SolidWorks, Cloud and Product Data Management

February 15, 2012

Cloud is one of my favorite topics. Back, two years ago, on SWW 2010, SolidWorks made a broad statement about the future of SolidWorks on the cloud and SolidWorks technological experiments in that space. I can see lots of changes happened since that time. Cloud computing is clearly going mainstream. It takes companies to understand what and how they should behave on the cloud. I wanted to put some thoughts about SolidWorks, cloud computing, and product data management. Until now, SolidWorks didn’t make any new announcement related to "cloud products".

SolidWorks Users and PDM

As I mentioned yesterday in my post, SolidWorks keeps the status quo in PDM. Enterprise PDM remains the mainstream PDM story for SolidWorks and as I can hear from many people at the conference, the adoption of EPDM is growing. At the same time, the overall PDM adoption in SolidWorks community is relatively low. My very conservative assessment is that about 70-80% of SolidWorks customers today have no product data management solution. The problem of these customers to adopt PDM solution mainly related to two major factors: complexity and IT resources.

SolidWorks n!Fuze

SolidWorks introduced first (and for the moment, only one) cloud data management product – SolidWorks n!Fuze. The initial kickoff of this product wasn’t very successful. Some mistakes were made in terms of product usability as well as pricing. It was mentioned during the Q&A session with SolidWorks VP R&D Gian Paolo Bassi. I’ve heard the same opinion from others’ people, including SolidWorks product managers and R&D people. Version 2 of n!Fuse is expected to come later this year. I’m expecting to see improvements in user experience. Maybe some changes in pricing will be done as well.

Cloud and SolidWorks opportunity

Back in SWW 2010, cloud topic raised lots of debates. However, if I analyze them in a detailed way, most of criticism was about taking SolidWorks CAD to the cloud. At the same time, I was able to hear that use of cloud to improve data-sharing capabilities and collaboration can be a very interesting option. Today, it is even clearer to me. The opportunity to improve product data access and data management using cloud technology is huge, in my view. Two major showstoppers for EPDM adoption – complexity and IT resources can be removed by cloud. Even very small teams and individual engineers will be able to access CAD models, drawings and other product data inside the company and beyond using mobile devices.

What SolidWorks competitors are doing?

In my view, the opportunity is well understood by competitors and the community. Few years ago, PTC introducedWindchill Product Point. PTC tried to leverage SharePoint to address problem of complexity and IT resources. In my view, it didn’t work and PTC retired ProductPoint. Autodesk is clearly coming after the opportunity by focusing on smaller manufacturing companies. At the same time, it is not clear how Autodesk Nexus PLM will address the need of "PDM-less customers". Autodesk announcements clearly stated a combination of Autodesk Vault on premises and Autodesk Nexus PLM on the cloud as two main components of the solution. From my conversation with Autodesk people, I understood that they are aware about the potential of PDM-less customers and thinking how to address that. I can see potential forAutodesk Cloud (introduced few months ago), but in my view, it suffers from similar problems you can see in SolidWorks n!Fuze.

What is my conclusion? Cloud is a game changer. The ability of cloud products to solve the problem of complexity of deployment and IT resources with a combination of low-cost and availability cannot be missed. The opportunity is well understood by both SolidWorks and Autodesk selling products to smaller manufacturing companies. I can see everything that was done, until now, as "trials". It will be interesting to see next steps. The simplicity is hard to address, and we all know that. I will be heading to SolidWorks 3rd day general session in few hours, which is traditionally focused on product announcements. Maybe some news will be coming from there. Stay tuned…

Best, Oleg

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PLM and Amazon Enterprise Cloud

February 1, 2012

An interesting addition to my yesterday post about technological options for cloud PLM. I was reading Amazon’s announcement that came earlier this month – Amazon separates servers from IP addresses. Navigate to the ZDnet UK Blog article “Amazon Separates Servers From IP Addresses to read more. Here is how this feature explained in Amazon blog:

Today we are adding additional flexibility to EC2 instances running in the Virtual Private Cloud. First, we are teasing apart the IP addresses (and important attributes associated with them) from the EC2 instances and calling the resulting entity an ENI, or Elastic Network Interface. Second, we are giving you the ability to create additional ENIs, and to attach a second ENI to an instance (again, this is within the VPC).

On the picture below you can see how Amazon explains the topology of EIN.

Cloud PLM

There are two CAD / PLM vendors officially announced their support for cloud – Autodesk and Dassault. Nexus 360 PLM is a cloud PLM coming from Autodesk later this year. Dassault ENOVIA is a flagship product sold by Dassault. Another PLM company claims their support cloud is Aras Corp. I haven’t heard any specific cloud plans from Siemens PLM and PTC. If you’re in discussion with your CAD / PLM vendor these days, you better check if product cloud configuration supports EIN.

What is my conclusion? Even the article is a bit on a technical side, I found it quite important. Cloud is moving towards having more and more “enterprise features”. This is a reaction of cloud providers on the coming demand from enterprise IT to accept cloud usage. The critical question that wasn’t answered was about the cost. Cloud attractiveness is dependent on cost structure. Cloud providers will have to charge an additional fee for enterprise features. Will it be still attractive for company IT? A big question. The architecture of cloud systems is in a very early beginning phase. You better check it carefully with your vendors and/or partner. Just my thoughts…

Best, Oleg

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Technological Options for PLM on the cloud

January 30, 2012

Cloud is hyping in 2012. Coming Facebook IPO can only supercharge the future of cloud computing. Last year Autodesk announcement about Nexus 360 cloud PLM created a confirmation that large CAD / PLM vendors will be interested to leverage the power of cloud. Two weeks before AU2011, during DSCC 2011, Dassault Systems confirmed their plan to continue development and investment in their Enovia cloud platform.

It takes time, but economic of cloud computing is too good to be ignored by CIO. At the time consumer market already embraced cloud computing via multiple store (but not only) options like Dropbox etc., CIOs are just coming to discover it. Navigate to the following Gigaom article – CIOs come around to cloud storage. Here is my favorite passage:

“The sheer volume and availability needs are pushing cloud storage to the forefront,” he said. They have to look at the economics of cloud compared to the high-cost, high-maintenance data center storage model, he said… In short, even the most risk-averse C-level information executives are coming to realize that if cloud storage isn’t in their current plan, it will be in the near future.

At the same time, I can hear voices of customers and vendors about the fact cloud computing is still confusing. So, in today’s post, I decided to put some practical technological options about how PLM (and not only) can be delivered on cloud today from the technological standpoint.

Amazon

Amazon is Amazon. Flexible, public, cloud. Period. It is a perfect virtual environment with dollar meter. You pay for what you use. Despite few outages, AWS is pretty stable and can provide you a reliable base as a platform for cloud PLM. Most of PLM vendors talking these days about cloud are exploring Amazon as a first option. Amazon also provides probably the best shortcut between existing PLM architectures and future cloud models.

Microsoft Azure

Azure is a different type of cloud animal. If you’re familiar with terminology, Azure is PaaS (opposite to AWS, which is IaaS). I can see many advantages of Azure. It is single development platform, tools, multi-language support. Another positive side of Azure is that Microsoft can much easier force developers follow specific rules that can prevent application from misbehave. The perception of vendors and developers is that Azure is closed platform. I’m not saying it is true, but this is what I think many people assume when they think about "Azure cloud".

OpenStack

This is a very interesting option. OpenStack pretends to become "an Android of the cloud". Open Stack achieved critical mass to become a reality. OpenStack is IaaS environment currently supported by Rackspace and NASA. Technologically, OpenStack is a combination of storage and computing library. The easiest way to start with OpenStack is to use it onRackspace. OpenStack objective is to convert cloud into commodity, which can be beneficial for many consumers of the technology. I can see an interesting option for OpenStack and PLM. OpenStack provides a very open and economic way to establish mini-cloud centers. It can be a foundation for cloud services available for large companies having concerns about public cloud.

Cloud Databases

This is an interesting option for PLM developers. Fundamentally, PDM/PLM is all about a database today. To move PLM database on the cloud, can be an interesting option. Read my post few months ago – Will Database on the cloud supercharge PLM for Small Companies? There are few providers to be mentioned here. I’d be starting from Amazon RDS. Another option is to use databases services created by enterprise software vendors – Oracle Cloud Databases,Salesforce.com Database and few others.

Don’t Forget IBM big blue

Big Blue IBM is also going to the cloud. However, IBM is doing it differently. It called IBM Smart Cloud. You can learn here about how IBM suggests to use these services here. In a nutshell, IBM idea is to wrap whatever you have with Tivoli cloud services. IBM is attacking cloud from a software perspective and looking how to build a cloud umbrella beyond your existing data center. IBM clearly is looking how to attract "enterprise dollars" from AWS, OpenStack and Azure.

What is my conclusion? I believe we can see lots of misunderstandings with the cloud computing in a near future. CAD / PLM vendors and service providers will be able to balance in order to dance on both sides of the solutions – on premise and on the cloud. Understanding of technological options is a good foundation towards reasonable decisions about the cloud in 2012. Just my thoughts…

Best, Oleg

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Cloud PLM and IT Basic Instinct

January 27, 2012

The amount of publications about PLM and cloud is growing. This is not surprising me. There are two reasons to that. Cloud is clearly hyping. Second – major player such as Autodesk is making their move towards the cloud. Carl Bass, Autodesk CEO announced that today’s technologies allow to Autodesk to come with a reliable and affordable PLM system. Almost at the same time, during DSCC 2011, Bernard Charles is announcing that DS invested about $2B in the development of the most sophisticated online cloud platform in the word (he was talking about Enovia platform).

I was reading ECN article Seeing Past the Clouds – PLM and what’s What? by Eric Marks. The article is speaking about trends in the cloud PLM and four possible strategies: public, private, community and hybrid. I can clearly understand the difference between public and private (read one of my previous posts – PLM Cloud: dedicated, private, public). However, the concept of community cloud is a bit complicated, since it is point on how cloud services will be used, rather on if it goes to public servers and multitenant opposite to private server placement. At the same time, I found the passage about "hybrid cloud" the most interesting. Here it is:

And lastly there are “hybrid clouds” where a private cloud can extend onto a public cloud for specific activities and on an as-need basis. The benefit of a hybrid approach that incorporates a public cloud is that it provides extra performance scalability for the private cloud that would be in use.

I can clearly see how it can make a difference. I’m sure you’re familiar with Basic Instinct movie. Let me make an association with IT. The basic IT instincts are control and cost. As I’ve been told by IT people in one of the manufacturing companies in Mid West – if the cloud is be more cost-effective for effective for us, we will be moving towards the cloud. Otherwise we stay in our racks. Hybrid model allows to keep IT on premise and extend to cloud in order to have a cost effective expansion and scale. It sounds like something that can keep everybody happy and, at the same time, it is clearly Trojan horse that cloud providers will put in organizations. As soon as such solutions will be running in production, rest of the game for cloud providers will be to leverage the economy of scale and not to blow up "security" red-herring.

Another passage from ECN article practically confirms that.

According to Edward Quinn, Mevion Medical Systems IT Manager, “to do this, Mevion is leveraging a “hybrid cloud” in order to be able to scale quickly and efficiently to distributed cloud data centers at far less cost than purchasing expensive equipment or renting/building out corporate data centers. The IT department can leverage the advanced international infrastructure already in place by leading cloud computing companies and activate and pay only for the services that its business needs.”

What is my conclusion? There are many reasons why companies can decide to move towards the cloud – better collaboration, ease of install, mobile, and many others. However, the cloud fundamental is about how to drive costs down using the economy of scale. PLM won’t be an exclusion from this game. In order to move towards that, vendors need to pass "IT police" in every organization. Hybrid cloud looks like a good weapon leveraging IT basic instincts. Just my thoughts….

Best, Oleg

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Cloud PLM and Service Channels

January 6, 2012

About a year ago, I published my post – Will PLM Channels Survive The Cloud Era? Back that time, it was my answer to the growing amount of voices about so-called “cloud killing channels”. My conclusion was that re-sellers and service companies will be changing their priorities to answer on growing demand of implementation consultancy. Earlier today I was reading the announcement by Symetri - Symetri Appoints Fulthorpe to Head Up New Consulting Services Wing. Navigate to the following linkto read the article. I noted an interesting quote:

The new Symetri Consulting Services business stream will initially focus on several key areas: the integration of engineering data management systems with other downstream business systems such as ERP/MRP; helping customers adopt sales configurators or Engineer to Order Systems (ETO); Autodesk cloud based services and the implementation of dynamic simulation, CFD and FEA processes into customers engineering design workflows.

Clearly, this is an answer on Autodesk stepping into “PLM cloud game”. As I stated few days ago in my Inforbix blog about on-premise / cloud connection, introducing cloud solutions can raise a wave of integration services. The challenge of service companies and implementers is to learn new field and adopt web and cloud technologies to serve manufacturing companies demands. The potential danger is to migrate existing integration work to the cloud without making any optimizations.

What is my conclusion? I have no doubt, introduction of new cloud solutions won’t reduce the amount of services and implementations. So, first, it is a good news for VARs and service providers. At the same time, cloud solutions will set a different “price” demand in front of vendors and partners. To re-organize to a new pricing structure will be another challenge. Just my thoughts…

Best, Oleg

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My First Take on PLM Cloud Maturity Model

January 4, 2012

The beginning of the year is a good time to think aboutBHAGs (Big Hairy Audacious Goals). Cloud was one of the dominant topics for the past two years of blogging on PLM Think Tank. So I decided to make a step up and think beyond one-page blog article. Two publications inspired me to do so -Tech-Clairty publication A maturity model for Product Data Accessibility and Oracle whitepaper - Cloud Computing Maturity Model. It made me think about how to summarize the current state of PLM industry and the development of cloud solution into something that will make a practical sense for manufacturing companies and help them to decide about their PLM cloud strategies.

Actually, I found interesting the fact cloud PLM was around for the last decade. Arena Solutions was pioneering PLM on the cloud since early 2000s. Recently, I figured out that Arena Solutions (original name – BOM.COM) passed multiple transformations on their way to position their product and strategy. In the following video, Eric Larkin (Arena’s co-founder) explains how Arena passed from the original idea of BOM.COM via PLM on Demand to the cloud BOM and change management on the cloud

I found very interesting to listen and compare Larkin’s talk to Steve Bodnar’s intereview explaining Autodesk Cloud PLM approach. In my view, Autodesk is clearly playing a role of “fast-second” by trying to learn from mistakes of PLM industry and advantages of cloud technologies.

Crowd-sourcing and Maturity Model development?

Here is my challenge. I want to apply the idea of a crowd-sourcing via blogging to the development of PLM cloud maturity model. I will be publishing PLM cloud maturity model in the end of each month and learn from comments and feedback with a hope to come something meaningful at the end of the year.

What is my conclusion? A short conclusion is mostly related to two videos I shared with you. It is interesting to compare Cloud PLM as it perceived by Arena Solutions – company pioneered cloud PLM solutions for the past decade and dominant CAD vendor taking advantages of the resources and learning from the experiences and mistakes of last 10 years of development. I’m looking forward to hearing back from you about what do you think about cloud adoption and PLM cloud maturity model. I hope it will be an interesting journey… Just my thoughts.

Best, Oleg

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PLM Cost and Enterprisey Clouds

December 30, 2011

PLM is a costly piece of software. Software licenses, installation, implementation, support, services. All these components of PLM software make the decision of manufacturing companies to adopt PLM software questionable. In the past, out-of-the-box solutions promised by software vendors claimed to decrease PLM software TCO. However, it was only a promise. These days "cloud" perceived as something that can make this change. If you listened to Autodesk Buzz Kross recently, you probably noticed the following passage from Autodesk Nexus 360 announcement:

"Our approach to PLM is a sharp contrast to the decades old technology in the market today," said Robert "Buzz" Kross, senior vice president, Manufacturing Industry Group at Autodesk. "Autodesk 360 for PLM will enable customers of all sizes to achieve the full promise of PLM with a scalable, configurable and intuitive solution.

The following slide presented a month ago during AU 2011 shows that Autodesk approach is to provide much more affordable PLM solution.

Cloud and IT’s bluff

I was reading blog article by David Linthicum. One of the topics discussed there was related to efforts made by cloud providers to provide solutions acceptable by enterprise companies. The questions of security and data replications are probably on the top of the list by many providers. One of the solutions mentioned was Google’s high availability data replication (so-called high-Replication Datastore). At the same time, according to David, introducing multiple "enterprisey" features can remove a potential to provide affordable enterprise-cloud solutions. Here is the passage:

The problem I have with this process is that much of what’s valuable in the world of cloud computing is the simplicity and cost advantage — which is quickly going away as cloud providers pile on features. The good news is that enterprises won’t have an excuse not to move to cloud computing, and adoption will accelerate in 2012 and 2013. However, as cloud offerings appear to be more and more like enterprise software, the core cost advantage of cloud computing could be eroding.

What is my conclusion? The key to make cloud solution cost effective is to keep the right balance between enterprise IT requirements and capabilities of cloud-based software. Some of these "enterprisey" cloud requirements are reasonable, and some of them are typical "red-herring". We are going to watch the process of balance finding in the next few years. Just my thoughts…

Best, Oleg

Image: scottchan / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

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PLM Cloud: differentiation or “anti-cloud rant”?

December 22, 2011

After my publication PLM, Autodesk and Cloud Wars Club few days ago, I received few comments from my readers trying to figure out what is PLM vendors’ position with regards to the cloud. One of them, even tried to rank PLM companies on how they committed (or not) to the future of cloud computing. The funniest comment was by Jonathan Scott of Razorleaf – "I am waiting for someone at Siemens or PTC to come out with the "anti-Cloud rant" much like Carl Bass’ "anti-PLM" rant". About a year ago, I was writing about PLM vendors and cloud strategies. You can navigate to the followinglink to read my post from the last year. I think, some movements happened since that time, so I decided to make a second check on major PLM vendors about what they do on the cloud.

I’ve been reading an interesting article earlier this week. The Cloud: Worrying about the wrong things? written by Peter Bilello of CIMData. Peter is talking about different elements of cloud strategies and PLM. It is a good read, and I recommend you to spend few minutes and have a read. My favorite passage is about security, which is considered one of the biggest concerns of cloud software. Here is the quote:

IT chiefs in both the private and public sectors and some Internet industry analysts may be overly concerned about security. Worrisome Internet security breaches, though rare, are widely reported. By law, banks, credit card companies, and other online repositories of financial and personal data must report breaches. Two big outages were front-page news in April 2011: Amazon Web Service’s Elastic Computer Cloud (EC2) was down for a couple of days. Sony’s PlayStation Network was out for five weeks…. Amazon put its EC2 data loss at 0.07—seven-hundredths—of one percent. Some perspective: information online expands exponentially while the number of digital break-ins grows far more slowly. Adding in less nefarious security lapses, system errors, and human error still does not boost these problems out of the rare category

Another interesting passage about security is coming from Rackspace:

“Security is security, in the cloud or anywhere else,” according to Web hosting company Rackspace US Inc. in San Antonio, Texas. In a 2011 white paper titled, Five Reasons Why the Cloud is Ready for the Enterprise, Rackspace points out, “The same security issues apply to an enterprise data center or on-premise application as to the cloud. Everyone must be vigilant about security, no matter where their data is stored.”

Autodesk

It is clear, Autodesk is taking the cloud story as a major differentiation. As I mentioned yesterday in my post, Autodesk sees themselves "Cloud PLM" similar to how Salesforce.com can be recognized as "Cloud CRM". Autodesk introduced multiple products on the cloud. Their latest Autodesk Nexus PLM 360 supposed to be available somewhere between Q1 and Q2 next year. Here is Buzz Kross quote from Nexus PLM announcement last month:

"Our approach to PLM is a sharp contrast to the decades old technology in the market today," said Robert "Buzz" Kross, senior vice president, Manufacturing Industry Group at Autodesk. "Autodesk 360 for PLM will enable customers of all sizes to achieve the full promise of PLM with a scalable, configurable and intuitive solution. We believe it will help our customers achieve a measurable competitive advantage through better, more accessible collaboration and business information management."

Dassault System

DS is passionate about their cloud online platform. I’ve been reviewing what DS is doing about that during Dassault customer conference (DSCC 2011) last months in Las-Vegas. Enovia V6 is a power horse behind Dassault cloud story. Read my post from DSCC 2011 by navigating on this link. Here is the quote:

Dassault is presenting ENOVIA V6 as a big deal, the only one “unique online cloud platform”. In the first day, Bernard Charles shared the information about $2B investment into R&D effort that “converge” with all technologies under a single platform available on the cloud.

Siemens PLM

Siemens is providing a very modest cloud story. As a year ago, I wasn’t able to find many references on what is Siemens PLM cloud strategy. Few announcements and press releases I found pointing on the work Siemens PLM is doing with Microsoft Azure cloud platform. Navigate to the following Siemens’ press release – Siemens PLM Software to Create Industry’s First Quality Management Solution "in the Cloud". Here is the quote. Siemens

announced a joint project with Microsoft Corporation to create the PLM industry’s first cloud computing-based quality management solution. The solution will utilize Microsoft Windows Azure™ platform cloud computing services to securely run Siemens PLM Software’s Dimensional Planning and Validation (DPV) application, showing how cloud computing can enable a world-class quality management application to be cost effectively accessed and leveraged on an as-needed basis.

PTC

From my standpoint, PTC is probably less than other PLM vendors is focusing on how the cloud reshapes PLM industry. PTC was one of the first pioneering Whidchill availability as a hosted solution via IBM. However, besides that, I haven’t seen anything about future cloud product coming from PTC. Interesting enough, I was listening for Jim Heppelmann during Creo launch event in the beginning of 2011. According to this article, here is PTC’s opinion about cloud and other PLM vendors.

While Autodesk and Dassault Systemes appear to be running headlong into developing cloud-based applications, my recent conversations with PTC representatives indicated that, as customers were not asking for it and the benefits were not clear, PTC was not heading to the cloud anytime soon. Given the error in underestimating the move to Windows, I asked Heppelmann for his view of CAD on the cloud.

Here is the passage from Jim’s quote provided in the interview to Develop3D journal:

“So, we identified these key problems and then if I say, well which of those problems does the cloud solve? It doesn’t actually solve any of those problems! It solves some other problems – perhaps ease of installation, perhaps cost of ownership, things like that. But I’m not sure those are the key problems. So we’re not pro-cloud or anti-cloud, we’re just trying to solve what we see as the biggest problems, and we don’t see solutions to these biggest problems being in any magical way enabled by cloud technology.

What is my conclusion? Here is my summary about how leading CAD/PLM companies see their cloud strategies. Autodesk is the only one that built on top of the cloud as a differentiation factor. Dassault announced Enovia V6 platform as a true cloud online platform. Despite the fact Enovia platform has deep roots in Matrix One technology developed in the end of 90s, I believe DS invested a lot of resources to re-shape MatrixOne technologies. TeamCenter shows some interesting and trying cloud water with research projects. PTC is strongly neutral the cloud. As you can see all are different. It will be interesting to see how these strategies are evolving and adopted by customers. Just my thoughts…

Best, Oleg

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PLM, Autodesk and Cloud Wars Club?

December 19, 2011

Companies are looking for differentiation in the way they are making business. PLM companies are not different. Dassault, PTC, Siemens PLM, Aras, etc. Nobody wants to sell "me too" cocktail nowadays. With the last Autodesk PLM announcement, it became clear that Autodesk is targeting a "cloud PLM" place. During the recent AU 2011 conference in Las Vegas, Carl Bass, Autodesk CEO, made it very clear that Autodesk wants to accomplish the following triad – Cloud ERP, Cloud CRM, Cloud PLM.

I was reading Michael Fauscette blog article – The Cloud Wars -2012. I found it interesting. Take a moment of time during the next week holiday slowdown and have a read. Make your conclusion. The names of companies on the list were quite predictable – Oracle, Salesforce, SAP, IBM, Microsoft, Google, Workday, Facebook. I especially liked the part related to salesforce.com in the list. Salesforce clearly having an ambition to come with strong enterprise solution and growing in multiple directions via acquisitions and partnership. Few months ago, during the Dreamforce 2011 event, I came across an interesting presentation made by Kennady – manufacturing solution built purely on top of Salesforce.com platform.

The cloud wars -2012 article and Autodesk cloud ambitions made me think about some potential in dynamics between Autodesk PLM platform and other "big cloud" players. Autodesk didn’t announce about what technology is running behind Nexus PLM. Amazon was mentioned, but it doesn’t mean anything about Autodesk cloud PLM platform. Another interesting Autodesk innovation is to integrate on premise Autodesk PDM (Vault) with future cloud solution – Autodesk Nexus.

What is my conclusion? Cloud competition becomes interesting in manufacturing. It is still far away from Google vs. Facebook clashes. However, who knows what we are going to see in 2-3 years from now? Just my thoughts…

Best, Oleg

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The Enterprise and PLM will rock 2012?

December 18, 2011

As usual, at the end of the year, there is a time for blog posts with predictions, opinions and future trends. Last 2-3 years of technological boom were around consumer applications – social, web, mobile. These are three major application field that developed many technologies of the past years. How it may impact enterprise and PLM?

I was reading thebarefootvc blog earlier today – 10+ trends: recap of 2011 and what’s next… One of the trends mentioned in the context of 2012 was Enterprise. This is my favorite passage:

The Enterprise: The last few years have focused on consumer usage and adoption of technology. However, large companies are recovering from the shock of the 2008 collapse and re-aligning to the New Normal. Technology can play a role through cost reduction and creating efficiencies (virtualization, cloud computing) as well as top line revenue enhancement (utilizing data and social media for better customer service and sales strategies). New financial services and healthcare regulation will also create the need for related IT solutions.

It made me think about PLM in 2012. Few important events happened in the end of 2012. One of them – Autodesk entered PLM. This is an important move. Autodesk means "volume". Consumer market is also about volume. Volume means broader adoption and lower prices. Volume is about Toyota and not about Lexus. Second is a broader adoption of the cloud technologies. For many enterprise organizations now it is a question of "when" and not a question of "why".

What is my conclusion? 2012 has a potential to become a year of PLM rock stars. Cost will be one of the most important factors of PLM in a near future. Cloud technologies and behemoths like Autodesk will be playing a significant role in this process. Just my thoughts…

Best, Oleg

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