Microsoft Expands Vision from Engineering Desktop to the Extended Enterprise
By Chris Ray
Industry Manager for Engineering
Microsoft Corporation

Several years ago Microsoft outlined the vision of a single, integrated desktop for technical computing. This platform would be capable of running high-end applications like 3D solid modeling and business productivity applications at the same time. This vision was met with some skepticism because it seemed unlikely that the PC, which was great for business, would ever have the horsepower or the reliability to perform high-end engineering.

Where are we with this vision? Currently, engineering applications running on Microsoft Windows 2000 outperform any other operating system in almost every category: integer performance, floating point performance, graphics performance and application performance. And it allows for complete integration between technical and business applications.

So, in large measure the vision has been realized, but in the meantime the engineering industry has not stood still and there are new challenges. In particular, the Internet has impacted almost every aspect of business including engineering and product development.

Three trends are developing out of the growing acceptance of the Internet that will affect the future of engineering.

First, in order to make increasing gains in productivity the integrated desktop needs to be expanded to provide a platform for advanced collaboration. Most projects require a flexible environment, which can adapt to the needs of the project and this means being able to build a shared project workspace with all the tools and information an engineer needs right at the fingertips.

Microsoft has recently released SharePoint Portal, one of the new .NET servers that will make it easier for engineers to collaborate on projects that span multiple sites and multiple partners, customers and applications. SharePoint Portal combines a powerful document and search engine, document control features and the ability to build powerful, customized digital dashboards.

The second reality of the current environment is that no single product will solve all of the collaboration needs of even the simplest product development enterprise. There is a need for CAD collaboration, sharing of data contained in PDM systems, document collaboration, workflow collaboration and a host of other needs. So, whole suites of solutions are sprouting up to solve these issues and a new problem has been introduced-how to collaborate among the collaboration tools?

Microsoft BizTalk Sever will make it possible to exchange data and business processes between PDM systems from several vendors and with the legacy business systems within the company. BizTalk Server allows for the definition of process flows, transaction flows and contracts, and allows for a deep integration across heterogeneous environments. BizTalk server makes all of this possible because it supports the industry standards that are driving the internet, for example: XML, SOAP and UDDI.

The third emerging trend that will have an impact on the engineering environment is the definite shift toward distributed computing. There will continue to be a client server relationship within organizations, but Web services will provide more flexibility.

.NET is Microsoft's forward looking strategy aimed at helping organizations take advantage of this next generation of distributed computing. .NET will provide a development framework that will make writing web services as simple and as easy as possible. The .NET servers like BizTalk Server, Exchange Server 2000 and others will provide the best platform to aggregate and deliver these web services.

So, now that an integrated desktop is a reality, the next big challenge we face as an industry is in integrating the vast intellectual capital held in the product design process with the rest of the extended enterprise. Standards and systems that allow for flexibility will make this possible.

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