Keeping Your IT Clients' PLM Grounded As Cloud Adoption Becomes More Mainstream

By Chuck Cimalore, CTO, Omnify Software

There is a lot of talk about cloud computing today and its exponentially growing presence among enterprise technology, particularly product lifecycle management (PLM). While PLM “in the cloud” is available today, its adoption can be slow. PLM provides a central and secure location to track and manage product data throughout the product lifecycle including: component data, bill of materials (BOMs), product documentation, engineering changes and revisions, as well as quality and compliance information. With the type of sensitive information that is managed in PLM (a company’s intellectual property) there has been some apprehension about moving to the cloud. According to survey results collected from the 2013-2014 Metrics that Matter research study conducted between LNS Research and MESA International, adoption of manufacturing software in the cloud is slowly gaining momentum as more companies see the available options and advantages.

What is leading to this gradual yet increasing adoption of PLM in the cloud?  Once only seen as an enterprise solution for large manufacturers, PLM software is branching out into smaller organizations developing next-generation products. Due to this move, cloud-based PLM is receiving more support and higher adoption as these companies, new to PLM, start to deploy newer business technology and more evolved IT computing environments. However, there is still quite a bit of education needed of cloud-based PLM in the market overall.

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