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

COFES, Microsoft and Engineering Software Business Models

COFES, Microsoft and Engineering Software Business Models
Oleg
Oleg
16 April, 2011 | 2 min for reading

COFES is a think tank for engineering software. This is a place where you can drop any idea and see if it resonates. One of the COFES sessions is so called Maieutic Parataxis session. Think about pitching your idea in front of 300 people. You can see a sequence of 7-10 pitches from people compressed in a row. This is what Maieutic Parataxis is about. Last year I shared the story about Simon Floyd of Microsoft talking about PLM Excels: COFES, Maieutic Parataxies and PLM Excels. This year Simon came with a new idea of future business models for engineering software. Some of Simon’s slides and observations were resonating with my previous thoughts about PLM software business models. About a year ago, I wrote about Faltered Licenses and Future PLM Business Models. I talked about Subscriptions, Advertising and Reverse models. Take a look on Simon’s slides and make your opinion.

What is my take on this? The engineering software is changing slowly. The dynamics are different from the consumer market where the idea of market pace was realized and succeed. I can see multiple reasons why it happens. The most important reason is what I call “a good enough” principle. Traditional manufacturers are very conservative. Software is just a tool for them to produce the result. Existing software can run these companies for years. At the same time, I can see signs of changes. There are two main reasons, in my view: cost and competition. In order to compete on the market, companies need to find more efficient software to get a job done. Engineering software market place can offer a diverse set of tools that can be used. However, the compatibility of these tools, data access and many other reasons can potentially lay down this idea. Leading companies in this space are thinking about market place and application granularity. I think next 5-7 years can show the potential of the realization of this model.  Just my thought…

Best, Oleg

Recent Posts

Also on BeyondPLM

4 6
18 June, 2013

Data is a fascinating topic these days. The amount of data is growing and it raises lots of concerns on...

7 August, 2018

One of the most frequent debates in cloud (or SaaS) software are debates about tenancy. Or how you can often...

26 July, 2019

Standards are like toothbrushes, a good idea but no one wants to use anyone elses. The history of engineering and...

30 September, 2010

It was a long time I didn’t talk about Microsoft SharePoint. I tried to recall and found that my previous...

25 June, 2010

When you talk to a sales person from one of the PLM companies, you for sure will be exposed to...

1 May, 2020

Two months in the COVID-19 pandemic. It is a good time to talk about some lessons learned. These lessons are...

6 September, 2010

I decided to make an unusual post today. Because of holiday (Labor Day in USA), I spent most of the...

18 May, 2021

My long time PLM buddy Jos Voskuil wrote about The Future PLM. In the voice of many PLM publications, Jos’...

26 August, 2020

The roots of PLM are in CAD file data management. It was so obvious for CAD vendors to store data...

Blogroll

To the top