PLM and Single Point of Truth. You probably heard about that before. I tried to address this topic in the past. Navigate to few of my old posts about that – PLM and Single Point of Truth and PLM and Single Point of Disagreement. Earlier this year, I came back to this topic in my write-up PLM and “The Whole Truth” Problem, which raised up few comments about cost of integration and “single PLM option” as a cost-effective alternative. Interesting enough, the topic of multiple systems usage isn’t unique for PLM space only. I’ve been reading CloudAve blog post The Rise of Two Tier ERP and Larry Ellison’s NetSuite Intentions. Here is an interesting passage:
Essentially it’s a further nod by NetSuite to the notion of two-tier ERP, the idea that organizations can continue to use their existing ERP systems at a corporate level, but enable individual business units to innovate with secondary solutions. It’s a smart idea and one which is a natural fit for NetSuite that had traditionally had a hard time selling into the largest corporates who were generally seen as invested in one or other of the large ERP vendors. At the event NetSuite was keen to tell attendees about the case studies of large corporates who have moved to NetSuite for individual business units, all tied to traditional ERP solutions at the corporate level.
Even if the ERP topic and local accounting is a bit different topic, I can see a clear trend to “optimize” IT environment opposite to unification of everything under a single umbrella.
PDM/PLM multi-tier optimization
The idea of multi-tier strategy for PLM implementation sounds as something we might see more in the near future. The main reason is the same – optimization. With a large amount of IT systems already implemented, companies can think about the combination of systems to re-use existing assets and implementation and optimize cost. Cloud can play an additional role in this future optimization by providing companies an easy path to the missing functionality or coverage of remote and geographically separated divisions.
What is my conclusion? How to optimize IT assets? I believe we will be hearing about it more and more these days. When cost of global deployment is skyrocketing, companies will be looking how to leverage multi-tier strategies to optimize the future of PLM deployment and implementation. Large PLM vendors be aware, since it provides an opportunity to niche players and startups. Just my thoughts…
Best, Oleg
image courtesy of designbuzz post
