PLM 360 and three years of cloud PLM innovation

I’m attending Accelerate 2015 – Autodesk PLM 360 event in Boston this week. It was a good opportunity to compare it with my notes about PLM 360 I made three years ago when PLM360 (original name Nexus) was just introduced. I checked back my old blogs – Autodesk enters PLM: Everything changes… for Autodesk and My first take on Autodesk PLM 360 system and technology.

The following slides demonstrated  the initial Autodesk PLM360 vision back into 2011 – step beyond engineering data management system into broad organizational system and technological disruption via cloud data, infinite computing and more.

Fast forward into 2015. The first and probably most important thing that happened for Autodesk PLM360 for the last three years – there are customers that speak about PLM360 experience now. Accelerate 2015 brings several key PLM360 customers and I had an opportunity to listen to what they said about PLM360 experience.

The vision of PLM to grow beyond engineering became more mature. I captured the following slide from the keynote presentation made by Scott Reese, VP of cloud platform.

Autodesk PLM vision was presented in a form of Product Innovation Platform (PIP) taking cyclic perspective on product development. The traditional linear PLM perspective from concept to operation was replaced with the cycle between concepts and connected services. It reflected a broader vision on Future of Making Things (#FOMT) created by Autodesk during the last few years.

Autodesk continued the line of technological disruption started back in 2011 with cloud technologies. The latest acquisition of SeeControl brings the technology to help developing IoT cloud services and to create virtual product experience. An example from the keynote presentation – predictive maintenance product services.

What is my conclusion? Autodesk PLM vision is getting more mature. It moved from a concept of leveraging cloud technologies to help manufacturing companies into the realization of PLM platform to innovate and to help manufacturing companies to develop new products and services. Back in 2011, Autodesk took a risk to bring PLM based using cloud technologies. From that standpoint, I can see Autodesk mission accomplished. PLM industry is embracing cloud these days. All PLM vendors are brining some sort of cloud technologies, products and vision. Few weeks ago, I made my first attempt to compare PLM cloud services provided by different vendors. Unfortunately, “cloud” became a buzzword. To ask “why do we need cloud?” is a wrong question to ask. Cloud is here to stay. But devil is in the details. It will take another round of innovation to differentiate cloud PLM products and technologies developed by established PLM vendors and newcomers. Just my thoughts…

Best, Oleg