I’m officially coming back online after a week of cooling down during family vacation in Iceland. Apologizing for absence of blogging last week. While I didn’t stop reading on my vacation, you can think about my blogging twisted mind as a geyser, which is about to release a burst of water. Few interesting articles that caught my attention.
Monica Shnitger article – Cloud vs Subs. A very important clarification for everyone in enterprise business. Business model transformation and technologies are intertwined and created interesting combinations of product offering. One of them – selling subscriptions to desktop applications instead of license. Another one – an importance of cloud and multi-tenant technologies for collaborative features, cost and business opportunities.
You can buy software in many ways, from a one-time payment for an app to an ongoing subscription, to purchasing a pool of licenses that give access to a specific number of concurrent users. Or some other creative mechanism to appeal to a specific class of buyer. This is the business part of the transaction and should be evaluated like any other purchase: what gets me what I need at a price I’m willing to pay?
How you use software is another matter entirely. You can download it to your phone or desktop, you can use it in the cloud, or your can stream it to your VR goggles. That has to do with how the software works, if your IT infrastructure allows cloud access and other considerations. The question here is: does it do what I want in a way that’s useful to me?
Another article that caught my attention was Jos Voskuil – Are we blocking our future? I like Jos articles about brain and human behavior. One of old ones if you missed is – Our brain blocks PLM acceptance. Brain, human behavior intertwined with enterprise software business is fascinating and sometimes counterintuitive.
To stay competitive or meaningful in a global market with changing customer demands, old ways of working no longer bring enough revenue to sustain. The impact of software as part of the solution has significantly changed the complexity and lifecycle(s) of solutions on the market.
There are so many proof points that our human brain is not as reliable as we think it is. Knowing less about these effects makes it even harder to make progress towards a digital future.
While Jos blog provides a very good point about importance of education and not relying on our instincts, it also walks very fine line between educating and blaming customers for a failure. Here is one of the most controversial reading about enterprise software implementations and consulting business I had a chance to read is this one (not related to PLM, but to SAP) – The art of blaming the client when project goes south. While I cannot check the source of the article, which can be another twist of enterprise software business, it doesn’t sound like a sci-fi if you’re familiar with enterprise projects. At the same time, one of my recommended readings is – What to do if a customer is “wrong”?
Last week I learned bunch of things about vulcans, earthquakes and geothermal activity in Iceland, which will be a topic for a separate blog. One of the most fascinating things is about positive role of earthquakes. Earthquakes happen because of planet “adjustments”. In some places like Iceland you can feel and see it. Geothermal activity is one of the most interesting appearance. Earthquakes allow water, nutrients and minerals to cycle between different layers and it fuel geothermal activity processes. As much as earthquakes can be devastating and deadly, they are helping geothermal energy production and facilitate lifecycle processes. PLM business is adjusting as well and I think business models and technological earthquakes are good thing to move business forward.
What is my conclusion? The state of enterprise and PLM software business is changing. New business models, technologies are coming. People and organization are not accepting them can be torn apart by the forces of changes. Which side of the business and technologies are you taking? How existing vendors will control future PLM earthquakes and move energy in a productive direction. Jos Voskuil is right in his article – human brain is not reliable. We need to educate ourselves, but also to bring more data driven technologies to help us. Just my thoughts…
Best, Oleg
One the picture below Þingvellir (Thingvellir) a historic site and national park in Iceland, east of Reykjavík. You can see a rift valley caused by the separation of 2 tectonic plates, with rocky cliffs and fissures.
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.
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