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

PLM and Cloud File Sharing Bubble

PLM and Cloud File Sharing Bubble
Oleg
Oleg
14 September, 2012 | 2 min for reading

File Sharing on the cloud. Who is not doing it these days? It sounds so simple and straightforward. Dropbox was one of the companies that pioneered the success of cloud file sharing and made it mainstream. Other large companies took the challenge. As a result, we have plenty of options to share our favorite pictures and other files online. Apple iCloud, Google Drive and Microsoft SkyDrive are just short list of products in this list.

Slowly, companies are moving to discover what is business value of file-sharing services for business. Dropbox is proposing Dropbox for Teams. Another popular solution in this space is Box.com. Two days ago, the following article caught my attention – Marc Benioff drops bombshell at TechCrunch Disrupt: Announces Box competitor – Chatterbox. This is my favorite passage:

…”Our customers have come to us and told us they wanted ‘Dropbox’ for the Enterprise. They want it integrated with our platform. They want our trust model, our security model. They want to have application services. They want to build apps with Force.com and do Chatterbox. They want to use Heroku and do Chatterbox. They want to use it on their own. So we have to step up and deliver Chatterbox,” he said.

Cloud File Sharing for Engineers?

CAD/PLM vendors are not standing aside of this cloud-file-sharing story. You might be interested to read one of my previous post – Will Cloud Drive disrupt engineering collaboration? The idea of drop-box-like service as a foundation of the future PDM/PLM system isn’t new and discussed by many vendors, analysts and industry watchers. There are several products already available in this space provided by large and established vendors SolidWorks n!Fuze, Autodesk 360. In addition to that, I can mention few start-up companies moving in this direction – TeamPlatform, GrabCAD, Nuage.

Cloud File Sharing – how to make it different?

Cloud storage becomes a commodity these days. The short list of requirements is size, cost and reliability. How to compete with giants like Google, Microsoft and Apple? This is a place where lots of innovations can be applied. Engineering content is a tricky thing. CAD files are semantically rich and contain lots of dependencies. Services like viewing and direct uploading from CAD system are options to provide some differentiation compared to plain vanilla dropbox and other services.

What is my conclusion? In my view, we are in the middle of cloud sharing bubble. Storage becomes cheaper. So, we will see more companies trying to challenge the status quo of large cloud providers. The key element to success is user experience. Fewer clicks, seamless integration with CAD and other engineering system – this is a short list of potential differentiation factors. Just my thoughts…  What do you think? What will be an important function to help you to share your design online?

Best, Oleg

Image: FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Recent Posts

Also on BeyondPLM

4 6
15 October, 2010

What do you think about “Collaboration”? I think, it confusing a bit. We use it too often. Some people like...

11 July, 2017

Hybrid cloud is one of these words that makes IT to feel that they can “have cake and eat it...

22 March, 2013

I learned a new buzzword yesterday. Have you heard about BaaS? Navigate to the following TechCrunch article – Kinvey Launches...

11 November, 2010

This week on DSCC 2010 I had a chance to learn more about what Dassault is planing as their next...

2 March, 2011

Choose the platform for your software becomes a new issue in 2010s. Platform was kind of easy story for the...

24 February, 2012

PLM Innovation 2012 in Munich is over. It was a great event, gathered about 250 people and 20+ companies on...

13 April, 2010

The number of companies and products that are trying to jump into the social tools bandwagon is growing. At the...

17 December, 2015

As we are approaching the end of the year, I thought it is a good time to refresh and provide...

12 September, 2014

Cloud is getting wider adoption these days. An interesting trend I observe for the last year – customer are asking...

Blogroll

To the top