Autodesk Accelerate 2016 in Boston

I will be attending Accelerate 2016 event in Boston later this week. This is a 3rd annual event Autodesk is dedicating to Product Lifecycle Management. You can catch up on my posts about Accelerate 2014 and Accelerate 2015.

Read more about the event by navigating to the following link. I can smell some changes coming from the event. Previous events were focused on Product Lifecycle management. Check out Under the Hood blog about Accelerate 2015.

This year event is focusing on Product Innovation. Here is the passage from the website.

Accelerate brings together industry executives, top market analysts, and subject experts to learn, network, and share strategies for solving modern manufacturing challenges. This year’s Accelerate conference will engage, energize, and excite the community with a focus on Product Innovation. You’ll hear from Autodesk customers who are accelerating the pace of innovation using advanced product development technologies including PLM, CPQ and IoT.

My hunch the changes are reflecting the transformation that happened with Autodesk PLM from PLM360 into Fusion Lifecycle as well as combing into IIoT tools (formerly known as SeeControl). Here is Autodesk article published few months ago – Autodesk adds Fusion Connect and Fusion Lifecycle to its Cloud-Connected Product Innovation Platform.

Product lifecycle management, Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT), and data management are also essential in this new era of product development. To better integrate those critical elements, Autodesk is adding Fusion Lifecycle andFusion Connect to its product innovation platform. Fusion Lifecycle is a new name for Autodesk’s fast-growing cloud-based PLM 360 software helping to make the product development process more efficient. Fusion Connect replaces the name SeeControl, the widely-used Industrial IoT software Autodesk acquired in 2015 aimed at creating smart, connected products and services.

Here is a picture of Autodesk Product Innovation Platform I captured from the articles.

What is my conclusion? Autodesk is transforming PLM platform into something different changing names and adding additional modules. Originally released 5 years ago cloud-based PLM360 was focusing process improvement. It looks like Autodesk is looking for a broader concept of platform and this is where Fusion Lifecycle is heading to. I’m looking forward to learn more about Fusion Lifecycle as it is today and share with you. Just my thoughts…

Best, Oleg

Want to learn more about PLM? Check out my new PLM Book website.

Disclaimer: I’m co-founder and CEO of openBoM developing cloud based bill of materials and inventory management tool for manufacturing companies, hardware startups and supply chain. My opinion can be unintentionally biased.