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With digital business, the nature of products is changing. This requires manufacturers to adopt new thinking and new IT called "product innovation platforms" to define and design products and to manage product life cycles. So, what defines the nature of these platforms?

Most experts agree that innovation platforms and PLM IT Systems in general should

  • provide powerful analytics tools
  • facilitate visual decision making and open innovation
  • include data from various sources (authoring tools, quality management, manufacturing, the supply chain and so on)

Especially the last point means that they should be open.


But what does openness exactly mean?


A couple of years ago, ProSTEP iViP has defined "The Code of PLM Openness (CPO)", which is a worldwide unique approach. It combines technological IT requirements with those from business. The aim of the CPO is to establish a common understanding on openness of IT systems in the context of PLM between IT customers, IT vendors and IT service providers. Thereby, the CPO goes far beyond the requirement to provide IT standards and related interfaces. It defines measurable criteria (‘shall’, ‘should’, ‘may’) for the following categories: interoperability, infrastructure, extensibility, interfaces, standards, architecture as well as partnership.



Source: ProSTEP iViP


SAP supports the Codex of PLM Openness (CPO) initiative. SAP has been a member of the CPO workgroup since the beginning and openness is a major part of SAP’s solution strategy. SAP appreciates ProSTEP iViP’s approach of moderating a common definition of "openness" in the PLM community,bringing both customers, vendors and implementation partners to the desk. SAP supports openness of IT systems in the sense the CPO defines:  
"Openness is a capability provided by an IT system, and it is characterized by interoperability, portability and extensibility. These capabilities are implemented using IT interfaces, standards and the IT architecture. The openness of an IT system cannot be seen separately from the partners to the contract, i.e. the IT vendors and the IT customers."   SAP respects its customers’ view on the necessity of openness, acknowledging their often diverse and inhomogeneous landscapes. SAP stands for open integration of systems in the respective customer environment, enabling their customers to support their businesses based on their needs in their specific industry.

SAP has just recently renewed its CPO statement, reinforcing its commitment to support PLM openness.

Please find the first CPO statement and the May 2015 update below.