Remember a few years ago, we had many discussions about PLM cloud. This is just one example of my article from 2016 – Chasing the right PLM cloud. Fast forward in 2019 and we are past PLM cloud wars. The time of cloud vs no-cloud debates are over and vendors are full speed ahead in the development of the option that fits their market in the best way. So, you can see how some CAD/PLM companies are focusing more on public cloud (e.g. Onshape, Autodesk, etc) and how some others are paying much more attention to private and hosted versions (PTC, Siemens PLM).
Among all CAD and PLM providers, I found Dassault System 3DEXPERIENCE one of the most interesting. 3DEXPERIENCE is giving you the largest number of possible options and permutations – public cloud, private cloud, and on-premise. Also by announcing 3DEXPERIENCE.Works on Solidworks World 2019, DS is planning to become a broad provider of a platform for the highest diversity of customers – from the lowest range of single Solidworks users to the highest range of enterprise PLM solutions.
How it will work is a very good question and I was trying to get the answer on how to benchmark and compare different packages of 3DEXPERIENCE. In such a context, I found xLM article Which 3DEXPERIENCE platform works best for you very interesting. Navigate to the article and have a read.
I captured a few interesting points from the article that can help you to make a decision.
1- IT resources. Moving down from DS public cloud to private options and on-premise will demand more IT work – hardware, maintenance, configuration, upgrades.
2- Flexibility. Moving up from on-premise to private and after that public cloud, you will be losing configuration, flexibility, and ability of the system to be adapted.
3- Integrations. Moving up from on-premise to the public then public cloud, you will be losing options to upload data and integrate with other systems.
As much as I liked xLM article, I didn’t find information and links about few important points:
– Price and subscription options.
In the world of SaaS software, companies are usually transparent about subscriptions cost and configurations. I navigated to the 3DEXPERIENCE cloud, but I wasn’t able to find the cost. Everything I found was about leaving contact information and asking sales to contact me.
– Public cloud cross tenant application data access
Having an application to run on the public cloud has one huge advantage. It means you have a better way to communicate with other companies using the same platform. I didn’t find any evidence that such cross tenant access is available on any of these cloud solutions.
– Interoperability between multiple clouds
It is not clear what 3DEXPERIENCE can offer to communicate between different options. For example, your customer is running 3DEXPERIENCE on-premise, but at the same time, suppliers are using the public cloud version.
What is my conclusion? 3DEXPERIENCE seems to have many cloud deployment options. Even so, it is missing some very critical aspects of collaboration and flexibility, which is so essential in the modern manufacturing world. Just my thoughts…
Best, Oleg
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.
