Do you know what is the most widely adopted PLM system in the world? You probably can guess based on the title of this blog post – Microsoft Excel. I’ve been writing about Microsoft Excel and PLM many times.
PLM Excel Spreadsheets: From Odes to Woes
Why Do I Like My PLM Excel Spreadsheet?
Do We Need Chief Excel Officer To Manage BOM?
Microsoft just released Office 365 in the cloud:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zdOD1dGxMW0
Earlier today, I was reading details about Microsoft new cloud offering. Navigate to the following link to read – Microsoft puts Office in the ‘cloud,’ confronts Google. What is the story? For many years, Microsoft was leading in Office space selling Microsoft Word, Excel and Outlook to individuals and enterprises. The market share of Microsoft Office products is huge. However, for the last couple of years, Google succeeded to introduce a strong cloud competition to Microsoft Office products – Google Apps. To compete with them, Microsoft is placing Office product in the cloud for a very competitive price. This is a very interesting quote from Reuter blog post:
Google, which has had the most success in the small and medium-sized business range, says there are now 40 million users of online Google Apps suite. Microsoft does not publish equivalent numbers, but research firm comScore has estimated 750 million people worldwide use Office in some form.
PLM and Office in the Cloud
So Office is hearing in the cloud. What does it mean for manufacturing companies and PLM vendors? One of the most problematic side effects of working with Office and specifically with Excel was the ability to share data and collaborate between different people in an organization. Separate Excel files, even if you put them in the shared drives, are very bad for this. Multiple PLM systems were focused on how people can work collaboratively sharing information about drawings and bill of materials. With the introduction of Office 360 and growing competition of Google, PLM companies can find their collaborative solution with cloud collaboration supported by Excel running on cloud. Microsoft is emphasizing how Office 365 will be used by small and medium customers first. As you can see on the picture below – it is just $6 /month.
What is my conclusion? I don’t think, PLM vendors will be in a real jeopardy because of Microsoft Office moves to the cloud and competing with Google Apps. Large manufacturing companies are complicated, and PLM vendors sit deep inside with the implementation of complex PLM product suites. However, what happens with hundreds of these that are running Microsoft Excel as their PLM system? Time to make some thinking and calculations. Important…
Just my thoughts.
Best, Oleg
