Few months ago, I posted about potential for Apple and IBM to open a door for mobile PLM future. Blog raised lot of questions, but I haven’t seen any groundbreaking announcements from CAD and PLM vendors since that time. Maybe I missed some press releases or maybe companies are shy to announce and work in a stealth mode.
One more news about the same topic caught my attention again few days ago. Business insider article Apple And IBM Hope To Change The Way People Work, Starting Next Month. I noticed few snippets of information indicating interest and stating that some development work is under go. Here are few passages:
“Hundreds” of corporations worldwide have “expressed interest” in MobileFirst to Apple, which is “actively working with over 50 of them to become foundational clients for MobileFirst solutions in their industries,” Maestri said. The apps mostly focus on analyzing business data. IBM’s Schroeter says the first dozen applications will launch this quarter. Some apps will be out next month, Maestri told Reuters.
IBM gets paid to write the apps and then host them on its cloud, and it also has the chance to sell other things, like security software, and so on. “We also know that the deeper the apps go in the enterprise, the more it opens up avenues in enterprise,” Cook said. “And that’s a key part of the IBM partnership and what I think customers will get out of that, which is more important than us selling, is changing the way people work.”
IBM Mobile First website is up and running. You can browse to get more information. I found few interesting use cases under build category.
Navigate to this link to Rohde & Schwarz cuts mobile development costs by 60 percent. This use case speaks about cross platform mobile application development. More specifically it was about creating mobile enterprise infrastructure to generate applications. To integrate with existing enterprise backend infrastructure was one of the challenges PLM vendors and manufacturing companies are experiencing today. Here is an interesting passage I captured from case study:
Rohde & Schwarz wanted to create a mobile enterprise infrastructure that enabled it to support multiple devices and generate required applications. Specifically, the company sought to build, run and manage a range of applications for customers, partners and employees within an aggressive timeframe. However, the organization had certain challenges, including a need for cross-platform development as well as integration with back-end systems such as SAP and an existing mobile device management infrastructure.
It made me think about potential of specific PLM mobile application development. One of my earlier posts –Mobile PLM gold rush: did vendors miss the point? I’ve been talking about the fact, successful “mobile” strategy requires development of application to support specific use cases and scenarios. I continue to discuss the same idea here – How PLM vendors can find mobile moments . Here is a passage from my older post, which I believe is still very relevant:
Consumers are moving to mobile and requesting more and more interaction with businesses via mobile devices. To make “all tablet” won’t work for product development software. To stop and think about a specific productivity apps that can solve a particular problem is the right way to go.
What is my conclusion? I didn’t find any trace of CAD/PLM companies working with IBM/Apple on mobile apps. However, I still believe, mobile experience is completely different from what customers in B2B spaces are experience with desktop or even web applications. To success in mobile, PLM companies need to find customer “mobile moments” that focus on a specific use cases where mobile device will provide a complete advantage. To replicate existing product into mobile devices won’t be a right path to go. Just my thoughts…
Best, Oleg
Image courtesy of IBM case study.
