Managing PLM Data Migration

June 1, 2012
Report identifies challenges, outlines objectives in application migration, integration

Numerous industrial, commercial, technological, and even demographic trends are converging with one effect for machine shops and other manufacturing technology operations: the supply chain is becoming more dense, and the need to maneuver on that supply chain requires a greater volume and availability of information. As a result, an increasing number of machine shops are adopting a Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) programs.

CIMdata, a PLM management consulting and research firm has released a new report about the use of application data migration and integration in PLM environments. The report — “Application Migration & Application Integration” — is available free for download.

“Application migration and application integration are a fact of life for all companies as they move from older to newer applications and as they share data with suppliers and customers who often use different applications,” according to CIMdata.

Application migration processes tend to be complex because of the amount of accumulated data in legacy applications, further complicated by the various business rules that need to be established to facilitate the movement of that legacy data into PLM and other solutions. Also, because business processes cut across various applications, businesses need “an enterprise-bus backbone” that allows data to move across applications to support both application migrations as well as application integrations.

The challenges of migrating data include the need to reformat data so that receiving applications can use it; data that has to conform to security rules that may be established in multiple applications; data mapping that may be required so that it can be placed properly into a new application; and data that has to be cleaned so that it retains its value and integrity as it is moved.

Complex tasks like these generally are not supported in all applications that use and modify data. CIMdata’s report concentrates on eQ Technologic’s eQube-MI program, which provides a framework for supporting the complexity of data migrations among multiple applications. It describes the program’s capabilities and how manufacturers have used eQube-MI to execute data migration and application integration needs.

The report provides a business perspective on the importance of data migration and application integration within product development: the pressures that motivate the use of data migration and application integration; their value and future; and how eQ Technologic develops and advanced, data migration programs for the PLM market.

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