Cloud is a big buzzword these days and all PLM vendors are trying to use to their own advantage. Last year, I’ve been comparing PLM cloud services. You can catch up on my blogs here – The buyers’ guide for PLM cloud 2015.
Cloud infrastructure is an important element of cloud PLM architecture. PLM vendors are using multiple infrastructure today – public cloud IaaS platforms and variety of hosting options (public and private). Scaling is one of these characteristics that will allow to one of cloud PLM products to outperform others in the future. It might come as a combination of platform technologies, maturity and cost.
My attention was caught by Business Insider article – 17 charts that show just how scary Amazon’s $275 billion business really is. Article speaks about Amazon dominant position in online e-Commerce and cloud technology business. I captured the following two slides that demonstrating AWS market share and growth.
It made me think cloud infrastructure can play a role in the future PLM competition. Setting a system with a specific cloud platform can provide technological and cost advantage to PLM vendors. For the moment, top three PLM vendors are playing “platform neutrality” game and trying to make software to work on all platforms. It might not be a case in the future. Smaller vendors are lack of resources to work on all platforms and might develop a unique value proposition (technological and cost) based on a specific cloud technology and platform.
What is my conclusion? Technological and cost advantage can play an important role in the future of PLM competition. In general most of customers don’t care much about what IaaS platform will be used by a specific PLM vendor. Security compliance and adoption rate can be an additional factor in cloud infrastructure competition. Just my thoughts…
Best, Oleg
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