6 October 2011
World Congress of Engineering Asset Management
by Doug Alcorn
We have been working with Assetricity implementing the MIMOSA Common Conceptual Object Model information standard for operations and maintenance. This year the WCEAM was held here in Cincinnati. I was able to attend the Interoperability for Asset Management workshop for the last couple of days. While there we ratified the new 3.2.3 CCOM Markup Language standard I’ve been working on the last year or so.
This project obviously has a lot of “big E” Enterprise baggage. The weight of that opening paragraph alone rekindles my rebellion from our corporate overlords. I’ve stuck with this project for several reasons though.
First, it’s really hard. Asset management, maintenance, and condition monitoring are much more complicated than what I originally thought. It’s an incredibly broad field with many diverse needs across almost all industries. There have been many times when I thought, “there must be an easier way to do this.” However, after understanding more of the context I’ve often come around to understand why the complexity is needed. Even still it’s almost become a cliche to remark on how hard this project is.
Second, the goal of the project is aimed squarely at interoperability. It hopes to chart a course through very difficult waters to unite many of the big players in the land of “big E”. Instead of staking out its turf and fighting to the bitter end, the project is trying to help companies get their heterogeneous environments to work together. From my early days working with (and on) Linux to focusing on open web standards, this is a goal I can easily get behind.
In the Ruby (and also Agile) world we often talk about working in the Enterprise. Glenn Vanderburg has said, “The Enterprise isn’t ready for Ruby, it’s desperate for it.” After escaping the Enterprise, I’ve been very suspicious of working with it again. Frankly, I’ve passed on a couple projects that flew too close to the sun. This is a project though that allows me to push my ideals into the Enterprise.
