PTC, Industrial Innovation, IoT Magic Quadrant and LiveWorx Extravaganza

IoT is PLM. Remember my blog from a year ago? It was a message from PTC LiveWorx last year by Jim Hepplemann, PTC CEO and President. Check Jim’s explanation about IoT in this video I captured last year

I’m getting prepared for an annual PTC LiveWorx event. LiveWorx 2018 will take place during the week of June 17th in Boston and I will be there to share information about PTC products, industry partners and news. You can check LiveWorx 2018 web site. It is huge, colorful and contains lot of information and data about the even, participants, tracks, etc.

PLM and Creo topics are usual suspects on my list. My special attention is about PTC IoT products. This domain is actively developing and to stay on top of what is happening is extremely important for all players. My attention was caught by Gartner MQ reprint – Magic Quadrant for Industrial IoT Platforms. The interesting piece is vendors and yon see companies are involved it IoT business.

PTC comes as a prominent leader in this space. The naming is still confusing – IoT, Industrial Innovation platform, Thingwox platform, PLM IoT, etc. My hunch, PTC is still looking for the right name and position intersection with PLM. The following slide comes from time to time with different names, which is probably ok in our current dynamic world.

What is my conclusion? IoT is dynamic and interesting space with lot of opportunities. Many of them are long shot for future dominance in connected world we all are planning to live in. For manufacturing companies, IoT is a way to change their business – moving from selling products to services, improving customer support and optimizing product behavior. For PLM companies such as PTC, IoT is also a new way to differentiate. Meantime, different names shows lack of maturity in the space –  innovation platform, IoT platform or something else. The jury is out to watch. I will report back after LiveWorx 2018. Just my thoughts…

Best, Oleg

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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.