Siemens PLM Analyst Event and PLM Public Cloud Strategies

Social tools can make your professional life much more efficient these days. I’ve been following Siemens PLM analyst event in Boston last week via twitter. The even is over, but you can still reach the tail of the information today by searching for #SPLM13 hash tag on twitter. Twitter search tool has a limited timespan, so run fast if you want to get the original tweet stream.

Cloud PLM switch is under go and obviously, one of the topics of my interest was Siemens PLM software in the cloud. Few months ago, Siemens PLM announced about TeamCenter cloud availability and IaaS cloud strategy. I wanted to find some examples of TeamCenter cloud experience provided by customers. Cloud buzzworld wasn’t on the top of hype list for the event. It was very easy to catch the following tweet by Jim Brown:

Jim Brown @jim_techclarity. Sterling – Yes, Teamcenter is on #Cloud. 2 customers up. Working w/ partners vs setting up cloud #SPLM13 #PLM

One of the top differentiations in cloud strategies today is private vs. public cloud. The associate cost is one of the factors of the decision. The cost of data centers and services can easy go high and it will influence other decisions – availability, packages, price. I found a very interesting article speaking about cloud cost differentiations published in Wired magazine. Navigate to the following link to read – Why Some Startups Say the Cloud Is a Waste of Money. Make a read. The main point in the article is that public cloud and Amazon can be quite costly and not efficient in specific cloud configurations. The article brings multiple examples companies started with public cloud on the Amazon and moved towards private cloud within the time. Here is my favorite passage from the article.

“The public cloud is phenomenal if you really need its elasticity,” Frenkiel says. “But if you don’t — if you do a consistent amount of workload — it’s far, far better to go in-house.” Within IT departments, public clouds do tend to get more expensive over time, especially when you reach a certain scale.’

PLM vendors are following different strategies when it comes to public and private cloud these days. Arena Solutions (aka Bom.com in early days) is offering their software as public cloud. The same does Autodesk with PLM360. Dassault Systemes didn’t provide any information about how much cost their new cloud offering. Meantime, Siemens PLM didn’t provide any information about TeamCenter on the cloud as well. Here is the only relevant tweet from #SPLM13 I found about Siemens PLM cloud licensing and cost:

PJ Jakovljevic ‏@pjtec4 #splm13 Interesting that in #SiemensPLM’s new go-to-market initiatives there are no mentions of #cloud & subscription licensing #JustSaying

What is my conclusion? We are getting into period of time PLM vendors will try to innovate by trying different cloud strategies. My hunch there are two main reasons here – cost and market differentiations. Public vs. private cloud will be one of the key differentiators. The elastic capability of public cloud is a huge advantage and it was proven by many internet and enterprise companies. At the same time, specific characteristics of PLM business can make private cloud and combined options attractive as well. The jury is still out. Just my thoughts…

Best, Oleg