Cloud PLM Basics


Overview

Over the past few months/years the main focus of discussions in the PLM industry seem to have centered on the “Cloud”. I thought I'd take a few minutes to provide my commentary/overview on this emerging technology with a few pros and cons to help people considering a move to the cloud.
Most if not all PLM companies are now offering some kind of web/cloud/hosted offering – here is a non exhaustive list of the ones I found with some cursory googling.
  • Siemens with AWS (Amazon Web Services)
  • PTC Cloud services
  • Autocad PLM360
  • Oracle Agile PLM in the cloud
  • Arena Solutions
  • Aras Cloud
Oleg's BeyondPLM site also has an excellent (as usual!) write-up here...

What is it?

I would define CloudPLM as accessing your PLM solution via a third party (host) where the host provides standard hosting options e.g. web server farms etc, but with the addition of application support and vaulting/storage for ALL or some of the PLM data normally stored in an on-site data-center.. This eliminates a lot of workload for the PLM system owners at a company.

Pros

Removes data center costs
In a hosted/cloud solution there are no data-center costs, instead the company pays a fixed sum based on some guidelines set up by the vendor e.g. some vendors charge a fixed amount per user accessing the system, some divide this by functionality available to the users and some by how much data is stored (either in total or per user). This give the company a clear understanding of how much the PLM solution costs per user.
Easier upgrades
Some cloud solutions only provide a vanilla version of the PLM software and this can facilitate smoother and quicker upgrades.
Experts managing system
Since the teams in the data-center manage many different PLM systems they often develop strong expertise in the usage, setup, configuration and day-to-day operation and management of the systems that system administrators managing only one system would never be able to achieve. It is likely that they will have seen most things and be able to quickly address issues for most common situations.
Centralized
With the cloud systems being centralized there are great advantages for delivering strong and sophisticated backup and disaster recovery mechanisms. All these costs are rolled into the price so there are no additional IT budgets needed for this and the responsibility for all this effort is off-loaded from the company to the cloud vendor.
Virtualized performance
Most solutions support huge scalability from test/sandbox size to huge corporate systems.
Flexiblity
By virtualizing the systems can grow, add new systems (e.g. test/quality assurance) or shrink as needed, at little extra cost and complexity to the customer.
Concentrate on running your business
You can leave a lot of the headaches of large IT systems to a third party and focus on the business aspects of PLM insuring that it is fit for purpose without needing to worry about the logistics of hardware, upgrades, IT outages etc.
Technical Support interactions
Many (if not all) of the cloud solutions are run by the PLM vendors meaning they have excellent links to the development and support teams in the PLM company. This means that if there are technical issues or software bugs encountered they can gather information quickly and develop solutions, possibly without you even knowing there was a problem! Again there is limited need for a company's staff to be involved in troubleshooting etc.

Cons

Losing control of the system
I added this as a con, but it can also be pro as well! Clearly when someone else runs your systems there is a loss of control. However developing and negotiating for good Service Level Agreements (SLA) and working within a framework such as Information Technology Infrastructure Library (ITIL) can mitigate the risks in this approach. Strong negotiating during the sales cycle will help avoid damaging problems later (e.g. outages, disaster recovery approaches and liabilities).
Big data (e.g. CAD) performance
Locating data remotely can be a challenge and the size of some datasets in PLM can be HUGE. CAD data is usually the largest, but other data can also be a problem. In the set up phases it is good to discuss how the cloud solution deals with big data and what storage alternatives and performance levels can be expected. Some solutions can offer localized CAD vaults which can offset some of the performance issues, but some of the advantages of cloud solutions are lost in this approach e.g. there is now a need for local hardware and staff.
Customization opportunities limited
Many cloud solutions either do not allow for customization or charge extra for this. In some respects this should make you review you customizations and ask are they really needed. A lot of this will be determined by the PLM solution you have and the scope of what the cloud vendor offers.
Access to local third party applications
Pushing information through to manufacturing applications can be challenge with cloud based solutions e.g. ERP. Again this could reduce the benefits of a turnkey cloud solution since you may need to employ local IT experts to oversee the transfer process. You will need to define strong SLA on the communication between the PLM and other systems and what is the responsibility of the cloud provider and what is your ERP system IT responsibility. Also you need to be clear with the cloud vendor and what they can support in this area.
Third party contact to product Technical Support
If you experience an end user issue with the system it might be challenging to log cases with the vendor's technical support team and work with them since there are now three parties in the mix; the end user, the cloud solution provider and the vendor. Of course in most cases the vendor and the cloud solution provider may be the same company, but might not be the same organization. It would be good to understand the way the cloud offering supports the reporting of bugs/data issues from end users prior to going live with the solution.
Security/NDA/ITAR concerns
Many of the cloud PLM systems have strong accreditation for handling ITAR and other NDA type data, but it would be good to clarify these before putting such data on the cloud solution.
Need to verify Service Level Agreements (SLAs)
Check, check and double check SLAs with the Cloud vendor. What are the penalties for missing key points of the SLA? Can you live with the SLA; can your end users and engineering managers?
Who owns what?
Third party applications interactions. Insure you know who owns what – is your data stored separately? How do you deal with licenses of other products, especially ones from other companies, e.g. if you have a Siemens cloud solution how do you deal with Dassault or PTC products and licenses?

Conclusions

In conclusion I would certainly recommend investigating cloud especially for small and medium size companies where it often hard to recruit and retain staff for these system and manage hardware. For larger companies due diligence in deciding on risks versus benefits needs to be clearly evaluated before such an undertaking.

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