New enterprise software reality for PLM vendors

I’m planning to attend PI Congress event in Dusseldorf next week. As part of the preparation, I’m taking a look back on past events. Back in 2012, I was presented at PLM Innovation 2012 event in Munich about PLM and consumerization. You can navigate and see my presentation. One of the topics I discussed was related to enterprise software and future impact on enterprise IT.  The changes were coming to enterprise IT and we can see it clearly now.  Business insider article Today’s IT department is in fight for its life can help you to understand the significance of changes.

Changes in enterprise IT made me think again about what changed in enterprise software. I want to come with top three significant changes comparing to 2012 – Distributed, Connected, Cloud.

1- Distributed. Nothing happens these days in a single place. Regardless on what type of company and industry sector are you working, you have to deal with the situation when you customers, partners, suppliers, engineers, manufacturing facilities are located everywhere. This is a new reality and it is getting reflected into enterprise software.

2- Connected. Another thing. People need answer now, at the right moment. People are expecting a different speed from business and enterprise software must provide an answer. Social networks and web disrupted the way enterprises are operating nowadays. Everyone is staying connected.

3- Cloud. Enterprise moved from discussion about cloud into practical implementation of cloud software. It is not about why to implement cloud. It is about how to do it right. Enterprise software vendors and their customers are looking how to find a right solution for today and tomorrow.

What is my conclusion? The reality of today is distributed enterprise software. Essentially, there is no single location for any organization. If you developing PLM software today, take the distribution factor as the most fundamental requirement. Second is communication – the information is flowing between people at high speed and frequency. The right information is in chat, messenger, shared content. How to pickup this information and make it connected to people decisions is a critical aspect. The last one is cloud. There are lot of confusion about what is cloud and how it can be done for organization. But, every organization is going to discover how cloud is impacting what enterprise IT is doing. No escapes here. Just my thoughts…

Best, Oleg

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