CIMdata's Vice President of Research, Stan Przybylinski, recently sat down with Siemens PLM Software's Executive Vice President & General Manager for Cloud & Data Services, Stephen Bashada, so that he could learn more about Siemens PLM Software's cloud strategy.
Let's find out!
How important are cloud-based solutions to the strategy of Siemens PLM Software?
Cloud-based technologies are enablers of digital innovation and can provide the agility companies require to quickly integrate and deploy new capabilities into the product lifecycle. The market trends are clear: cloud-based technology companies are experiencing rapid growth and investment, especially relative to the traditional on premise technology firms. We are seeing a generational shift and nearly 90% of senior executives view the implementation of cloud strategies as a competitive advantage.
Technological agility can help reduce product time-to-market. Cloud-based technologies provide immediate access to powerful tools to support the product development cycle such as multi-physics simulation, design exploration, machine learning, Internet of Things (IoT) in manufacturing operations, data analytics, simulation democratization, and model-based system engineering. In addition, the instant scalability provided by cloud infrastructure resources reduces bottlenecks, fulfills unmet demand, and breaks down self-imposed capacity walls previously limited by constrained capitalized expenses.
Siemens’ vision for cloud transformation balances boundary-pushing digital innovation with the recognition that cloud-based innovations should be implemented in a modular/phased approach that fits within the customer’s IT architecture and security environment. We understand the need for some components to remain in a private on-premise cloud while connecting to other components in the public cloud to take advantage of scale and global replication.
What about the ecosystem of infrastructure, applications, and other partners that are part of your offerings
Siemens provides cloud solutions across the digital enterprise software suite from design, build, software lifecycle, manufacture, simulation, product data and lifecycle analytics as shown below.
Partnering with cloud-based technology companies like Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft, Rescale, Smartronix, Cloudera and others, and having a modular and open architecture decentralizes innovation and allows for skill specialization / economies of learning and development.
Siemens provides options for desktop software products in addition to server-based computing to allow increased mobility of the workforce, accommodate bring your own device (BYOD), ability to keep data secured in a cloud environment, and allow access to robust engineering software from any device and to allow for centralized management of all desktop applications.
How does your solution and its go-to-market address the issues raised by your customers and prospects?
As companies make the move to the cloud, there is generally not a one-size fits all approach. In addition to driving innovation, cloud-based technologies in the form of software (SaaS), infrastructure (IaaS), and platforms (PaaS) delivered as a service are reducing and aligning expenses to operations. Cloud technology services reduce Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) for information technology organizations as firms increasingly understand that traditional cost metrics are inadequate for capturing the hidden administrative and opportunity costs associated with traditional on-premise approaches.
As cloud-based software, data management, and analytics are driving digital innovation, diverse infrastructure requirements are emerging. Hardware is increasingly optimized for different purposes and software developers are optimizing codes on platforms with divergent strategies. Only a cloud-based infrastructure can deliver the agility enterprises need to support the demands of an enterprise software tool suite. One-size-fits-all solutions for infrastructure are a thing of the past. Different solutions will have different requirements, from a cost, performance, security, and scalability perspective. Cloud environments are evolving rapidly, and Siemens is monitoring the changes and is working directly with cloud service providers to ensure that the unique requirements for PLM environments are met or exceeded.
Many companies, especially large enterprises, will end up with a hybrid cloud environment, with some workloads running on private virtual machines and a variety of public cloud workloads and applications.
Infrastructure savings increase as companies are able to leverage cloud resources including Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) cloud environments like AWS, Siemens Platform as a Service (PaaS) solutions like MindSphere, the Open IoT Operating System, or Siemens Software as a Service (SaaS) solutions from Siemens and our partners.
Siemens offers three cloud delivery models to best suit the goals and needs of your organization: infrastructure as a service (IaaS), managed services, and software as a service (SaaS). Your business needs dictate which cloud solution is right for you.
In addition to the overall delivery models for the solutions, Siemens provides all of their desktop products in a flexible adaptable model to support different customer requirements. Desktop engineering products like NX, NX CAM, Amesim and others are provided on-premise, in a single application streaming mode, in a virtual desktop mode, or in a cloud paging/managed by the cloud but running local mode. These different cloud technology options allow customers to address different business challenges within their organizations. Customers can select a single mode of use or can mix and match the solutions to address different business needs within their global deployments.
These modes include:
- Cloud paging – leveraging on-premise hardware but managing the software deployment and revisions from the cloud.
- Application streaming – virtual streaming of individual applications to any device anywhere in a secure performant manner. Thereby, allowing customers to be flexible, leverage BYOD devices, and have mobile workers while keeping their company IP secure on the cloud.
- Virtual Desktops – Managing Siemens' applications and other business applications on a virtual desktop in a secure centralized manner. Allowing a single location to deploy, update and manage corporate applications.
Siemens' vision for our Digital Enterprise suite encompasses a comprehensive plan to support customer business requirements today and the technical agility necessary for our customers to continue to evolve, resulting in faster product time-to-market with higher quality products.
How are your offerings going to evolve in the short to medium term (1-3 years)?
Siemens PLM Software, a business unit of the Siemens Digital Factory Division, is a leading global provider of product lifecycle management (PLM) and manufacturing operations management (MOM) software, systems, and services with over 15 million licensed seats and more than 140,000 customers worldwide.
Many industries have already made the move to digitalization. We are now seeing discrete and process industries at the tipping point, and Siemens is here to help with that transition. For example, the Requests for Proposals coming from industrial companies clearly show they want a PLM provider who can help them make an intelligent transition to the cloud.
As discussed previously, as companies make the move to the cloud, there is generally not a one-size fits all approach. Many companies, especially large enterprises, will end up with a hybrid cloud environment, with some workloads running on private virtual machines and a variety of public cloud workloads and applications.
Infrastructure savings increase as companies are able to leverage cloud resources including Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) cloud environments like Amazon Web Services, Siemens Platform as a Service (PaaS) solutions like MindSphere, the Open IoT Operating Systems, or Siemens Software as a Service (SaaS) solutions from Siemens and our partners. Siemens and our partners offer a Managed Services approach so the move to cloud can be orchestrated and managed. Through our IaaS, Managed Services (MS), and SaaS models we support a full range of solutions, with new SaaS options being delivered continuously as illustrated below.
From what we see this momentum will continue to increase, and having the full breadth of solutions and expertise from on premise to complete SaaS and all the options in between will uniquely position Siemens.
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We look forward to hearing from you!
Stan
