Cloudy PLM: Roadmap Into The Future

June 16, 2009

cloudy future

How will PLM-related software evolve on the cloud? This is actually my question for today. How will PLM get along with its big brother – the Cloud? I think we’ve spoken a lot in the past about topics related to Clouds and Product Lifecycle Management. I’ve linked a few of my previous posts below if you’d like to refresh your memory, or you are new to plmtwine and haven’t had the chance to see them before.

Where is PLM on Industry Cloud Map?

Where is the PLM shortcut to the cloud?

Should PLM take Excel to the Cloud?

Host PLM Data using Cloud Services

How will PLM applications change when they move to a cloud?

This time I’d like to try to outline the possibilities for the development of PLM Cloud options. For the moment, I can designate a relatively small set of available Cloud-based products in the PLM space today starting from veterans (such as Arena Solution), some past and existing services from the large PLM players  (Agile-Oracle, PTC-IBM) and related services provided by ERP vendors (such as?). Definitely we don’t have a PLM-cloud-mainstream so, how PLM become mainstream using the many options available today.

Following are 5 possible options:

1. Host of existing PLM products on private and public clouds.

This is a straightforward option for today’s PLM providers. They can try to leverage value from their existing infrastructure, by using the power of the existing implementation for legacy customers now wanting to move into this space. (is this what you meant?) . This offering is also probably the simplest from the technical standpoint. It provides multiple alternatives for deployment, provides a mixed integration of existing stacks, and offers a potential for great value for existing and growing partners.

2. Development of PLM-related services based on existing and/or new ERP or other PLM-neighbor-domains

The PLM domain isn’t very friendly, and competition in this space has increased over the past few years. So, I’d expect that the PLM-neighbor will try to step into this space and provide cloud-based services that leverage their power of infrastructure, customer base and diverse portfolio.

3. Emerging PLM-related services out of emerging services and applications.

I’d expect that some of the products available today can provide a good potential for PLM-related products. We discussed MS Excel and the related SharePoint product offering. The new wave of Google Wave and maybe some additional products can provide scalable grounds for future PLM services.

4. Development of new separate PLM-related services based on upcoming Cloud platforms from large vendors.

The upcoming MS Azure and other Cloud-based platforms hold a potential future for newcomers in this space. I’m sure that platform providers will be interested in developers who want to test or try their new offering within this space – PLM will not be excluded from the list as good value providers.

5. Developing PLM services based on Cloud based infrastructure available today.

This is an addition for option #4. But a few of the available platforms today can be mature to deliver some PLM functionality.. Amazon Web Services is probably on the top of my list. In addition Google Apps and, more specifically, Force.com can also provide some alternatives to newcomers in the PLM space.

Finally, I cannot vote for one of these options. My take is that the future will come in the form of a diverse set of federated PLM services related to the space that we refer as today as Product Lifecycle Management. Will we call this space PLM? This is a very interesting question, I think we need to discuss this and, of course, to see (or influence) this in the future.

2 Comments | Cloud Application, Daily PLM Think Tank, Technology | Tagged: , , | Permalink
Posted by olegshilovitsky

How will PLM applications change when they move to a cloud?

May 7, 2009

Clouds have become a very important trend lately. Earlier this week, I was reading a McKinsey discussion about document presentation – <Clearing the air on cloud Computing>. Also, I had the chance to write a few posts on this subject a couple of months ago. I’d like to get back to this topic again and discuss its potential implication on the PLM/PDM/CAD business. I’d like to group it into hardware, software, application, and innovation.

cloud-computing-trend

Impact in the area of hardware infrastructure will allow you to provide better solutions from the environmental standpoint. Additional impact will be on data management and data retention programs. The biggest benefit and impact is that cloud data centers will allow you to manage an infrastructure that you weren’t able to manage previously. It will make a global PLM solution possible and decrease cost. It will allow many small manufacturers to have solutions they weren’t able to build before.

From the perspective of software platforms, today’s PLM vendors and future PLM solutions providers will be able to use the capabilities of existing and new cloud services. This is a new type of software that focuses on virtualization and common application services like databases and services. A great benefit of these platforms is the ability to scale up when needed. This is can be greatly used by simulation and computation products, as well as serve peak performance needs.

Here is a landscape of most popular today’s platforms:

cloud-platforms-today

Hardware and Software Platforms will open a new space for the development of service applications. These applications will be specifically designed with the “cloud in mind”. They will focus on online presence, transparent data availability and multiple device access. Additional benefits will be a dramatic cost reduction for PLM applications as a result of cloud hardware/software bundled platforms.

Last, but not least, is Innovation in PLM. Today’s on-premise environment sets a relatively high bar for newcomers in developing new and innovative applications in this space. I think that the combined effect of hardware, software and application development will impact the future PLM application landscape. This be largely beneficial for manufacturing companies around the globe during the current economic situation.

7 Comments | Cloud Application, Daily PLM Think Tank, Technology | Tagged: , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by olegshilovitsky

The Biggest PLM Challenge on the Cloud

March 25, 2009

We’ve had a discussion about the  future and benefits of cloud applications. Without rehashing the conversation too much, it seems obvious as to how an offering based on Cloud Computing and SaaS/PaaS/IaaS can simplify application development, streamline implementation and improve ROI. But what is the biggest challenge of PLM on the cloud?

 I think that a Cloud and SaaS offering can provide enough benefits to be launched very soon. For example, the computing capabilities initially announced by Autodesk, project Autodesk ShowRoom will make third-party computing resources available for designers. IBM, together with Dassault Systmes also mentioned Cloud computing as part of their strategies.

 Today, I’d like to raise an issue that, in my opinion, is crucial to making the PLM cloud journey successful over the long-term. This issue is Application Integration. As a system becomes more and more distributed and disparate within and across organizational boundaries, the need to keep a log? of transaction and communication between these systems also grows. This problem is already known but the capabilities of the system to be integrated for enterprise deployment are much bigger compared to future cloud-based options. In order to deploy PLM successfully, organizations will need to integration tools and processes across multiple applications.

 This problem is not unique for PLM applications, but also exists for other enterprise applications that are moving to a SaaS / Cloud zone. We can see similar challenge in the CRM and Finance Application offerings. An example of a company offering a cloud-based application that solves integration needs is Workday. Workday offers business and CRM applications. To solve their growing integration needs, Workday acquired a company called CapeClear and established an ‘Integration on Demand’ offering.

 To sum up, I think that integration will cause enterprise cloud deployments to face significant challenges and will require solutions beyond standard SOA and Web Services-based offerings. It will be interesting to see how ISVs will recognize and face these challenges.  I also would like to learn from your personal experience with this issue.

1 Comment | Cloud Application, Daily PLM Think Tank, Technology | Tagged: , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by olegshilovitsky

Where is PLM on Industry Cloud Map?

March 23, 2009

Continuing the cloud-zone discussion I have started for this week, I found this pretty comprehensive technological map for Cloud Computing, SaaS and PaaS industries on blog of Peter Laird and Kent Dickson. 

So, where does PLM fit into this space? There are a few service providers that have traditional server PLM applications and data services, integration services, content services and BPM services. On this map, there are a few interesting application providers such as Oracle, Netsuite, and Salesforce. Some of them such as Saleforce Force.com, are listed as PaaS vendors.

 So, there are many choices for companies to develop PLM solutions and place them on this map. Larger ISVs can find their place as providers of PaaS and Application Suites. Smaller and new ISVs can find interesting way of developing services and applications on top of data and integration services.

 http://saaslink.googlepages.com/saasindustrymap

saasmap_lairddickson_may08-full

7 Comments | Daily PLM Think Tank, Market and Technology, Technology, Uncategorized | Tagged: , , , , | Permalink
Posted by olegshilovitsky

PLM Think Tank Week on the Cloud

March 23, 2009

I’ve seen a growing number of publications related to Cloud Computing and all variations of SaaS / PaaS / IaaS buzzwords. In addition, I’ve learned about a few very interesting trends in Cloud application development during the last week (even though I was actually on vacation). So, in addition to taking a few ‘cloudy’ :)  photos, I decided to focus on discussing cloud-related topics next week on PLM Think Tank. I hope it will be beneficial and that we will have a good cloud discussion this week. Stay tuned, and I hope you will enjoy the photos below.

cloud11

cloud2

 -Oleg

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Posted by olegshilovitsky

How do I access my PLM data on a cloud?

December 30, 2008

Before we put something on a cloud, let’s think how we can take it off… and I really think this is good idea. Like with backups of early days – you can backup, but can you restore? With all the excitement around cloud computing, all these applications will produce massive amount of data. So, my voice in cloud-oriented technologies will say – how do I access my cloud-located data? Or, in another words – how will this data be available for me as users? For those of you who are already  typing the answer  to this question as “web services”, please slow down. I’m not talking about how one API will contact another one. My question is specifically how will I be able to manipulate data located somewhere now called http://mydata compared to how I can manipulate data located on c:\ or on \\mysqlserver? 

I found two interesting answer on this question. One is service available from salesforce.com, leader of SaaS eco-system This service, called “s2s” or salesforce to salesforce, allows users of salesforce applications to share data between them. This service allows users to integrate data between suppliers, partners, vendors and customers. With four simple steps – Invite, Publish, Subscribe, Collaborate, you can access data across a company’s account. Another example is more technologically crafted – CloudSQL from Zoho, a provider of online collaborative applications. CloudSQL allows you to use the very well-known SQL language to manipulate data between different Zoho applications, such as Zoho Creator, Zoho Reports, and Zoho Projects. What is interesting is that this service claimed to be an expandable middleware able to collaborate with external web services.

 Although I’m sure you will be able to find more examples these two are very representative. The problem with data access is recognizable by vendors doing SaaS business and they spent time and effort to provide “access and connection points” to their applications and data behind the cloud.  While the salesforce.com example is very end-user oriented, the Zoho example is very oriented on application engineers, service people and other developers, and also leverages today’s widely adopted standards (SQL). 

I find both examples, as well as this topic , very relevant for PLM. In most implementations of PLM,  data access is a very critical point and can not always be solved easily. So, before we move our data stocks on the cloud, let’s think how we make the data accessible. 

2 Comments | Daily PLM Think Tank, Technology | Tagged: , , , , | Permalink
Posted by olegshilovitsky

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