Do I Need An Invitation To Join CAD/PLM Cloud?

Last week was very cloudy in Southern California. I’m sure you understand…  I’m talking about SolidWorks World 2010 in Anaheim, CA. It was time when SolidWorks presented their technological preview and first SolidWorks PLM on the cloud (SolidWorks Product Data Sharing). However, I want to start from a very interesting twitter message I’ve got at the time SolidWorks presented.

I can understand this twitter message from Arena. Arena was the pioneering cloud PLM solutions since early 2000s. It was called OnDemand back that time.  Finally, cloud apps started to appear in the mainstream presentations of vendors like Autodesk and SolidWorks. However, read Arena’s message and blog. Arena is looking how to organize work between SolidWorks’ new cloud solution and Arena’s Bill of Material products online. And this is very interesting turn that requires future discussion and understanding.

Interoperability Tabu and Cloud Openness
This is one of the most widely discussed and prohibited topics in CAD/PLM industry. In the very competitive world, CAD and PLM companies have hard time to maintain communications, formats and data exchange to provide a solution to their customers. However, introducing of cloud can bring a new voice in the story of interoperability. Internet and cloud, obviously perceived as the most open space. It will be very interesting to see how CAD/PLM solution on cloud will develop their openness skills in the future.

How Many Clouds Do We Need?
This is the question that I had in my mind when I’m thinking about future PLM cloud solutions. What will be the communication in the cloud and between clouds? How customers using SolidWorks will be able to use Arena PLM solutions? How SolidWorks on cloud will work with apps from Salesforce.com? How multiple CAD systems on cloud can be connected to the cloud solution from PLM and ERP vendors that I’m sure will depart to the cloud universe?  Those and many other questions I have in my mind. I’m sure we are about the right time to start discussing it.

What is my conclusion today? In my view, the cloud time is coming. We will see massive introduction of first solution on the cloud from CAD and PLM vendors. However, I hope we will not create multiple “PLM clouds” in the way we created multiple CAD files and PLM Databases. I hope, we’ll find a better solution to do so. Just my thoughts…

I’m looking forward to have more cloud-related discussions with you. And I posted about cloud before. If you haven’t had chance to see them, take a look below:

Cloudy PLM: Roadmap Into The Future

PLM Architecture: Get Off My Cloud?

Where is PLM on Industry Cloud Map?

Where is the PLM shortcut to the cloud?

Should PLM take Excel to the Cloud?

Host PLM Data using Cloud Services

How will PLM applications change when they move to a cloud?

Best, Oleg