A blog by Oleg Shilovitsky
Information & Comments about Engineering and Manufacturing Software

Who is a competitor of cloud PLM?

Who is a competitor of cloud PLM?
Oleg
Oleg
2 March, 2017 | 3 min for reading

plm-status-quo

Propel PLM article – Can you trust your on-prem PLM vendor to evolve raises a question about how efficiently and quickly existing major PLM platforms can move from perpetual licenses and on prem- installations to the cloud.

Trust me, it is a very painful process to transition a product offering from on-prem to a subscription model. I’ve watched ModelN, CallidusCloud, Satmetrix, Vendavo among others, try to make the move. It can take a few years to turn the aircraft carrier. Initiating change with a big price increase and forced transition to a new platform may make sense to the accountants and incentivize salespeople, but it may not be in the best interest of customers.

Existing customers of on-prem PLM should carefully scrutinize the price increase and the hassle of redeployment when being pressured to move off on-prem. It’s likely a better choice to move to a modern and much more customer-focused approach to PLM, rather than stay on-prem for another year or two, and then be forced to re-deploy later.

Article is a blunt marketing and basically advising companies to move into new cloud PLM systems such as Propel PLM. Cannot blame Propel PLM – enterprise software business is not simple. But it made me think about PLM competition and introduction of new PLM systems.

You can catch up on the topic of PLM vendor selection and competition in the following articles – Why PLM sales stuck in organizational politics; How PLM vendors can compete with manufacturing status-quo ; PLM competition with status quo.

My main point is that status quo is the biggest competitor for new PLM vendors. The lifecycle of existing PLM implementation is shockingly long. It is not uncommon to see how after almost a decade of PLM implementation, companies are coming to a production PLM setup that can bring real value to user. Obvious question – after ~10 years investment to move from a system with established processes, implemented software and proven relationships is hard. Therefore, ROI should be one of the key questions if you have in mind to replace existing PLM system.

So, how to get that magic sauce of ROI combined with functions that will convince customer to drop existing system and switch to another PLM. Unless, you’re dealing with extremely unsuccessful PLM sales and company that really struggle with existing PLM implementation, you might be out of luck to sell something. Thinking about complementary solution can be much more productive discussion.

What is my conclusion? The competition in PLM segment is increasing. However, status quo is the biggest competitor. Manufacturing companies will require a special trigger to start jumping from existing PLM implementations with lot of custom features  and move to the brand new products. I will be watching the path of new vendors such as Propel PLM and the way they are going to compete with PLM status quo. 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.

Recent Posts

Also on BeyondPLM

4 6
26 January, 2017

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is having a renaissance moment these days. With the risk to disclose my age, I can remind...

30 June, 2017

I spent last 3 days attending CONTACT Open World. If you missed my earlier posts, take a look here and...

16 April, 2012

COFES 2012 became special to me. It is almost four years since I started my daily blogging on Daily PLM...

10 November, 2010

I spent my yesterday on Dassault Systems Customer conference (DSCC 2010). I had a chance to talk with DS executives...

10 February, 2012

I’m coming to SolidWorks World 2012 this weekend. SWW is always a special event for me. This year, SolidWorks World...

25 August, 2009

Yesterday, two separate article got my attention and brought me to think about Lifecycle. Alternatively, even more, about number of...

5 April, 2016

Hardware is growing these days. There are many new companies developing innovative products  It was enabled for new manufacturing technologies...

10 October, 2018

PLM project isn’t a piece of cake for many organization. Some people say PLM is never ending project. It is...

9 July, 2012

When it comes to “cloud PLM”, the discussion about “security” is almost inevitable. This is one of the top concerns...

Blogroll

To the top