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

How to Virtualize PLM?

How to Virtualize PLM?
Oleg
Oleg
10 March, 2011 | 2 min for reading

Virtualization becomes an important piece of modern technological solutions. The time of physical servers is over. Businesses are actively seeking how to optimize the IT and backend deployment. As part of these activities, businesses are starting to rely on the ability to virtualize enterprise servers into scalable physical server machines. Another aspect of virtualization are actually coming from the side of “cloud based technologies”. Companies like Amazon and Racksapce are focusing on how to provide expandable (elastic) cloud based solution. Good examples here are Amazon EC2 or Rackspace Cloud. However, does it really as simple as it sounds?

I read few articles related to the topic of SQL Server and virtualization. In 2011 SQL Server Market Trending toward cloud virtualization and Are SQL Server BI systems compatible with virtualization? There are some interesting and controversial points made by these articles. Microsoft is trying to play with SQL Azure version to drive their cloud business forward. At the same time, SQL BI tools can provide some important business value propositions for customers to buy them. However, multiple front-end and back-end tools provided by Microsoft, in my view, can introduce some portfolio and end-user acceptance problem. Another part of conversation was about technologies and solution architecture for SQL Server, BI and cloud. The resource sharing which made possible by leveraging virtualization may have some limitation when it comes to SQL, BI and similar application.

These two articles made me think about what will be the next technological steps PLM companies will be taking. PDM/PLM business spent last 15-20 years working on databases. The fundamental PLM believes in database singularity and establishment of a “single point of truth” will face a future challenge with growing introduction of cloud, virtualization and distributed technologies. It will be interesting to see what path PLM companies will be taking in order to move their solutions to cloud? Dassault is making sound statements about Enovia V6 cloud compatibility.  Aras (enterprise open source PLM) just announced their cloud availability. In my view, Windchill and Teamcenters are not playing a strong game in building of cloud future and more focused on how to solve enterprise data challenges. I can see them investing in the future “private cloud” technologies and trying to virtualize their current solutions.

What is my conclusion? Virtualization is the name of the future technological change. To build efficient and scalable solutions that can be virtualized to the big enterprise data scale is a future challenge for PLM businesses. I’d like to learn more about how PLM SQL backbones will be transformed and virtualized using future cloud technologies.

Just my thoughts…
Best,Oleg

Recent Posts

Also on BeyondPLM

4 6
29 December, 2017

Few weeks ago, my attention was caught my Jim Hepplemann tweet. When I co-founded Windchill nearly 20 yrs ago, it...

21 October, 2010

I’ve been attending SPTech Boston Conference today. Navigate your browser on this link. You can get some information there. Microsoft...

4 December, 2009

My new post on 3D Perspectives: Best, Oleg

30 July, 2010

The following blog article caught my attention last week – “Four recommendations for better Excel BOMs” in Arena Solutions blog...

13 November, 2014

Analytics is a hot word these days. You can hear it everywhere. It sounds and feels sweet and smart. You...

6 May, 2014

Once “social” was a hot topic for PLM developer and analysts. In my view, the hype went down. Ask PLM...

26 June, 2009

Short prompt. I want to continue  theme related to PLM adoption. There are many talks about PLM deployment, ROI, Values...

16 February, 2025

Many years ago, I developed applications for AutoCAD to support product development process and analyze data and customer feedback in...

22 November, 2018

It hard to make a change when operating in your comfort zone. I decided to push myself out of blogging...

Blogroll

To the top