About a year ago, I published my post – Will PLM Channels Survive The Cloud Era? Back that time, it was my answer to the growing amount of voices about so-called “cloud killing channels”. My conclusion was that re-sellers and service companies will be changing their priorities to answer on growing demand of implementation consultancy. Earlier today I was reading the announcement by Symetri – Symetri Appoints Fulthorpe to Head Up New Consulting Services Wing. Navigate to the following link to read the article. I noted an interesting quote:
The new Symetri Consulting Services business stream will initially focus on several key areas: the integration of engineering data management systems with other downstream business systems such as ERP/MRP; helping customers adopt sales configurators or Engineer to Order Systems (ETO); Autodesk cloud based services and the implementation of dynamic simulation, CFD and FEA processes into customers engineering design workflows.
Clearly, this is an answer on Autodesk stepping into “PLM cloud game”. As I stated few days ago in my Inforbix blog about on-premise / cloud connection, introducing cloud solutions can raise a wave of integration services. The challenge of service companies and implementers is to learn new field and adopt web and cloud technologies to serve manufacturing companies demands. The potential danger is to migrate existing integration work to the cloud without making any optimizations.
What is my conclusion? I have no doubt, introduction of new cloud solutions won’t reduce the amount of services and implementations. So, first, it is a good news for VARs and service providers. At the same time, cloud solutions will set a different “price” demand in front of vendors and partners. To re-organize to a new pricing structure will be another challenge. Just my thoughts…
Best, Oleg
