The technology trends are interesting these days. You think what can be more disruptive than cloud. Indeed, cloud, social and mobile are there major trends and forces to drive innovation in enterprise organizations now. However, here is the thing – I can see more and more confirmations about readiness of customers to go forward with cloud solutions. At the same time, the question that companies and individuals are raising are more towards understanding of “what” cloud means for them and “how” to implement cloud solutions. I raised this question in my recent post – Dassault IFWE and PLM Cloud Switch.
Yesterday, I’ve been reading venture bit article – How SaaS is triggering the rise of mid market companies. Navigate to the article, have a read and make your opinion. It speaks a lot about cloud “hows” in the context of cloud technology trends. It was the first time I’ve seen people mentioning “old cloud vs. new cloud”. Here is the passage I found inspiring:
Startup software vendors can take advantage of new technology and infrastructure better than decade-old vendors in this new reality. They have an immense advantage over established players struggling to adapt legacy web 1.0 products to the new paradigm. As Salesforce approaches its 15th birthday, the SaaS market it pioneered so disruptively is itself feeling disrupted.
It sounds like “new cloud” positioned itself somewhat different from bigger cloud providers, by reaching better flexibility, data access, intuitiveness. One of the key elements is usage mobile devices and natural collaborativeness inherited from new mobile applications. Native mobility becomes one of the key advantages of “new cloud trend”. It appears not only in the way application can be used, but also in the way application can be sold and implemented. Here is another interesting passage:
The SaaS paradigm also reduces the cost of selling to mid-size businesses. Since products are web-based, they can easily be demonstrated remotely. In addition, search engine and social technologies make it much easier for customers to find software vendors. These inbound tactics combine synergistically with outbound e-mail and telemarketing campaigns, eliminating the need to send a salesperson to each company.
What is my conclusion? The speed of business changes is dramatic these days. Only few years ago, we mentioned cloud pioneers like Salesforce.com as a company on the bleeding edge of technology and business model. It is interesting today, how new waves of disruption are going to open a new decade of cloud applications. Does it mean something for PLM companies and PLM implementations? I don’t think we have an answer. The question about speeding up transition of customers to the cloud solution is still not answered, in my view. Industry was changed by bringing new technologies to revolutionizing manufacturing business these days. What will be the next steps? It is a right time to ask about. Just my thoughts…
Best, Oleg
