I’ve be sharing many of my thoughts about how different cloud technologies can be used to implement PLM. Nevertheless, once in a while, I’m also getting comments and questions about acceptance of cloud PLM for large companies. Usually, it comes in the intersection of security and readiness of large manufacturing companies for cloud (SaaS) software.
TechMVP article – The benefits of SaaS transformation: both the obvious and non-obvious shows some very interesting perspective on that topic. Let me go straight to security question:
The second common objection stems from the thought process amongst large enterprise CIOs regarding whether to allow certain applications to live outside of the enterprise’s firewall. IT managers and executives – sometimes speaking about legitimate security concerns and sometimes speaking to protect their jobs – stand in the way of core applications moving to the cloud via a SaaS vendor. At the same time, these same decision makers have adopted Salesforce.com for CRM, and allow unencrypted email between employees and non-employees, thus calling into question the sincerity of their argument against other SaaS applications. The successful adoption of CRM in the cloud has opened the floodgates for virtually all other types of applications to move to the cloud even over the objections of certain IT managers.
Towards this end, we have seen in recent years the advent of ERP (FinancialForce, Workday), Marketing Automation (Eloqua, Marketo), and Software Development or ALM (GIT and Rally Software) in the cloud. These types of applications manage information that is often considered the “crown jewels” of corporate data, and thus are the types of applications that some thought would never take root in the cloud.
I can observe a significant growth of SaaS software adoption by manufacturing outside of pure engineering domain. You can see software in different categories – ERP, CRM, marketing, project management, software lifecycle management and many others. Imagine manufacturing product with software code managed using GIT? What will be the point to reject PLM system managing engineering bill of materials in the cloud?
Another interesting perspective is related to creation of new software companies. The graph below demonstrate a complete dominance of news business starting SaaS companies.
One more data point is coming closer to PLM business and related to implementation of ERP systems. Panorama consulting solutions published an interesting 2014 ERP report, which speaks about type of ERP systems implemented in 2013. As you can see on-premise and hosted system is accounting together for 96% of all systems.
What is my conclusion? I wonder what percentage of new PLM systems implemented in 2014 will be SaaS. The number is probably not very high. However, traditionally, it takes long time to decide about PLM system. My hunch, that broad adoption of SaaS software in other domains will push manufacturing companies to evaluate more PLM systems and make their decision faster than before. SaaS lower risks and upfront cost, which can be an additional factor for manufacturing companies to taste cloud PLM sooner than later. Just my thoughts…
Best, Oleg
photo credit: Robert Hensley via photopin cc
