A blog by Oleg Shilovitsky
Information & Comments about Engineering and Manufacturing Software

Alexa – Play La Cucaracha for CAD & PLM

Alexa – Play La Cucaracha for CAD & PLM
Oleg
Oleg
27 November, 2017 | 2 min for reading

I learned that today was Cyber Monday. The internet was overblown by deals and promotions. I checked few websites including Amazon. Meh… the things that were highly demanded and highly priced are still the same. But, I noticed something interesting. Retailers are giving huge discounts to smart speakers-  Google and Amazon are leading the game by discounting speakers for 20-90$.

I captured an interesting picture showing what people are doing with smart speakers.The top 3 things people do with their Amazon Alexa or Google Home are: set a timer, play a song, check the weather.

It is fascinating to think how useless are those speakers, but it is kind of cool. And it is getting traction and adoption. And what is amazing that how much vendors are pushing to sell these speakers to everyone for such low price. Why are they doing so? Where is the profit? Aren’t they cool and can be sold in Apple store for a lot of money? My hunch is that speakers for both Amazon and Google aren’t a point of profit. It is a tool to sell future services. It is hardware as a service model in front of our eyes.

So, what PLM vendors can learn here? In my view, it is a great lesson about future business models. Google and Amazon are giving away devices collecting our voices and other intelligence and then turning it into services they sell to somebody else.

In my earlier articles, I shared thoughts about future business models in CAD and PLM. It is essentially about two things – services and polyhedral business models. Existing business models are relying on expensive software licenses. Modern technologies in data management, cloud and analytics can create a new value and turn it into new business model. Free software can create a value that can be traded to different businesses. All together will create a completely new eco-system different moving away from software licensed packages, resellers and manufacturing companies required to buy expensive software.

What is my conclusion? My initial reaction was maybe some PLM vendors need to think how to create a simple and stupid function in their application to improve adoption? Something like “Hey PLM, tell me what is a weather on a shop floor?”…  I still kind of like this idea, although it might not work for manufacturing companies. At the same time, giving software for free and building intelligence is a technique widely used by new digital businesses for the last decade. And this is what CAD and PLM vendors need to learn sooner than later. Just my thoughts…

Best, Oleg

Want to learn more about PLM? Check out my new PLM Book website.

Disclaimer: I’m co-founder and CEO of OpenBOM developing cloud based bill of materials and inventory management tool for manufacturing companies, hardware startups and supply chain. My opinion can be unintentionally biased.

 

Recent Posts

Also on BeyondPLM

4 6
24 November, 2016

It is Thanksgiving or Thanksgiving Day in United States today. I wanted to say some special words to all my...

8 March, 2011

Earlier today, I discovered an interesting company solution called Tigertext. At the time companies are talking about 2D vs. 3D...

11 October, 2011

I’m spending more and more time with alternative UIs. It first started from mobile and web. Now it is coming...

3 November, 2016

Change management and PLM implementations are hard. You can check some of my earlier blogs to catch up on the...

12 June, 2017

If you’re long enough time in tech, you probably remember Knowledge Management (KM). KM emerged as a scientific discipline in...

3 December, 2022

PLM adoption is hard. The history of PLM projects start as engineering projects and, unfortunately, struggles with many aspects related...

25 March, 2015

I attended PI Congress in Dusseldorf last month. During the conference I had a chance to share my thoughts about...

12 August, 2013

An unusual topic for today. I read The Guardian article Google’s Sergey Brin bankrolled world’s first synthetic beef hamburger. Navigate...

10 November, 2009

Few months ago, in this post, I had chance to discuss the future of immersive CAD and Data Management. Looking...

Blogroll

To the top