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

Competitive edges of SharePoint and PLM collaboration

Competitive edges of SharePoint and PLM collaboration
Oleg
Oleg
5 November, 2014 | 2 min for reading

microsoft-sharepoint

SharePoint is an interesting product and technology. I’m following it already few years. I can see some kind of love and hate relationships between PLM vendors and Microsoft SharePoint business. You can catch up on some of my thoughts about SharePoint in my previous posts – SharePoint PLM Paradox; Why PLM should care of SharePoint?PLM SharePoint thoughts. SharePoint technology was successfully used by some PLM products (eg. SolidEdge SP) and discontinued by others (eg. PTC ProductPoint). With these two extreme examples, I guess most of CAD/PDM/PLM vendors are keeping neutral position with regards to SharePoint. Most of them are supporting some sort of integrations typically done by partners and service providers.

One of the issues that makes many customers and vendors confused is a comparison and sometimes even competitive positions of SharePoint. With increased demand for enterprise collaboration and information sharing, many customers are concerned about how both technologies can interplay in the organization. I put some of my thoughts about that in my post last year – How to stop comparing PLM and SharePoint?

Real story group blog SharePoint is no longer a swiss army knife caught my attention and made me think about SharePoint and PLM again. Also, chart shows SharePoint usage by different type of application. It also made a highlighting of new, mature and light usages.

sharepoint-usage-survey

The following two categories – project oriented collaboration, document management and simple file sharing shows probably a dominant place of SharePoint mature usage. From my experience, these categories demonstrates why many companies are confused about PLM and SharePoint. For many of them, the initial phase of PLM – project collaboration and CAD file management can create a feeling of functional overlap. 

The situation is getting even more interesting with new wave of cloud products developed by CAD/PLM companies and new startups. The focus of some of them is clearly to solve a problem of document management for engineers, file sharing and project collaboration. It is not obvious that these companies are going after the same market niche as Microsoft. At the same time, I can smell some levels of competitiveness there.

What is my conclusion? SharePoint is mature and successful technology. Microsoft has strong enterprise positions and with new Microsoft strategy for enterprise cloud can become even more dominant player. My hunch, PLM companies should make another round of thinking how to live together or compete with Microsoft SharePoint and connected social collaboration products. Just my thoughts…

Best, Oleg

Picture credit Microsoft SharePoint and RealStoryGroup

Recent Posts

Also on BeyondPLM

4 6
28 December, 2015

This is a time of the year when PLM analysts and journalists are trying to look at crystal ball for...

20 April, 2010

I hope you know about my “love and hate” relationships with Excel. I posted many times about how deep Excel...

21 October, 2015

  CAD and PLM marketing folks have tough time these days. It has been just five years ago, when Jeff...

24 September, 2012

The issues of data, data lock-in, interoperability usually drives lots of debates and discussions. Started early from support and conversions...

19 January, 2021

The word “integration” is one of the most frequently used in PLM business. Naturally, PLM puts itself in the middle...

18 March, 2011

What do you think about SharePoint? During the last few months, I’m getting this question very often. After my post...

25 February, 2010

I’m continuing to discuss various aspects of PLM on the Cloud and SaaS. The issue I wanted to discuss today...

22 February, 2012

I’m just few hours before two-day marathon of PLM Innovation 2012 in Munich. The list of speakers and the agenda...

13 February, 2013

IT consumerization speed is probably underestimated. At the time we are discussing if enterprise workers need to use tablets, mobile...

Blogroll

To the top