Cloud is going mainstream these days. It happens everywhere. It is hard to find a company or business today that is not interested about what cloud computing and mobile technology can do. PLM vendors came to the point where the accent of the question about cloud moved from “why” to “how”. The same is happening today with customers. I posted about it few days ago about it in my blog – Dassault IFWE and PLM Cloud Switch.
PLM Cloud Switch made me think about the beginning of cloud trend in PLM. It was a bit funny to read again my first posts about cloud and PLM going back to 2008 and 2009 – Where is PLM on industry cloud map? PLM Architecture – Get off my cloud. However, the most interesting one I found was – How PLM application will change when they move to the cloud? Here is a Google trend snapshot I captured for “cloud computing” back in 2009.
It was interesting to see how the same trend looks today. I also want to speculate about “big data” as a potential next big thing that will come to change PLM as we know today. Take a look on the following screen shot I’ve made yesterday.
What is my conclusion? Cloud is not a differentiation for PLM anymore. Everybody is making cloud or at least thinking they can do it. The devil is in details now about how to make it right. This is where next cloud PLM battle will go. However, now is a good time to look at crystal ball and think what can become the next significant differentiations in the development of PLM solutions. Cloud solves many problem such as speed of IT deployment and implementation efficiency. It brings many new technological options to PLM development that were out of reach before. However, PLM is still a complicated journey. It is a good time to think how to make it different. Just my thoughts….
Best, Oleg
