Nov 05 2013

HP to extend ePrint & Share reach

HP New Logo 150pxHP is to extend the reach of its ePrint & Share cloud storage service. The company, best known for its printers (it also does workstations), will be working with the major providers of Software-as-a-Service construction collaboration platforms so that design information can be shared with non-HP platforms.

ePrint & Share was launched just over three years ago at an event in Copenhagen, providing up to 5GB of free storage for HP users, allowing drawing files to be accessed from compatible HP printers as well as from desktop devices. In March 2012, HP extended its partnership with Autodesk to enable printing to HP devices from the Apple iOS AutoCAD WS (now AutoCAD 360) mobile application; two months later, it released an HP ePrint & Share mobile application for Android smartphones and tablets; and in September 2012, HP DesignJet UK manager Phil Oakley talked about accessing content stored in DropBox, and in PlanWell – a file-sharing service developed by US-based reprographic provider ARC.

ePrint & Share APIs? Coming soon….

At a London event at the Royal Society of Arts today, I asked Phil and Ramon Pastor, Vice President of HP’s Large Format Design team about the long-promised integration with third party platforms. I was told that HP would be working with partners to create ePrint & Share interfaces between its printers and the leading cloud-based construction collaboration platforms. Next year seemed to be the timeframe, and I got the impression it would be working initially with the major design software houses – Autodesk, Bentley, etc – and then extending the learning from that process to create APIs with other platforms such as Aconex, etc.

To HP, the design world is one where paper and digital are connected, with HP devices increasingly used to store and process metadata associated with designs, to output the paper manifestations of digital models, and to share files and support collaboration. Phil even talked about the use of augmented reality in annotation of drawings and sharing these back to the model!

HP Remote Graphics Software

The event also showed off HP’s workstations, and demonstrated v6 of HP’s Remote Graphics Software (RGS). I hadn’t seen this before, and it was impressive. Basically, a HP workstation user can enable a screen-sharing session from his or her desktop and screen-share with team members anywhere and on any range of devices, including tablets and laptops (not just workstations). As the process is essentially streaming a view of the desktop, no great processing requirement is required at the viewer’s end, though v6 includes advanced video compression and HP Velocity WAN optimisation to limit latency, etc.

Permanent link to this article: https://extranetevolution.com/2013/11/hp-to-extend-eprint-share-reach/

Nov 05 2013

Another FM accolade for iSite’s Hub

SaaS technology vendor iSite’s Hub wins Innovation in the use of Technology and Systems Award at the BIFM Awards.

iSite Tech AwardIn March, Styles & Wood SaaS technology subsidiary iSite picked up an award for its SaaS-based ‘Assetology’ Hub, launched in October 2012 (post), at the annual i-FM Technology in FM Awards. It has followed this up by winning the Innovation in the use of Technology and Systems Award at the British Institute of Facilities Management Awards recently.

Martin Ward (holding the trophy, right) said the Hub was singled out by the BIFM judges as being far above other similar “integration” services:

The HUB entry stirred a lot of debate amongst the judges. The use of the technology was innovative and the management information potentially generated through the system is a very powerful tool for FMs. The fact that it is independent and is being developed in conjunction with FMs looking after a large complex estate without making legacy systems redundant demonstrated the real value and potential of the technology…. … a technology such as iSite has a wide application across the FM sector both for clients and service providers.”

The Hub is a fully integrated workspace management system that enables estate teams or property managers to measure the performance of their buildings and assets as well as their supply chain.  It provides users with data on property, project, asset, facility, risk and compliance which can then be fully interrogated to drive efficiency.

Permanent link to this article: https://extranetevolution.com/2013/11/another-fm-accolade-for-isites-hub/

Nov 04 2013

Aconex appoints a US-based CMO

aconexThe apparent transition of Australian-founded Aconex into an American corporation took another step last week with the announcement that experienced US SaaS executive Blaine Mathieu had been appointed as chief marketing officer of the SaaS project collaboration vendor.

Blaine Mathieu, Aconex CMOAccording to the news release, Mathieu brings more than 25 years of management experience in marketing, product management, sales and business development, operations, and acquisitions. Previously, he was chief products officer at Mindjet, where he led go-to-market and product planning for the company’s transition to a SaaS business model. He also served as chief marketing officer at Lyris, a provider of SaaS integrated marketing automation solutions, and before that was at Corel Corporation, Adobe Systems and Gartner.

In just over two years, we have seen the Melbourne-based software developer invest in several experienced US executives as it has entrenched itself in California’s technology heartland, fuelling some speculation about an initial public offering, IPO.

  • October 2011 – [name removed at subject’s request] was appointed senior vice-president, sales and marketing (no longer with Aconex)
  • May 2012 – Steve Recht was appointed chief finance officer
  • October 2012 – Frank Kopas was appointed general manager, US
  • November 2012 – Patricia Cuthbert appointed as vice-president, finance

In November 2011, Aconex also bolstered its board of directors by appointing two new non-execs, one of them former Bechtel Enterprises president Paul Unruh.

Update (28 December 2013) – Earlier this month, Mathieu left Aconex after just a month’s service, becoming President and CEO of Selectica. Neither his Linkedin profile nor the Selectica news release (5 December) make any mention of Aconex. The 30 October 2013 Aconex news release quoted Lee Jasper:

“Adding Blaine Mathieu to the Aconex senior management team is a major win … Blaine will be an important catalyst to help drive the next phase of our growth.”

The one time SVP sales and marketing lasted six months (October 2011 – April 2012) and now Mathieu has lasted barely a month. I guess he was headhunted for the two roles almost simultaneously, and jumped for the one giving him CEO responsibility rather than staying as a CMO. So: will Aconex now resume its search for a CMO?

Permanent link to this article: https://extranetevolution.com/2013/11/aconex-appoints-a-us-based-cmo/

Nov 04 2013

Colin Smith exits Conject

BIW founder and CEO Colin Smith steps down from AEC SaaS pioneer Conject Holdings

Colin SmithLast month, I was writing about the departure of founder and CEO Richard Vertigan from UK-based SaaS construction collaboration technology provider 4Projects; now I find myself writing a similar story in respect of Colin Smith, who has decided to step down as CEO of rival vendor Conject at the end of 2013.

There are various parallels between their decisions. Both founded SaaS start-ups around the turn of the century initially targeting the UK construction industry, growing them through the difficult days after the dot.com bubble burst, and turning their companies into profitable international businesses. Colin’s BIW Technologies was the early pace-setter in the UK market, and was eventually acquired by Munich, Germany-based SaaS vendor Conject in December 2010, while Richard’s firm was acquired by US construction software company Viewpoint in February of this year.

Contrary to many people’s expectations, Colin was not immediately replaced; indeed, he thrived in the new larger company and emerged as CEO of Conject Holdings GmbH, passing control of the UK operation to former BIW sales director Steve Cooper, while he devoted much of his time to managing affairs in Germany. However, the sheer amount of time that he spent in Germany and travelling to and from his Berkshire home became one of the reasons that Colin decided to step down (in another Vertigan parallel, we know Viewpoint is keen to have a locally-based person as the new CEO of the soon-to-be-Newcastle-based 4Projects). Colin Smith told me:

“Conject is now a sizeable, stable and profitable company with strong cash reserves; the UK business is in good hands, but the group as a whole needs someone based in Germany to take it to the next level, continuing the group’s international expansion and preparing it to roll-out a range of new exciting SaaS applications over the next 12 months. With UK family, I was reluctant to move full-time to Germany, and, frankly, after 13 years growing an entrepreneurial business, would like to take a break, look for some new challenges, and let an experienced director continue the expansion of the group.”

The new Conject Holdings CEO will be Ralf Händl, an existing Conject director and shareholder with extensive experience across the global construction market. Colin, meanwhile, says he will be recharging his batteries and “may even call Richard Vertigan for a round of golf!”

[Disclosure: I was one of Colin’s early recruits to join BIW Technologies in 2000 and was a BIW employee until early 2009.]

Permanent link to this article: https://extranetevolution.com/2013/11/colin-smith-exits-conject/

Oct 30 2013

BIM = Better information mobility?

A US survey suggests growing benefits of mobile information, but its respondents weren’t enthusing about mobile access to digital models.

Bentley - logoAt the Bentley Systems Year in Infrastructure conference in London this week, information mobility has been a recurring theme (indeed, BIM has even been verbally re-engineered to become ‘better information mobility’), and its not just about mobile devices but about the whole challenge of enabling collaboration by connecting people and sharing data from a multitude of different applications, operating systems and devices. We are, of course, some distance from the utopian vision of seamless exchange of the right information at the the right time in the right place and on any device, but the industry has at least started to make steps on the journey, it seems, though I think the speed of that journey may also vary between the US and the UK.

McGraw Hill Information MobilitySmartMarket report

A survey of 300 contractor firms in the US construction sector undertaken by McGraw Hill Construction has been published this week, and I listened as Harvey Bernstein, vice president of Industry Insights & Alliances, presented some of the research findings from the new SmartMarket Report this morning (click here for report). Contractors are benefiting from increased information mobility, he said, but significant gaps need to be overcome for the benefits to be widely achieved across the industry.

Overall, the most highly reported benefits are better team collaboration (reported by 76%) and improved productivity (reported by 68%). Bottom line benefits, such as shorter project schedules, lower project costs and increases in project ROI, are significant for those that are tracking the benefits.

However, only half (51%) are tracking information flow at all, and only 20% are tracking the flow of their information outside their own firms—a significant need in the industry in order to understand and improve the flow of information.

There are proven results in the value of information mobility investments, with contractors reporting shorter schedules by 9%, project cost decreases of 10% and increases in project ROI of 2%. We need to encourage the industry to track and report these benefits so they can justify investing in information mobility, thereby improving their profitability.

Another challenge is determining access to data and information—ranked as one of the most important factors driving investments in information mobility. While the industry has made significant improvements in information flow within or outside an office, only 37% report that their workers onsite can access information outside the trailer. The two most important functions of information mobility reported by contractors are gathering real-time data from the jobsite and conducting analyses of those data.

ProjectWise

As you might expect at a Bentley conference, ProjectWise is widely discussed, and you almost get the impression that no other online collaboration platforms exist (though I did hear Crossrail’s Neill Pawsey talk this afternoon about connecting third party tools such as Aconex and Asite to Bentley’s eB system). Certainly, ProjectWise has become a pervasive tool within the Bentley ecosystem, and Bentley CEO Greg Bentley has highlighted that more than half of UK Bentley users now collaborate via ProjectWise. Extending this collaboration beyond the site office, though, is still seen by the US survey respondents as fraught with difficulties, particularly relating to document security, secure access and version control.

Crossrail lessons

Bringing the Bentley conference to London, however, has (I think) opened some US delegates’ eyes to the great strides that the UK industry is making with building information modelling (the original BIM) and the smaller but still significant strides that organisations such as Crossrail are making with use of mobile devices (see May 2013 post). Neill (who I know well through COMIT and as a fellow member of the Institution of Civil Engineers’ Information Systems Panel) talked about use of Apple tablets in the challenging underground environment of a major tunnelling project. While some contractors ban mobile devices completely, he suggested there could be exceptions.

He compared the safety of using a conventional paper notebook within a live site’s ‘safe zone’ with using a tablet in the same place; he also pointed out “Paper tends to lose all integrity in wet weather” and argued that an encased tablet would be a more than adequate replacement, particularly if you could overcome its vulnerability to knocks, etc. Crossrail had learned from using an application called Formotus on iPads to rapidly capture and centralise engineers’ observation reports, and he also said viewing building information models in-situ often helped explain construction methodologies better than any paper drawings could.

Currently, though, mobile devices still tend to be used predominantly to share PDFs and electronic versions of paper drawings and documents – according to the SmartMarket report – and, perhaps surprisingly, the US survey respondents were not predicting increased mobile use of digital model files. I expect if the same survey was undertaken in the UK, where BIM adoption and interest in BIM on mobile devices is exploding, the results would be very different.

(Note: COMIT’s own conference on information mobility is next week, 7 November in London.)

Permanent link to this article: https://extranetevolution.com/2013/10/bim-better-information-mobility/

Oct 28 2013

Bentley embraces cloud still further with Microsoft Azure

Bentley - logoI’m attending the Year in Infrastructure 2013 Conference, Bentley Systems‘ annual showcase for all they do in relation to software for the infrastructure sector. Highlight (for me) of this afternoon’s press briefing in London was the announcement that Bentley CONNECT Services, “to be successively extended to all of Bentley’s software subscribers to complete the reach of project and asset information mobility, will be fully provisioned through the Windows Azure cloud from Microsoft.”

I will be reviewing my notes and looking more closely at the move and what it means for Bentley ProjectWise and for SaaS in general, later in the week. For now, here is some of the news release:

“Windows Azure will unify Bentley’s own software and support enterprise, making it accessible to add value directly in the “live” context of users’ work, through Bentley CONNECT SELECTservices for software administration and technical support and Bentley CONNECT LEARNservices. In addition, it will underlie an incremental business model – enabling Bentley to complete its reach in “software as services” – through Bentley CONNECT MANAGEservices.

Speaking here at The Year in Infrastructure 2013 Conference … CEO Greg Bentley reviewed the effective strategies emerging this year … to take advantage of information mobility for better performance of infrastructure projects and assets. By now comprehensively “connecting through cloud services,” he said, projects could effectively, securely, and immediately augment the information mobility returns on their successful existing internal collaboration initiatives.

To help achieve this, Bentley CONNECT can span users’ project environments across participants, firewalls, supply chains, joint ventures, and disparate vendors’ software, as well as across Bentley’s information modeling application portfolio, Bentley’s ProjectWise collaboration servers, Bentley’s AssetWise servers for operations and maintenance, and Bentley’s growing mobile apps portfolio. Cloud services being previewed for users include Bentley CONNECT Project Sharing Services, Bentley CONNECT i-model Validation Services, Bentley CONNECT Content Services, and Bentley CONNECT Scenario Services.

Bentley’s decision to choose Windows Azure as the technical foundation of Bentley CONNECT allows it to extend its proven capabilities with new services uniquely enabled by an always-on “cloud.” By embracing Windows Azure Platform-as-a-Service and Infrastructure Services, Bentley is aligned with Microsoft’s commitment to hybrid environments, comprising cloud and on-premises computing – a crucial factor in meeting the unique requirements of organizations that design, build, and operate the world’s infrastructure. In addition, the global footprint of Windows Azure is a major advantage as Bentley users are key contributors to projects worldwide.

SaaS commercial offerings

Update (29 October 2013) – Revisiting the #yii2013 Twitter stream and wading through the wad of news releases given out yesterday, I should also mention that Bentley announced it is extending the reach of its software by providing it as a service (SaaS):

  • Bentley SELECT Open Access will provide “unrestricted access to Bentley’s portfolio of information modelling applications – unencumbered by conventional software procurement cycles”.
  • “Bentley’s new MANAGEservices offering facilitates the provisioning, rapid deployment, and operation of Bentley’s ProjectWise collaboration services and AssetWise asset information management services in a hybrid cloud services environment.”

The first option appears to aimed at organisations with Bentley Enterprise License Subscriptions, but the introduction of MANAGEservices (PDF brochure) is – for Bentley – more radical. It enables “instant-on” access to various cloud services, allowing small firms access to enterprise-strength (and previously enterprise cost) software (hosted by Microsoft Azure, Amazon Web Services and other service providers around the world), with the UK’s Highways Agency one of the first to implement ProjectWise in this fashion. Questioned by AEC Magazine‘s Martyn Day, Bhupinder Singh confirmed that users could be able to stream applications via the web and work via virtual desktops (assuming they had adequate broadband capacity).

Permanent link to this article: https://extranetevolution.com/2013/10/bentley-embraces-cloud-still-further-with-microsoft-azure/

Oct 21 2013

McLaren releases first stage support for BIM

McLaren-logoTwo months after its previous release, provider of construction project collaboration and computer-aided facilities management solutions, McLaren Software has announced the latest version of its Software-as-a-Service FusionLive platform, describing it as “arguably the most significant release in recent years”.

McLaren BIMIn the face of growing building information modelling (BIM) capability in rival SaaS collaboration systems (4Projects, Asite, etc) to provide the required common data environment (CDE; post), it delivers some functionality promised in August: what it describes as “first stage support” for BIM, allowing users “to open, view, navigate, select / deselect components and attribute information held in 3D IFC format models.”

The release adds: McLaren CAFM Explorer users will also be able to access these models in future releases supporting the building lifecycle from construction to facilities management.

McLaren CEO Paul Muir says:

This first phase of BIM support is a natural progression for FusionLive for construction collaboration and also for CAFM Explorer for facilities management. Streamlining processes and communications between users is a key foundation for a BIM strategy. This latest release also includes submittal comment management and other features designed to simplify ease of use and efficiency but not losing sight of the importance of the single point of truth for a project.

Extended BIM support will be announced in the near future as McLaren enhances our offerings to support building construction and facilities management for our Built Environment customers.”

Permanent link to this article: https://extranetevolution.com/2013/10/mclaren-releases-first-stage-support-for-bim/

Oct 21 2013

Conject UK 2012 results hit by exceptional costs

Conject Ltd’s UK operation slid further backwards in 2012, revenues dropping 5% and exceptional costs deepening its operating losses.

ConjectHaving just written about Asite’s recent financial performance, I did a quick check regarding some of the other UK Software-as-a-Service collaboration technology vendors. I discovered that Conject Ltd, the UK company previously known as BIW Technologies, had filed its financial results for the year to 31 December 2012 with Companies House back in July – and they don’t make pretty reading.

UK AEC SaaS vendor revenues Oct13 (amended)

The headline numbers show that Conject UK, which rebranded in March 2012 (and formally changed its company name in August 2012), generated revenues of £4.334m, down 5% from £4.576m a year earlier (post), extending a downward slide from its 2008 peak to four years. With rival 4Projects recently repeatedly promising bumper double-digit growth in its revenues, Conject is likely to fall even further behind its main UK competitor and the converging lines suggest it could conceivably be overtaken by Asite unless it can arrest that downward slide.

Moreover, a pre-tax Conject Ltd loss in 2011 of £573k grew nearly 9% to a pre-tax loss of £622k in 2012, its fourth straight year of reported losses.

UK vendor profit October 2013 (amended)

Exceptional costs

To me, this was an unexpected reverse – particularly as Conject group CEO Colin Smith had suggested an improving picture after a “flat” 2011 (rounded off by a “monster December” in 2012) when I spoke to him in January this year.

One big factor in the profit/loss performance is revealed in the detailed accounts: the company incurred exceptional expenses, totalling just over £400k, during 2012. This relates to a severance package for BIW founder and long-time director Bill Flind who, increasingly sidelined following BIW’s acquisition, resigned as a director on 1 October 2012. He received a £232k payment in lieu of notice and a further £135k in compensation for loss of office. The total value of the severance package, £403,239, is disclosed as exceptional administrative costs in the profit and loss account.

Clearly, without this exceptional cost, the loss would have been significantly reduced, to around £219k. The more worrying aspect was the lack of revenue growth, but there is an indication this may change: the firm’s order book at 31 December 2012 was standing at £10.82m, up around a third from the £8.12m reported a year earlier and a sign that the the company was finally winning more work. (Across the group, work-winning appeared to be accelerating in Q1 2013 when I spoke to Colin Smith in May.)

The Conject Group as a whole employs around 150 people and has combined revenues approaching €18m.

Steve CooperUpdate (24 October 2013) – Conject UK CEO Steve Cooper (right) has responded to my blog post, writing an upbeat post on the Conject blog, suggesting that I didn’t take into account recent market changes (though these are mainly to do with internal changes at Conject) or events since December 2012 (Steve mentions product enhancements, various wins, adding: “Up to the end of September 2013 revenues in the UK region have grown by 15%“). He also says it is more appropriate to compare Conject to its peers internationally – echoing a conversation I had with group CEO Colin Smith regarding German rival Think Project in May this year.

[Disclosure: from 2000 to early 2009, I was an employee of BIW Technologies, and have since undertaken occasional consultancy projects for Conject.]

Permanent link to this article: https://extranetevolution.com/2013/10/conject-uk-2012-results-hit-by-exceptional-costs/

Oct 19 2013

FieldLens: “the Facebook of construction”?

FieldLens - logoSome months ago, a structural engineer friend James Burt alerted me to FieldLens, and we had a long chat about this and related applications before the London launch of BIM4SMEs in April.

FieldLens is the work of a New York based development team led by CEO Doug Chambers. It aims to put construction collaboration on the mobile device – in this respect, the company is pursuing a similar approach to other mobile-first developers such as FluidCM and GenieBelt – and it particularly interests me for its shift from email-type communication processes to mobile-friendly short-form status updates and messaging shared via news feeds similar to Facebook’s “Timeline” feature. Indeed, recently reviewed by US publication, Engineering News Record, the application was dubbed the “Facebook of Construction”.

Chambers worked as a project manager on several high-profile projects, including the World Trade Center rebuild, and frustrated by the communication breakdowns, switched from construction to tech, raising over $1 million in startup funding. The service is currently free for approved beta testers until the end of 2013. The paid version will launch in early 2014 and will cost $15 per user, per month, for an unlimited number of projects, says Chambers.

The idea of a shared messaging or discussion stream for construction collaboration is not new. In September 2009, for example, I had a look at Incite’s shortlived Toolbox application which used the Web 2.0 concept of a comment stream – something also picked by fellow Australian companies Ennova (May 2011 post) and ProjectCentre (October 2011 post). While many of these early efforts were focused on traditional PC usage via a web browser, the pace of mobile computing adoption, and growing familiarity with social media communication styles, has made it inevitable that the idea would be applied for tablet and smartphone applications.

Permanent link to this article: https://extranetevolution.com/2013/10/fieldlens-the-facebook-of-construction/

Oct 18 2013

Asite advances

Asite grows revenues by a quarter and profits by a fifth in the year to June 2013.

Asite logo 2012London-based SaaS construction collaboration technology provider Asite has announced it grew its revenues 25.6% in the financial year to 30 June 2013, from £3.193m in 2012 to £4.011m, publishing its latest report and accounts (PDF; news release) yesterday.

UK AEC SaaS vendor revenues October 2013

The black line in the graph above suggests the company has made a significant advance, but it is the first of the leading players to report on its recent progress. UK rivals – eg: 4Projects (May 2013 post, September 2013 trading update) and Conject (post) – have both also been talking bullishly about recent trading performances.

In the year to June 2013, Asite returned a pre-tax profit of £0.511m (up 21.7% from £0.42m in 2012).

UK AEC SaaS vendor profit October 2013

So, on both revenue and profitability, Asite has continued the upward trend of recent years. A significant portion of that growth came from the Australian market, where Asite reported 2013 revenues of £557k, more than triple the £168k achieved a year earlier. US revenues more than doubled from £60k to £150k in the same period (Asite announced a new VP Sales for that market in July). The UK market saw revenues a more modest 10% up – still encouraging given the recent recession – and accounts for most (78%) of the company’s income.

The report, however, includes no breakdown between revenues from the company’s collaboration activities and those relating to its procurement/transaction hub.

Staff numbers were up to 104, from 90, almost solely through expansion of the India-based technical team.

In the Asite news release, CEO Tony Ryan is typically bullish:

The Asite team has delivered yet another record breaking year in terms of revenue, profit and best in class technology. … We continue to innovate, create and maintain sustainable growth, whilst showing others the way.

Adoddle is quickly becoming the number one Cloud solution for our industry and beyond – I’m grateful for being part of the best Team I have ever worked with in my 27 year career.  We have not once shirked from our responsibility in delivering the most up to date services and technology to our clients. Our Asite family continues to grow at break neck speed.  Our focus on Corporate or “Cocial” collaboration, as we call it, is trailblazing our platform to new levels.  Coupled with the fact that we are leading the way in collaborative Building Information Modeling (cBIM) with our state of the art Cloud Based Model Server (CBMS) – the future is back.’

I am sure his repeated front-runner claims – Asite is “showing others the way”, “becoming the number one Cloud solution”, “trailblazing” and “leading the way” – will be contested by some competitors. But, after so many years in the financial doldrums, there is no denying Asite is continuing to advance.

Permanent link to this article: https://extranetevolution.com/2013/10/asite-advances/

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