The following publication drove my attention last week. Microsoft is jumping more and more in this Open Source.
“Now, Microsoft has unveiled an organization it says will help open source work with commercial software organizations – the CodePlex Foundation. Microsoft is also the Foundation’s sole funder, having donated $1m – a number the company will review annually.” CodePlex becomes a very strong place for open source Microsoft related community.
So, is it good or bad for PLM? With only one company (Aras) oriented on PLM and Open Source, PLM is not very friendly to Open Source and to Open Source community. How Open Source can drive PLM change ruling more and more to Open Source. There are few reasons, in my view, that will bring PLM very soon to the kind of Open Source organization:
1. Level of Services in PLM domain. High level of services makes Open Source very attractive. When customer is not focusing on sales process, but just implementing, this is sounds like good sales speech and point to discuss.
2. Huge diversification in customer environment and requirements. Sophisticated engineering and manufacturing processes are complex, in my view, to become OOTB offering. So, another level of flexibility will be needed to make these customers doing what they want.
3. Frustrations with regards to expensive PLM licenses. Today’s perception – PLM is complex and expensive. By introducing Open Source PLM, you remove sales issue, when selling it for the first time. Customer won’t be requested to pay up-front before seeing results.
So, what is my conclusion. As I said before, Open Source is very interesting direction from many standpoints – technology, business, sales. With Microsoft becoming more active in this space, PLM companies very much oriented on Microsoft, can boost PLM implementation based on Open Source and Microsoft. Microsoft will actively promote open source projects on top of MS infrastructure such as SharePoint etc. Will codeplex develop a sufficient community is not clear, but definitely changes in OSS landscape were started already.
What is your opinion on this?
Best, Oleg
