During a recent webinar we shared some of the preliminary findings from our on-going survey into Cloud-SaaS Adoption in PLM. I’d like to thank everyone for signing up for the session and a special thanks to the large percentage that came to hear it live. I hope that it met your expectations.
There were a lot of questions that I will try to answer here. Some of them are repeats or variations on a theme, so some of the answers may be short. Some questions have been revised for clarity.
If you were unable to join the webinar, you can watch it here.
We hope this post will generate further discussion that enriches our collective understanding of this topic and would appreciate hearing from you.
Stan Przybylinski
Will you publish this survey somewhere?
Yes, CIMdata will issue a report in the coming weeks.
Can you include the number of folks polled for the survey for all these charts (“n”)?
At the beginning of the session, I listed the number of responses. These were preliminary results, so the numbers are not yet final. Once the results are final, we typically add that information.
What about the connection of a cloud solution with another one?
That is an important use case as the survey results suggest that many respondents rely on cloud solutions for other enterprise applications. This is a problem that CIMdata has been highlighting for several years now.
How beneficial is it to run two systems in parallel? Cloud and on-premise? You will not be sharing information if they are not integrated. Believe that is not ideal, true?
When working on a replacement, many companies run both the old and new systems in parallel to ensure business continuity. We were surprised that so many respondents suggested that they would run the systems in parallel with no integration. If they do not plan to move all of their data to the new system and need archival access, this could make sense.
Do you have a view on how PLM adaption in PaaS?
In the 2017 survey, we spent a lot of time on definitions of IaaS, PaaS, and SaaS because at that time there was a lot of spirited discussion generated mainly by the solution providers about how their approach was the better choice. Based on the responses, people did not care about the acronym; they wanted to get their solutions out of their data centers. (I am also not sure if you meant “adoption” or “adaption” in your original question.
Are you distinguishing/asking about on edge or private/on-premise cloud?
We did not ask about edge computing as our questions were at a bit higher level. This is an important consideration in a company’s IoT/IIoT strategy. If we were doing a survey focused solely on IoT/IIoT, we would undoubtedly include questions on edge.
Curious about Cloud/SaaS adoption breakdown within Enterprise, Mid-Market and Small manufacturing communities.
I am not sure that we have enough data to make meaningful conclusions on that breakdown. Based on discussions with many solution providers, the early adopters seem to be on the smaller side, with our definition of “mid-market” topping out at $1 billion in company revenues.
There was a response to my comment about losing the ability to work if the subscription is not kept up to date: “Well, that’s not 100% true that if you stop with subscription, you can’t use the software anymore. In case of Aras, the software falls back to “open” version which can be continued to be used by the customer.”
That is true, and I should have been clearer that not ALL providers stop all usage when subscription payments lapse. While the comment about Aras Innovator is true, the “open” version may or may not support all of the use cases built up by the company in their subscription-based deployment. For example, you lose access to capabilities that leverage third-party technology, like visualization.
What is your view of the co-existence of both on-premise and on-cloud PLM solutions? Any examples?
This is the stated strategy of Autodesk, linking Autodesk Fusion Lifecycle with Autodesk Vault. This is also one deployment strategy promoted by Oracle for Oracle Agile customers not ready to commit to Oracle Cloud PLM fully: leave your IP in Oracle Agile on-premise and leverage the capabilities of Oracle Cloud PLM.
Can you comment on PropelPLM as a cloud PLM offering? Understand if you don’t want to voice opinions on specific providers.
PropelPLM is a cloud-native offering built on top of the Force.com platform, making it natively compatible with Salesforce and its many partner applications also on the platform. The company founders are primarily veterans of Agile Software, bought by Oracle in 2007. Agile is a bill of material (BOM) centric offering targeted to electronics and medical devices, specifically enabling contract manufacturing. This philosophy guided their development of PropelPLM as well. One advantage of their approach is that you mitigate the effectiveness of “they are too small.”
What do you think about collaboration between “big” systems like PLM, ERP, and CAD if they are moving into the cloud?
I am not sure what you mean by collaboration. If you are planning on jumping on the “digital thread” bandwagon, you will need to leverage information from these three types of solutions and many others suggested during the session.
Are the mainstream PLM provider offerings native cloud-based and leverage existing cloud services? Or are the offerings mostly deploying non-cloud native products in the cloud?
Most of the leading on-premise solution providers have refactored their code or developed container-based packaging to better support cloud deployment. They have not done a “page one rewrite” as Jim Heppelmann, the CEO of PTC suggested was necessary. This was the thinking behind PTC spending $470 million to buy Onshape, giving them a cloud-native offering. Of the leading providers, it is mainly the enterprise application providers (SAP, Oracle, and Infor) that have committed and are already selling cloud-native solutions.
The survey did not touch on the risks & benefits of upgrades (cloud vs. on-premise). Do you have any thoughts on the value of multi-tenant cloud upgrades and risks that are not commonly understood?
When more of the PLM solution providers begin offering multi-tenant cloud solutions it will become a bigger issue. For the most part, multi-tenant is more important to the solution providers than it is to their customers if our surveys on the topic are representative of the community at large.
Do you notice a functionality gap between cloud and on-prem PLM offerings? Is that an impediment to shifting to cloud?
At present there can be a gap, but they are closing. But not being able to support critical use cases will certainly make customers hesitate.
How well do the various vendors’ roadmaps, to the extent they’ve been communicated, map to the various process requirements and intentions found in your survey?
The survey was built, in part, based on the cumulative knowledge of those roadmaps and offerings.
How is CAD integration to cloud PLM working out for customers?
Based on anecdotal information, not so well so far.
In your survey do you differentiate between SaaS (Cloud-Hosted) and True (Multi-Tenant Based) SaaS deployments ?
In the 2017 survey, we tried to talk about the definitions, but your use of the word “true” harkens back to that period’s definition wars. More importantly, these distinctions are not that important to our respondents based on the analysis results.
“True” multi-tenant solutions do not constitute a large portion of revenues in this segment today.
Is a hybrid cloud model (e.g., metadata in the cloud, file vaults on-premise) a requirement or alternative to cloud/on-premise only for many companies?
This approach has some benefits, at least in terms of perceived risks. People are hesitant to put their intellectual property in the cloud. This approach avoids that.
Has anybody looked at the migration of information from one to another e.g., AWS to Oracle Cloud?
No, but as cloud deployment increases as a percentage of the total market, this will become more important. It seems like it could be a good business for systems integrators to support.
Teamcenter X is one SaaS PLM solution. Is it a good solution to implement in any company like a pharma company?
It is hard to generalize about any solution applying in a specific company. Part of the answer to your question revolves around the desired users and use cases you want to support. PLM in some pharma companies remains document-centric. If that describes your environment, then most solutions could support managing them. According to Siemens, Teamcenter X supports multiple industries, including pharma. They have integrated with commercial formulation tools, including Siemens' own Opcenter RD&L (Research, Development, and Laboratory) solution. Advising companies on their PLM selection and implementation is a core part of CIMdata’s consulting business and we would be more than happy to help.
Do you see New Age companies like Rivian, Tesla getting Cloud vs. GM, Toyota? Is culture an issue?
Culture is always an issue in technology adoption, and implementation as the intended users are (flawed) humans. “New Age” companies (not sure what that means precisely) often start with little money and a need to move quickly, a perfect storm to support cloud adoption.
How do cloud solutions address latency issues over the Great Firewall for manufacturers in mainland China?
Some are looking at using local cloud infrastructures, like Huawei or Alibaba. You can find out more about the cloud strategies of leading solution providers by visiting: www.CIMdata.com/blog/.
You talked about value as the reason to think about PLM SaaS, and also you showed the benefit they are perceiving about moving to SaaS, but what are the differentiators you are seeing with all the market there is that really give new value?
We focused on value because that is in the eye of the beholder. Using managed service does provide value. Your company does not have to house and manage the software on-site. Is it more valuable than another approach? That depends on the customer. New functionality does not necessarily provide new or more value.
My working definition of a differentiator is a difference between two choices that a customer is willing to pay money for, or more money for, than another alternative. Most of the leading on-premise solution providers are at least initially focusing on how to give their customers cloud deployment options that, in part, allow them not to lose the investments they made in their on-premise implementations, particularly around tailoring and customization.
Is there any data that CIMdata has gathered that indicates any failures or reasons why companies that have tried cloud/SaaS have left the effort? Or have all that tried stayed the course?
We have not gathered any systematic data on people reverting from the cloud back to on-premise solutions.
How are companies handling the physical security aspect very core to many R&D establishments like no cameras, only authorized personnel, etc.? With the cloud anyone can take photos, videos - chances for information leakage are very high through physical routes.
I am a little confused about your question. If there are no cameras allowed and access is only provided to authorized personnel, it does not matter how the information is delivered to the screen. You would need to ensure screen captures and other means of video capture were all disabled, no matter whether it is on-premise software or cloud-based software.
Many organizations have customized their PLM to meet their business needs. Do they have to compromise their business processes when they are migrated to the cloud?
That is one of the biggest questions in the market right now. Most of the leading on-premise solution providers have defined their “path to the cloud” for their customer base to address this issue as best they can. Some are supporting “life and shift” to managed service, so that their customers can continue to use their custom environments. Others let customers have their own cloud-hosted instance at the start and customize it the way they always would.
What do you think of smaller disruptors in the PLM cloud industry like Upchain?
Smaller firms have a key role to play in the market. Upchain is a cloud-native solution that is planning full support for managing engineering work-in-process, the most difficult problem to address for the data and process management solutions that seek to enable PLM strategies. They seem to be having some success.
