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AECWeekly examines select top news each week, picks out worthwhile reading from around the web, and special interest items you might not find elsewhere. This issue will feature Industry News, Acquisitions/Alliances/Agreements, Announcements, Financials, Contract Awards, Awards, New Products, Letters to the Editor and Upcoming Events.
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Industry News
BusinessConnect, a Web Services Interface for the TRIRIGA Application
by Susan Smith
In a conversation this week with Mike Daffer, vice president, business development and marketing and Chuao Wang, director of technology strategy for TRIRIGA Inc., AECWeekly learned about that company and its new TRIRIGA BusinessConnect technology, which provides a web services interface for updating or requesting information from the TRIRIGA application.
TRIRIGA itself is in the forefront of the Integrated Workplace Management Systems (IWMS) market with 50% growth each year since its inception in 2000. According to Mike Daffer, Mike Bell from Gartner Research has ranked TRIRIGA #1 for two years in a row in this market space.
AECWeekly: So what is IWMS and to what do you attribute that growth?
Mike Daffer: Mike Bell from Gartner coined the term IWMS. It's a consolidation of the FM market, the projects CMMS and corporate real estate. Everyone identified the synergies that all these disparate markets shared and the fact that everyone needs to share the same data. We needed the ability to share data across multiple integrated applications on the same data platform. We use our own Momentum platform. The efficiencies gains that you get can be up to 33%. Mike built this market, and it's growing at about 10% a year.
AW: How long ago did he come up with this name?
MD: It's been around for about three or four years.
AW:, I remember TRIRIGA when it was starting out. It addressed a real estate market that needed to be able to work on multiple projects and handle lots of different aspects of projects within each one of those simultaneously. Is that still a part of what's going with TRIRIGA?
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AW: Design through operations - to what level do you take operations?
MD: We start in the design process, where people can take their CAD files and integrate them with ours. They can manage their facilities all the way through owning and operating those facilities, managing the leases and transactions, all the preventive maintenance, scheduled maintenance all the way through decommissioning and using all that history of the life of an asset, whether it be a building, a desk, a computer, etc. (there are always assets within assets), and be able to reuse that data to build the next building. You always have that fingerprint of data that's available to you.
That's why the analysts say the IWMS market is exploding, it's going to be the next ERP and CRM market. It is above any of the other growth markets today.
AW: Do you have any customers in the operations phase now?
MD: Yes, a number of them. We have 700+ customers out there, and a lot of them use it day in and day out in the operations of their facilities, they've actually integrated mobile into their facilities for work orders - they are going into great detail with this. The BusinessConnect tool is allowing us to integrate to those financial systems and other tools that don't fit in the IWMS market.
Chuao Wang manages the strategic vision and the feature roadmaps for the Momentum platform and other technology components, including BusinessConnect.
CW: The biggest benefit of BusinessConnect is that it provides a standards based interface for allowing external systems to query or update TRIRIGA information. The standards based interface is exposed as a web service and this web services complies with all the latest integration web standards and protocols including web services interoperability 1.1 also known as WSI 1.1 and all the associated protocols.
This means that with BusinessConnect, the effort to build an integration solution has been greatly reduced because now you can leverage standards that aren't leveraged by integration toolkits that are already built. The integration toolkit includes the standards best of breed middleware solutions like WebSphere, WebLogic, WebMethods as well as any standard SOAP client. There is a lot of open source stuff in the Java community that provides a lot of toolkits to jumpstart your integration using web services. Basically, we have exposed some existing interfaces that we already delivered in previous releases of Momentum. All we've done is packaged them and exposed them as a standards based interface.
AW: What is the advantage of having all these things packaged together into BusinessConnect? Is there anything new here?
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We've also added some new features in BusinessConnect, - most important is the ability to reference the business logic already defined in the application.
AW: What about security and access to BusinessConnect itself?
CW: Anybody who has access to BusinessConnect will always encounter the business rules, so regardless of how you are accessing it, those business rules will apply. You can define alternate business rules within the online application, because we can define multiple business rules per business object. Different users with different roles may have different security and business rules associated with business objects, so for a power user, maybe there will be less required fields and for a self service user, maybe there will be more required fields.
If you want to specify business rules just for integration, you can also do that. You can effectively turn off any data validation for a specific integration request. If you want to reduce the cost and duplication of that logic, you can just simply reference the existing business logic.
The main benefit is that out of the box, you can reduce a lot of the code that goes into your typical integration project because that business logic is exposed through the interface.
AW: How is BusinessConnect going to be available to new and existing customers?
MD: Today we offer a BusinessConnect per server license. New customers can purchase the BusinessConnect API. Previous customers can also purchase the new BusinessConnect API. Previous customers who have already licensed the older version of our interface called TRIRIGA API, while they're on maintenance, will be able to upgrade to BusinessConnect.
AW: Are there any plans to take TRIRIGA beyond the corporate real estate realm?
MD: There's no market we cannot enter, anybody who has a rooftop is a candidate for us. A threshold we use is that potential customers must manage at least a million square feet. Can we manage power plants? Yes. Is it at the top of our list? Probably no. Because there is so much corporate real estate out there just in the business world today, just in Fortune 2000. It's a huge market, and we are tackling that head on.
Our CAD integrator works with either MicroStation or AutoCAD, there are no limits to that front end component.
AW: What is the application development platform that TRIRIGA applications are built on?
CW: Customers use TRIRIGA Momentum to configure their applications. It is a proprietary application development framework that provides configuration utilities that are browser based that allow you to control and define entire lists of application behavior. This browser and configuration based framework reduces any of the coding or programming required to configure applications. Momentum is used to define basic business objects, basic transactions, organizations, contracts, people, floors, spaces, which is basically the aggregation of fields and data values that define a particular business object. We do that using a utility in Momentum called Data Modeler. We define the user interface for all these business objects, either to view or to create these objects. A Query Manager allows you to find the search and the lists of business objects. Security policies are all defined within these lists, as well as the business processes that define the TRIRIGA application. This is done using Momentum Workflow, which allows you to control all aspects of the business process. Momentum is built on the J2EE application framework.
TRIRIGA can adapt to existing business processes within organizations or we ship with best practices too.
Acquisitions/Agreements/Alliances
Intergraph Corporation, a global provider of spatial information management (SIM) software, announced that it has signed a definitive agreement to be acquired by an investor group led by Hellman & Friedman LLC and Texas Pacific Group in a transaction valued at approximately $1.3 billion. Under the terms of the agreement, Intergraph stockholders will receive $44.00 in cash for each share of Intergraph common stock, representing a 22% premium over Intergraph's average closing share price for the last twenty trading days.
Meridian Systems, provider of enterprise project management software for optimizing capital projects, programs and facilities, announced partnership agreements with three additional companies in the central United States. As authorized Meridian resellers, Master Graphics, Inc., New Vision Consulting Group, Inc. and Project 3 Technologies will support the selection of Prolog software, the industry standard for successful construction project delivery. These new partners will also provide consulting, implementation and training services to Meridian clients.
netGuru, Inc. entered into definitive agreements to merge with privately held BPO Management Services, Inc. (BPOMS) -- a provider of business process outsourcing services, including human resources, information technology, document management, and finance and accounting functions to middle-market companies -- and divest its Indian engineering business process outsourcing operations and related assets.
Announcements
Graphisoft announced that Archicad 10, the latest version of its award-winning Virtual Building(TM) modeling technology, is now supporting Apple. Macintosh OS X running on the new Intel. Core(TM) processor platform.
Sage Software announced the availability of Year-End Print Services for the 2006 tax year through Sage Compliance Services, as well as the general availability of a Sage Compliance Utility for use with the company's Sage Timberline Office product. The Year-End Print Services support the year-end W-2, W-2c and 1099 processing needs of small and mid-sized businesses (SMBs), while the new conversion utility enables companies using Sage Timberline Office to outsource their payroll tax compliance process to Sage Compliance Services to minimize exposure to penalties and reduce related IT needs.
COADE, Inc. announced that the company has donated 34 seats of CADWorx Plant Professional and P&ID Professional to Oklahoma State University (OSU) Okmulgee for classroom training. CADWorx, the company's industry-leading software for 3D process plant design and process and instrumentation diagramming (P&ID), will be used at the university to train the next generation of engineers and plant designers in a sector that is in need of these practical skills. Specifically, the software will be used in the Piping Drafting and Design course to train students on designing piping systems and P&ID's as well as producing isometric drawings. The donation was coordinated by COADE dealer ECAD through their Tulsa, Oklahoma, office.
Microdesk, Inc. a national Autodesk PSP and ESRI business Partner continues its growth in New England with the opening of a new office in East Berlin, Connecticut. The East Berlin office joins Microdesk's Waltham, Massachusetts and Bedford, New Hampshire offices as its third base of operations in the New England region, providing ATC training, consulting and development services, and technical support to its clients.
Awards
HDR, an architectural, engineering, and consulting firm ranked No. 17 among ENR's 2006 Top 500 Design Firms, has won a 2006 BE Award for its implementation of ProjectWise. The award category was "Civil: Managed Environment."
MasterGraphics has been awarded a Premier Service Provider (PSP) designation by Autodesk. for service to the architectural design community. The company also holds the PSP designation for the manufacturing and education communities. With the third PSP award, MasterGraphics becomes one of only a few select Autodesk Value Added Resellers in the world to hold PSP status in three industries.
New Products
Bentley Systems, Incorporated announced the commercial release of WaterGEMS V8 XM Edition, the only water distribution modeling solution to unify modeling across MicroStation, ArcGIS, AutoCAD, and stand-alone platforms.
The 2006 winner of the AWWA People's Choice Award as the most useful new product, WaterGEMS V8 XM goes beyond GIS-centric products, providing a true data-centric solution. This means that water utilities and consulting firms can, for the first time, leverage the benefits of ArcGIS integration without sacrificing interoperability with the AutoCAD, MicroStation, and stand-alone platforms.
Autodesk, Inc. announced the immediate availability of Autodesk Revit Structure 4, building information modeling (BIM) software for structural engineering, design and documentation. Revit Structure 4 introduces new advanced analytical tools and makes modeling key structural elements even more intuitive. Autodesk also announced the immediate availability of Autodesk Revit Building 9.1, which has been updated for compatibility with the new version of Revit Structure.
Quantapoint announced that final beta testing for PRISM 3D(TM) and QuantaCAD(TM) for PDMS has started. PRISM 3D is the most advanced technology available for sharing and accessing dimensional and other information from plants digitized using laser scanning and QuantaCAD enables this digitized plant to be accessed within AVEVA PDMS.
IMSI/Design, a leader in retail CAD, announced the release of DesignCAD(tm) 3D Max v17.
New features include a new, intuitive Light Source menu that gives the user unparalleled control of the lighting schemes of their drawings, as well as enhanced OpenGL rendering and shading that now make DesignCAD drawings even more realistic. Enhanced DXF and DWG support includes support for AutoCAD PaperSpace, as well as Layers, LineStyles, Views, Viewports and Blocks. In addition, a new drawing macro converts DesignCAD files to a DWG format that allows for seamless import into SketchUp(r) drawings.
Around the Web
Google Chief Joins the Board of Apple, Bloomberg News, August 30, 2006, The New York Times
Upcoming Events
| PLASA06 | |
| Date: | September 10 - 13, 2006 |
| Place: | Earls Court Exhibition Centre
London, SW5 9TA United Kingdom |
| PLASA06 is THE international event attracting buyers and specifiers within the entertainment, event, corporate, architectural and installation industries from all over the world. If you work professionally with lighting, sound, rigging or staging, then PLASA06 is the event w you can see the latest innovations in one place at one time. PLASA06 is steered by people from within the industry, ensuring it is receptive to market changes: the 2006 show promises to deliver precisely what the market requires - information, ideas and a strong forum for doing real business. |
|
| Integral Sustainability | |
| Date: | September 11 - 15, 2006 |
| Place: | Westin Hotel - Lakeview Pavillion
Westminster, CO USA |
| The 2006 Integral Sustainability Workshop Learn to use the Integral Framework to improve sustainability practice. This framework enables: deep clarification of sustainability complexity; identification of the highest leverage points in systems, culture, and stakeholder psychology; and up to 10 times increased personal effectiveness. Learn how leaders within the United Nations system, the US Environmental Protection Agency, and corporations use this approach to design more effective sustainability initiatives and leadership development programs. The Integral Framework is a comprehensive map of systems, culture, psychology, and behavior. It is used worldwide in some of the
highest levels of business, government, and civil society. The framework was crafted over the past 30 years by Ken Wilber and other scholar-practitioners and is delineated in 20+ books. It offers a breakthrough way to understand, manage, and respond to complexity. Contact information: Nicole Fegley +1 303-545-5445 seminars@integralinstitute.org |
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| The Canalys Navigation Forum 2006 | |
| Date: | September 11 - 13, 2006 |
| Place: | Crowne Plaza
Geneva, Swaziland |
| From 11-13 September, CEOs and top-line management from around the globe will gather in Geneva to take part in the first ever Navigation Forum. This exclusive gathering of business leaders, industry analysts and respected visionaries will provide an unrivalled event focused on the rapidly expanding and evolving world of mobile navigation. |
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| Apple Expo 2006 | |
| Date: | September 12 - 16, 2006 |
| Place: | Porte de Versailles, Hall 5
Paris, France |
| Wallingford Software International User Conference 2006 | |
| Date: | September 13 - 14, 2006 |
| Place: | Howbery Park
Wallingford, Oxfordshire, United Kingdom |
| This year's event will cover all the main Wallingford Software products and - apart from key plenary sessions - will feature multiple presentations running concurrently. During the 2 days t will be a good cross-section of user presentations, interesting and useful papers from Wallingford Software and a wide variety of product demonstrations and updates. |
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| UGS Digital Manufacturing Symposium | |
| Date: | September 13 - 14, 2006 |
| Place: | Ford Conference & Event Center
Dearborn, MI USA |
| Learn how UGS digital manufacturing helps you transform the process of manufacturing. Join UGS and your peers in other companies at this annual two-day event to see how Tecnomatix digital manufacturing software solutions are helping the world's leading companies gain an edge on their competition. |
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| Livable Communities: Walking, Working, and Water | |
| Date: | September 14 - 17, 2006 |
| Place: | Seattle Marriott Waterfront/Bell Harbor Conference Center
Seattle, WA USA |
Connecting Urban and Environmental Issues with Design Opportunities Presented by The American Institute of Architects Center for Communities by Design Committee on the Environment Housing and Custom Residential Regional and Urban Design Committee Young Architects Forum and AIA Seattle The Livable Communities conference will engage design professionals, public officials, and others in an exploration of the intersecting sps of community and environment through design. The focus will be on creating sustainable places that connect opportunities related to walking, working, and water.
Using the past, present, and potential future of Seattle and the greater Puget Sound region as a point of departure, the conference will focus on issues of national concern as well as the way those issues are experienced in the host community. The conference will also focus on issues ranging from regional to community to neighborhood scales. |
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| How Autodesk® Buzzsaw® Streamlines Agency-to-Agency and Private Sector Communications | |
| Date: | September 20, 2006 |
| Place: | Embassy Suites Hotel at BWI
1300 Concourse Drive, Linthicum, MD USA |
| Avatech Solutions, Inc. (OTCBB: AVSO.OB), the nation's leading provider of design, engineering, and facilities management solutions, has announced that it will be hosting a free executive breakfast seminar in Baltimore, MD, on Sept. 20, to help government executives discover and learn how Autodesk Buzzsaw can help them organize and simplify agency-to-agency and agency-to-contractor communications.
Attendees will learn how the use of Buzzsaw can streamline permitting, approval, and other processes that have direct impact on their ability to stay on budget, avoid duplication, and speed time to completion for their construction projects. Avatech's product experts will also demonstrate how Buzzsaw, in conjunction with a single integrated building information model (BIM), can help government agencies provide significant information for future and current homeland security initiatives, as well as comply with the federally mandated requirement for BIM. "The need to build tools to improve the sharing of key project information across agencies is on the minds of many government managers," said Avatech senior solutions expert Beau Turner. "This seminar will demonstrate how the superior collaborative capabilities offered by Buzzsaw can be executed simply and securely in virtually any public sector environment." |
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| FME Worldwide User Conference 2006 | |
| Date: | September 21 - 27, 2006 |
| Place: | Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada |
| Block off September 21-22, 2006 now to take advantage of this unique opportunity to learn new tips and techniques that will help you maximize your return on investment and improve your productivity with Safe Software products. |
|
| II Bolivian Congress of Color | |
| Date: | September 25 - 27, 2006 |
| Place: | Universidad Catolica Boliviana
La Paz, Bolivia |
| Color in Architecture, Application of Paintings, Harmony, Semiotic, Estereoscopy, Engineering, Art, Design, Decoration, Trends, Mode, Cars, Photography, Lighting, Colorimetry, Advertising, Marketing, Medicine, Colorterapy, Graphical Impression, Odontolgy, Culinary - Eaten, Physics, Optics, Vision, Education of the Color, Industry, Signposting, Psychology, Ceramics, Textils, Leather, Pigments, Dyes, Television, Cinema, Systems Classification of color, Samples of Color, Communication, Scenery, Image, History, Monuments, Museums, Restoration, Security |
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| PLM Road Map 2006 | |
| Date: | September 27 - 28, 2006 |
| Place: | The Dearborn Inn
Dearborn, MI USA |
| Product Lifecycle Management Road Map 2006 represents a strategic conference focused on the critical trade-offs that shape product development. At PLM Road Map 2006, find out first hand which issues are currently confronting end users. Presentations will cover collaboration across the enterprise, knowledge capture and reuse, the business benefits of PLM integration, PLM interoperability, the tradeoffs of open CAD and tight integration, product development platforms to meet the needs of commonality and variety, up-front simulation, up-front manufacturing process constraints, SOA reuse of software modules as web services, the business benefits of PLM, and
more. |
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You can find the full AECCafe.com event calendar here.
To read more news, click here.
-- Susan Smith, AECCafe.com Managing Editor.