PLM Think Tank Top 5 – May 2012

May 30, 2012

Time is flying. My monthly top 5 posts are coming too fast. Which made me think about so many changes that happen in our life these days. The root cause is so-called “re-imagination” that coming from web, new devices, connectivity, new trends in user experience and… beauty. I captured “re-imagination” word from the presentation of Mary Meeker’s of Kleiner Perkins About The State Of The Web. Here is a single slide from the presentation.

It is a bit long, but I’d recommend you to have a look on re-imagination slides that present how our consumer life changed under the influence of technologies for the last 5-7 years. It is not only about computers and websites, the disruption will be much bigger and much broader. The latest example is Nest – wifi enabled, auto-learning, auto-sensing, energy efficient, remote-controlled thermostat. If you haven’t had a chance to read announcements, since today you can buy it Nest in Apple Store. So, expect more news in the future. For the meantime, let’s move to PLM Think Tank top 5 posts:

First look of 3DS SolidWors e-Drawing for iPad

This is something I expected to see in 2011. However, when it comes it drives interest of tens of thousands SolidWorks users. Later is better than never. I think, many of SolidWorks users will appreciate e-Drawing iPad app. The price is $1.99. The Apple iTunes policy is complicated when it comes to corporate purchasing. Does e-Drawing iPad app worth $1.99? My answer is yes. Will engineers buy e-Drawing iPad for $1.99? A good question. I’d be very interested to see the number of uploads within few weeks and months.

Will PLM vendors dig into Big Data?

These two words are fascinating. The combination makes it even more powerful – “Big” + “Data”. The value of big data is undoubted. To adopt “big data”, PLM vendor needs to go to “unknown” place characterized by a different technological stack. It is not clear how they will do so. The time is running. The ability to dig into big data problem will become an imperative very soon.

PLM Implementations and Open APIs

To build a good API is a very complicated task. To make Open API is even harder. I can see a potential in exposing both semantics of data and related system functions in a way allowing me to use it and accomplish processes automatically. I think, web and REST give us a bit promise. The responsibility of vendors is to develop an appropriate level of granularity to make it usable.

PLM Business Models, Open Source and Copyleft Decline

I’m getting back to the conversation about Open Source PLM observing Aras PLM and other candidates. The focus on community building is a key. I’m following the development of open-source software, communities, free software and future potential steps of vendors with high level of interest. In my view, vendors are more interested in how to innovate in business models rather than follow strict rules of GPL licenses.

PLM Perfect Storm 2012

It is an interesting time to be in the PLM market these days. As I wrote in my recent blog -SolidWorks community and opportunity for PLM, there is a significant opportunity to deliver PLM solution to the white space market these days. Gartner’s PLM market dynamics slide is highlighting the same opportunity. It is clearly a perfect storm. Large PLM companies have a lot of money to play the future PLM game. They have a lot to win as well as to lose, in case something will go wrong. Who will take the best “stormy seat” in this game? An interesting question to ask.

Best, Oleg

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New definition of PLM from UK Datamation – Info Assets

May 28, 2012

The following twitter message from @raykurland of TechniCom, NJ market research and consulting firm woke me up during the long Memorial Day weekend in U.S.

According to Ray Kurland, Datamation of UK provides a new definition of PLM and even provides some implementation aspects for this definition.

Datamation of the UK defines PLM as the effective management of information assets through-life. It is a “live entity” – not disposable.

— Raymond Kurland (@technicom) May 27, 2012

I navigated to the Datamation UK PLM News from June 2012 to read more. The article is talking about well-recognized problems in PLM – long time of PLM implementation. However, DM provided some unusual look on reasons why it happens. Here is the passage that caught my attention:

There has been much debate recently about why the implementation of PLM solutions takes so long. Some blame the management for lack of commitment/vision, some blame the technology/supplier and others put it to the nature of PLM. In reality, it is none of these. Many still view PLM to be like any other business application.

PLM is different from say CAD, ERP, CRM, etc. and therefore investment decisions in it should be based on different criteria. PLM’s key role, as defined in the Datamation PLM Model report, is the effective management of information assets through-life. In other words, it is a “live entity” – not like a car or a pair of shoes that are bought, used for a specific purpose and replaced by the next model at the end of its life.

According to Datamation letter the focus needs to be place on the decision of what information assets will be accumulated and managed to support and manage business processes.

Note that the one thing that will be present/constant through-life is the accumulated information assets. Therefore the first priority is to decide what information assets will need to be retained to support current and future business processes – this is the foundation on which the system will be built. Only when this is decided, should attention focus on what new applications are needed and what integrations to new and existing ones will be needed -these represent the “structure” of the building. No building should be erected without a foundation.

The focus on data is clearly interesting. Manufacturing companies are accumulating lots of design, engineering and manufacturing information. In my view, all PLM vendors, until now, have been trying to solve the problem data management and data sharing. Which is one of the reasons why it took so long to implement all PLM solutions?

To build a foundation is a good approach. However, life is so dynamic these days. Some of data requirements are coming from regulation / compliance needs, some others are result of strategic acquisition made by a company focused on market share capturing, some manufacturing facilities got re-organized as a result of some economical and/or natural disasters. To re-plan foundation data assets on every step can be a complicated and expensive task. Opposite to that, the ability to have a easy data capture and flexible process management capabilities can be an interesting PLM alternative.

What is my conclusion? In my view, time and cost are two factors that will be driving PLM implementations in coming years. Inability to get fast integration and implementation are preventing companies from adopting PLM. If Datamation info asset’s strategy assumes that, it can "keep water". However, I don’t see it different from information assets related manufacturing (ERP), suppliers (SCM), customers and sales (CRM). Just my thoughts…

Note:

If you are interested in more information about Datamation and Daista Software approach, you can consider to register to their webinar "Informaiton as an asset" here and get copyrighted whitepaper after registration.

Image(s): FreeDigitalPhotos.net

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Secured PLM dropbox with EMC?

May 25, 2012

Speak about the "cloud" in a business community and you have a chance to be slammed by "security folks". Their primary concern is security and, sometimes, I have a feeling whatever you talk to them about, will leave them skeptical anyway. This is probably the type of people that are buying their first cell phone these days. Sort of people that according to the definition of a Roger Bell Curve will not buy "digital phone" until it is possible to buy "analog phone". Nevertheless, some companies are taking cloud serious these days. I was reading GIGAOM article -EMC buys Syncplicity to serve as Dropbox for business.

Cloud-based storage — Dropbox, especially — has become the primary villain in the move toward BYOD (bring your own device) workplaces, but is also an area of strong growth for providers such as Box.net that can support business needs. With those concerns in mind, this acquisition makes a lot of sense for EMC… Already, BYOD is wreaking havoc on unprepared companies, including companies like IBM that should know better. Employees want to use their personal iPhones, iPads and Android phones that to work from anywhere, but employers worry that sensitive corporate documents stored in the cloud on service

BYOD trend influence

BOYD (Bring Your Own Device) trend has a clear influence to the story of business dropbox development. According to the latest research the amount of employees supporting BYOD ideas is growing:

According to a recent British Telecom report, known as "Rethink the Risk", 60 per cent of employees are already using their personal devices when they head to work, while 82 per cent of companies surveyed said they either currently sanction BYOD or plan to do so within the next two years. Almost half — or 46 per cent — of employees working in organizations that don’t support BYOD say they’d like to be able to hook up their own devices while they’re on the job.

What is my conclusion? I think the combination of BYOD and business dropbox can have a significant influence on some areas PLM today is focusing on. Supply chain, global design and manufacturing – all these implementations require efficient data-sharing capabilities. Secured PLM dropbox can do it. The competition is clear in place. Fun time… Just my thoughts.

Best, Oleg

Picture courtesy GIGAOM article.

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5 candidates for Alien Technologies in PLM

May 23, 2012

Technological disruption is a very interesting topic. The term "disruptive technology" is overused, in my view. Nevertheless, if you can see how technological disruption can make a real play. I found the following list presented by PCWorld quite interesting and entertaining – The 10 Most Disruptive Technology Combinations. Even if all examples are well-known, emphasizing of technological combination makes it a good read. Randall Newton used the term "Alien Technologies" in his Graphic Speak Weekly update. Navigate to the following link to read the review. The review speaks about how CAD companies borrow some technology from game space to deliver interesting solutions. Here is the passage from the write up:

CAD is being invaded by alien technology. Modo is a popular modeler for art, animation, and game development. But the new export utility means Modo can be used as the foundational tool for initial product concept development. Autodesk Labs built Factory.Modz() from its Gameware technology in the Media & Entertainment division. The foundational technologies behind today’s CAD software are complex and brilliant, but in some ways limited. Luxology and Autodesk are at the forefront of what will grow as a trend in the coming months and years, the repurposing of technology created for digital content creation (DCC) for use in CAD.

The term "alien technologies" made me think more about the concept of technology borrowing and combinations in the context of product data management and PLM. Here is my list of 5 candidates for alien technologies that can disrupt PDM/PLM space.

1- Social Networking

The magic of social networking and Facebook are well known these days. When it comes to PDM and PLM, I can see a significant amount of followers trying to bring a magic of social to enterprise space. Will social technology be able to disrupt PDM/PLM space? I think, social technology has a good chance to disrupt the way we communicate. Email still remains a major communication pathway. Is it possible to disrupt email? This is a very valid question to ask.

2- Web Mashups

Multiple web technologies developed for the last 10 years create a good foundation to improve user experience of the applications. Mashups is one the most popular technique to combine information layers. It worked for consumer website and provide an opportunity to disrupt existing applications created 15-20 years ago.

3- Search Technologies

Since Google introduced their search back in 1998, search became a mainstream. Enterprise data management, PDM, PLM requires better data access technologies and techniques. Search can do it. Almost all PDM/PLM vendors made their experiments with search. Open source search lower the cost of search technology adoption. We can see how all PDM/PLM vendors are experimenting with search in a very pro-active manner.

4- NoSQL

Growing amount of data is a reality of all companies today. How to manage data more efficiently? Consumer technologies and web develop a significant amount of technologies growing beyond the capabilities provided by traditional RDBMS. When it comes to efficiency and cost, noSQL data-management solution can provide an advantage and play an interesting role.

5- Semantic Technologies

Last, but not least – semantic technologies. PDM/PLM systems have very rich "semantic layer" related to data organization. Semantic technologies, linked data, semantic web can provide an alternative to model data in a much higher level of flexibility and scalability. So-called "web of data" can become the next wave of disruption for PDM/PLM.

What is my conclusion? Existing PDM/PLM vendors need to think who will come to compete with existing solutions in coming decade. New technologies can become a disruptive factor. To create right combination of technologies solving real customer needs in a much more efficient way can end up with future PDM/PLM disruption.

Best, Oleg

Image(s): FreeDigitalPhotos.net

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PLM, ERP and enterprise cloud race

May 22, 2012

I was reading GIGAOM article Amazon and SAP put All-in-One in the cloud few days ago. According to the article SAP will soon make an appearance on Amazon EC2 cloud. Interesting enough it is connected to the fact almost all software of SAP rival Oracle is already available from the cloud.

Another interesting point is related to the fact Amazon is working to support product customization on the public cloud. It will remove another big barrier for deployment and implementation of enterprise software. Here is a very interesting passage:

The conventional wisdom is that big companies are wary of running ERP and other enterprise applications in a public cloud — because they tend to be quite customized and tied into other applications, which makes them difficult to forklift into the cloud. But Amazon is working to change that perception.

PLM and ERP: cloud race

In the past, CAD / PLM vendors lost the competition of C-level and IT visibility in the organization. PLM was considered as Engineering tools, and it took many years and significant effort to improve this perception (still not accomplish in full, from my standpoint). These days a typical “PLM on the cloud” discussion usually runs in too many questions about cloud PLM viability and security. At the same time, we can see how ERP vendors run their products on Amazon cloud.

PLM and Cloud / IaaS

When Amazon is considered as a definite leader in IaaS race, Aras PLM is thinking differently. During the ACE 2012 conference earlier this month, Aras announced Aras Spectrum – soon to be available on Microsoft Windows Azure platform. You can take a look on my post-ACE conference blog post – Aras PLM, Microsoft Azure and Cloud competition.

Autodesk (new PLM vendor these days) is playing with lots of “cloud toys” in the portfolio. One of the toys is PLM 360 -recently announced “cloud PLM alternative”. It is not clear what IaaS platform is using for their cloud development and deployment, for the moment.

What is my conclusion? Amazon is pushing to the enterprise by supporting major ERP vendors. Autodesk is playing with new cloud offering and probably going to make their IaaS choice later. Microsoft is experimenting with Aras PLM to provide Aras Innovator up and running on Azure Cloud. Dassault, Siemens, PTC… Are you watching?

Best, Oleg

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Why PLM need to learn about Google Knowledge Graph?

May 21, 2012

Last week was clearly Facebook week. However, if you had a chance to take your head out of Facebook IPOand Mark Zuckerberg and Priscilla Chan wedding, you probably noticed an interesting news that came out of Google. It called Google Knowledge Graph.

If you never heard about it, start with Google’s blog post – Introducing the Knowledge Graph: things, not strings. The following Google video can give you an initial idea of what is that.

What is behind Google Knowledge Graph?

Google Knowledge Graph (GKG) is a database of information about what Google calls “things”. The ideas are going to multiple places – semantic web, internet of things, semantic search, linked data, etc. In my view, Google acquisition of Freebase two years ago, became an important event towards building of knowledge graph. Here is an interesting passage from Google blog:

Google’s Knowledge Graph isn’t just rooted in public sources such as Freebase, Wikipedia and the CIA World Factbook. It’s also augmented at a much larger scale—because we’re focused on comprehensive breadth and depth. It currently contains more than 500 million objects, as well as more than 3.5 billion facts about and relationships between these different objects. And it’s tuned based on what people search for, and what we find out on the web.

It is not so clear how GKG was built and organized. Google clearly mixed information collected from Freebase, CIA Factbook and Wikipedia. You can read Deconstructing Google Knowledge Graph blog post for more information about “How?” it is done. It is still on the level of guesses. I’m sure in the next few months we will see more examples and explanations.

Why PLM vendors should care?

PLM vendors and product are struggling with the high level of complexity. It comes also from the side of semantic richness of data as well as from the side of user interaction complexity. Google Knowledge graph shows an interesting way to simplify knowledge representation and knowledge interaction with end users. Another aspect is related to the large-scale information modeling. The information about products and product lifecycle is getting more and more complicated every day. PLM products running on SQL databases will have to find a better technological foundation for the future scale.

What is my conclusion? Web technologies are moving forward with the speed of light. I cannot say the same about enterprise software. For the majority of people in manufacturing companies, life is a bunch of Excel spreadsheets and databases with applications running for years. The cost of existing IT environments is skyrocketing. The trends like BYOD shows that people cannot tolerate outdated IT anymore. So, how to build a product knowledge graph in your company? This is a question PLM managers need to ask these days. Just my thoughts…

Best, Oleg

Picture credit to Mashable GKG can change search forever article

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Will PLM vendors dig into Big Data?

May 18, 2012

Big data is hyping trend these days. Many people are using the term of big data for different purposes and situations. Here is a problem of big data in a nutshell, how I see it. The data is growing. It is growing in organizations and outside of organizational boundaries. It is growing because of application complexity and implementation complexity. My take is that each time we face “data problems” that cannot be solved in a traditional phase, the case of “big data” discussion comes up. To confirm that, take a look on the definition of Big Data you can find inWikipedia:

In information technology, big data consists of data sets that grows so large and complex that they become awkward to work with using on-hand database management tools. Difficulties include capture, storage,[3] search, sharing, analytics,[4] and visualizing.

So, I wanted to come with some examples of situations where “big data use case” is real and can bring a significant value to manufacturing organizations. My attention caught by the report made by SAS – Data Equity: Unlocking the Value of Big Data. You can grab a copy of the report by registering via this link. Download your copy. I’m sure you find it interesting. Here is a very good explanation about why big data becomes important.

Big data is becoming an increasingly important asset to draw upon: large volumes of highly detailed data from the various strands of a business provide the opportunity to deliver significant financial and economic benefits to firms and consumers. The advent of big data analytics in recent years has made it easier to capitalise on the wealth of historic and real-time data generated through supply chains, production processes and customer behaviours.

Big data can bring value. This is what you can learn in the SAS article. You can see it on the chart SAS presented to show BigData forecast to 2017 (see below).

Thinking about PLM and the impact on specific industry sectors, the example of a supply chain is very appealing. The data in a supply chain is getting really messy. Here is a very insightful take on supply chain and big data from the same SAS report.

Optimal inventory levels may be computed, through analytics accounting for product lifecycles, lead times, location attributes and forecasted demand levels. The sharing of big data with upstream and downstream units in the supply chain, or vertical data agglomeration, can guide enterprises seeking to avoid inefficiencies arising from incomplete information, helping to achieve demand-driven supply and just-in-time (JIT) delivery processes.

Why big data is complicated and why software vendors may consider it? Here is the interesting quote from the report that actually explains that:

A major obstacle to undertaking big data analytics is the level of technical skill required to operate such systems effectively. Although software solutions for tackling big data continue to become more user-friendly, they have not yet reached the stage where no specialist knowledge is necessary. The requisite skills for big data analysis are above those required for traditional data mining, and the cost of hiring big data specialists can be prohibitive for many firms.

Big Data and PLM vendors

I haven’t seen PLM vendors providing examples and mentioning big data. I think the fundamental problem is technology. The majority of PLM software vendors are running PLM products based on platforms developed 10-15 years ago. All these solutions are relying on RBDMS. As we learned, RDBMS doesn’t scale at the level of big data. An interesting exclusion is Dassault System, which decided to acquire Exalead back 2010 and improve their semantic indexing and search. However, I haven’t seen any implementation of Exalead applied to manufacturing and big data domain.

What is my conclusion? The value of big data is undoubted. To adopt “big data”, PLM vendor needs to go to “unknown” place characterized by a different technological stack. It is not clear how they will do so. The time is running. The ability to dig into big data problem will become an imperative very soon. Just my thoughts…

Best, Oleg

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PLM Business Models, Open Source and Copyleft Decline

May 16, 2012

I was reading IT World article early today – GPL, copyleft use declining faster than ever. It gives an interesting analyzes in the so-called “open source” field. Despite the broad definition of “open source software”, the debates about different flavors of open sources are on going. I was following Open Source in earlier on my blog. Navigate to the following link to read – PLM and Open Source Licenses. In my previous article, I’ve made analyzes of different open sources licenses available in the market and what it means for PLM.

According to IT World article, I mentioned above while the use of the GPL, LGPL, and AGPL set of copyleft (the method of making software free) licenses dominate free and open source projects, that use is still on the decline. According to the research made in the last year

The GPL family now accounts for about 57% of all open source software, compared to 61% in June,” Aslett wrote. More troubling for copyleft advocates, though, could be the projection Aslett and the 451 Group make based on the data. “…[I]f the current rate of decline continues, we project that the GPL family of licenses will account for only 50% of all open source software by September 2012.”

Later in the article author is coming to a very interesting comparison on the main reasons why “copyleft” is in decline as well as growing distance between “free” and “open source” licenses. The growing consolidation around communities opposite to to vendor’s project stated as one of the factors that drive an increase usage of permissive licenses. Almost two years ago, I discussed PLM vs. Free in my blog post. In my view, IT World article partially confirms the trend supported by many vendors to support more flexible and less restricted open sources licenses.

CAD, PLM, Free and Open Source

In CAD and PLM domain, Aras is a strong supporter of so-called Enterprise Open Source model. Aras is not using GPL licenses. Aras is developing community of users to share and development solutions on Aras Innovator platform. You can read Aras license agreement here. There is no other vendors in PLM world that follow open source strategy. At the same time, there are few products in the market distributed for free by CAD/PLM vendors (eg. Dassault System DraftSight and others)

What is my conclusion? I’m following the development of open-source software, communities, free software and future potential steps of vendors with high level of interest. In my view, vendors are more interested in how to innovate in business models rather than follow strict rules of GPL licenses. Just my thoughts…

Update 20-May-2012:

Aras just published a very good review of Aras Innovator licensing - Enterprise Open Source Aras Way. I recommend you to have a read. The short summary is as following:

1. Aras is combining Open Source solutions and non-open source infrastructure

2. Aras enterprise PLM applications are using OSI-compliant licenses – BSD and Ms-PL.

3. Aras core (or how Aras calls it Application Framework) is not available as open source. Aras is distributing it as a binary code, but it can be downloaded for free.

Best, Oleg

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GrabCAD: From Facebook for Engineers to PLM?

May 15, 2012

I hope I’ve got your attention with this blog title. So far, GrabCAD was known, until now, as a company that focusing on creation of community of engineers and crowdsourcing in engineering. If you still thinking so, make a refresh – not any more. GrabCAD is focusing now on how to solve the problem of design collaboration. Navigate to Boston Business Journal article today -GrabCAD to launch a new service for engineers and hire exec team to read more about it. According to Hardi Meybaum, GrabCAD co-founder and CEO:

…the company now plans to launch what could become the focal point of its business: a service that aims to change the way engineers and their customers collaborate on designs… The latter will be necessary as GrabCAD looks to roll out its new collaboration service within months, he said. Currently, most collaborating between engineers and their customers is done by emailing designs back and forth and discussing them over the phone, Meybaum said. What GrabCAD has developed is a “more visual way to collaborate,” he said. The service, which began in beta last week, allows engineers to post 3D versions of their designs on a private section of GrabCAD. Customers can then view the design – rotating around it to see all sides – and put a pin in an area of the design where they’d like to leave a comment.

In addition to that GrabCAD is planning to hire three vice-presidents to expand existing executive team:The company also plans to soon hire three vice presidents for its executive team, in engineering, product and marketing, Meybaum said.

This is not a first time I’m posting about GrabCAD. If you want to refresh your memory, navigate to few of my previous posts – The Future of Engineering Communities and GrabCAD, Collaboration and DropBox. The second one (including video) can give you hints of “changing course” of GrabCAD towards solving problems of collaboration. The confirm it is not a mistake or last minute thoughts, navigate to the 2-years-old GrabCAD presentation on slideshare – CAD Future and GrabCAD. You can learn from there that GrabCAD vision already in 2010 was to provide a solution for collaboration.

GrabCAD business model

When you speak about online community, the question of the business model is usually raises many questions. How to monetize thousands of engineers using GrabCAD to upload/download CADmodels? Meybaum answered on this question in the BizJournal article:

GrabCAD has been earning some revenue from corporate design challenges that launched on the site last fall; past examples have included a deck vent for luxury yachts builder Saare Yachts and an interior for a Shelby car. But the new service is expected to become the main revenue source for the company after it launches, Meybaum said.

Design Collaboration and PLM

Collaboration is not a new problem. Thinking about buzzwords, to solve a problem of design collaboration is one of the fundamental objectives of any CAD/PLM vendors. Solutions like Dassault 3DLive and others were focused how to get it done in a most efficient way. It was on the list of PDM/PLM for the last 10-15 years. Does it mean GrabCAD is about to compete with mainstream collaborative design solutions coming from Dassault, Siemens PLM, PTC and other vendors? I’m not sure yet… GrabCAD will be trying to monetize a significant amount of engineers (about 187,000 according to the publication) with a new service.

Design Collaboration and Email problem

Many companies these days are run by email. Email is the problem and the solution at the same time. Many of design collaboration, PDM and PLM solutions today on the market are trying to solve a problem of the mess email can create in the company. Just to point to few “newcomers” – Kenesto and Vuuch. According to Kenesto website, the solution provided by Kenesto is “nothing to instal, as easy to use as email, but better”. According to the problem definition on Vuuchwebsite – swamped by email? No matter the deliverable or the people involved, tracking details, staying on schedule and keeping everyone up to date, is an age-old problem that is getting worse due to the proliferation of email and distributed teams. Nuage is introducing something they call – Social Business Collaboration – Generation Y, today’s workforce entrants, are dependent on social media to communicate [I assume social media communication is opposite to email].

GrabCAD is targeting to solve the problem of email communication too. Take a look on the following passage from BizJournal article -Currently, most collaborating between engineers and their customers is done by emailing designs back and forth and discussing them over the phone, Meybaum said.

What is my conclusion? As you know, all roads lead to Rome. Can I say today all roads in engineering lead to PLM? Maybe… It still too early to say what type of collaboration service GrabCAD will provide. Taking into account few known snippets of data such as – 3D Viewer, collaborative design, to avoid an email problem, I can expect GrabCAD to provide cloud applications helping people to “work together”. Take a look on one of my previous posts – How to reinvent PLM collaboration? to grab some ideas about what other companies are doing today. Will GrabCAD grab something different? Time will show. I just want to restate my yesterday note about PLM collaboration – PLM is a fun place to be again. Just my thoughts…

Best, Oleg

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PLM Competition Toolbox

May 14, 2012

Normally, I’m trying to avoid the topic of PLM competition. Not very often, readers or attendees at conference are approaching me with the blunt question – what is better? TeamCenter vs. Enovia? Aras or Windchill? My typical answer – there are no “absolute advantages” for a specific PLM system. Enterprise and manufacturing companies are complicated environments. The level of complexity, strategy and current context can create a situation where each specific product will have his own advantages and disadvantages.

However, today, I want to talk about competition from the standpoint of PLM vendor. In other words, what can make PLM vendor competitive strategy more successful? To make this discussion interesting and provoking, I will use some examples of what happened in PLM market for the last 10 years. In the world where PLM buzzwords are getting very similar, I will try to answer on a single simple question – what can make PLM vendor competitive nowadays?

I can see four major strategies that can be used by vendors – discontinuity, marketing and branding, partnership and competitor’s mistakes. These are not specific characteristics for PLM companies and can be used for everybody. However, I will try to fill them with PLM context.

Discontinuity

Enterprise software is a complicated beast. PLM cannot be excluded from that list. It is complex, requires long time planning and implementation cycle. Once implementation it works for a long time,  replacement cost is high too. Add to this last 10 years of acquisition in this field and large vendor platform transformation and you will have a perfect place to play with discontinuity. Formally, nobody is discontinuing PLM/PDM products. Pro/PDM, Eigner, SmarTeam, Metaphase – all these products are supported and maintained by vendors on a certain level. Practically all PLM vendors are building a support network to deal with customers running outdated and retired systems. Therefore, these customers can become a strategic asset for competitors that will be able to propose them an interesting offer. Once the decision made, to change it will be even more complicated because of long processes, politics and corporate ego. Therefore, discontinuity play can be powerful and dangerous.

Partnership

To have good partners in business is like to have good friends in your life. If you have trusted and powerful partners, you can use it as an advantage in your competitive war. In PLM business, I can see two types of strategic partnership – service and sales channel partner (eg. IBM was such for many years in business with Dassault Systems), the parent company (eg. Siemens for Siemens PLM) or another business division (eg. SAP, Oracle, Microsoft). To develop and keep right partnership is very important. To know how to drop partnership is also one of the elements of a competitive game.

Marketing

To build a perfect marketing and branding story is another way to beat competition. Yes, I know… you are smiling and maybe even thinking – who is buying marketing PowerPoint presentations these days. Believe me or not, it happens all the time. If you are powerful and strong brand with billions of dollars in revenue, your marketing story can be very compelling. It will take time, resources and effort to sort it out. Yes, you are in danger to buy a dream. But it can be a very nice and well packed marketing. So, take it seriously. It can be 3D Experience, High Definition PLM, Instant On – dreams is an important weapon too.

Competitor’s mistakes

Last, but not least- the mistakes (or in this context – presents) made by your competitors. You need constantly and permanently watch your competitors. Low quality of a release, compatibility failure, channel problem – all these mistakes are weapon in your arsenal to build your marketing expansion.

What is my conclusion? The PLM competitive landscape becomes more dynamic than before. I can see some movements done by large companies (eg. Autodesk), smaller established companies with very innovative strategies (eg. Aras) and startup companies. As I said in one of my previous posts – PLM is a fun place again. Just my thoughts…

Best, Oleg

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Posted by olegshilovitsky

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