Buzzwords are funny things. Earlier today, I learned few new buzzwords. First was “Facecast”. You may think this is something related to “Face…”. Ha :)… It looks like something you knew before as a webcast, but running on the Facebook. Isn’t it funny? However, let’s move on.. I’ve been watching Rob Cohee facecast speaking about PLM 360 yesterday. If you didn’t catch it , navigate to AutoCAD facecasts records and watch it in recording.
Rob gave some introductory speak about PLM 360. The key topics were flying around simplicity, availability, user experience, cloud, etc. The demo of Change Request flying from Rob’s laptop to iPad was nice and I liked it. However, one new term hit me hard in the middle of the facecast – Out-of-the-Cloud PLM. It was actually entertaining comparing Out-of-the-Box paradigm with Out-of-the-Cloud one. I gave my thumbs up for funny marketing.
However, Out-of-the-Cloud buzzword made me think about some associations with OOTB (Out-of-the-box) term ideas that PLM companies used in the past decade very often. You might be interested to read one of my previous posts about the topic – PLM Out-of-the-Box: Misleading or Focusing? The idea of OOTB was to deliver PLM and to decrease the cost of PLM implementations and services by providing ready to be used software modules. The idea was good, but unfortunately didn’t fly well. It worked well for marketing purposes, but hit the wall of implementation complexity. After all, companies still requested customizations and changes.
OOTC (Out-of-the-cloud) thing has a chance to hit the same wall. At the end, delivery service is still not everything you need. The fact software delivered from the cloud still won’t resolve all the problem. The right PLM functionality is what matter. Autodesk defines PLM 360 as very flexible and customizable. I’d be focusing on this one as more important, including the ability to keep cost of changes very low.
What is my conclusion? I like funny marketing buzzwords. Out-of-the-cloud is one of them. However, in my view, it has a dangerous association with something that didn’t work in the past (OOTB). Successful PLM needs to deliver a balance between functionality, cost of delivery and cost of change. PLM360 has a potential. I want to learn how it will be realized in the field. Just my thoughts…
Best, Oleg
