Autodesk Launches PDM-in-the-Cloud to Bolster PLM Solution – Finally

PDM allows users to manage their CAD geometry with features like revision control, versioning, release tracking and collaboration on designs. Most companies start to feel the need for PDM once they have 3-5 people regularly using CAD data. And with teams of more than 10, it’s downright imperative.

The PDM user interface within Fusion Lifecycle

The new PDM functionality will be included for all existing PLM360 customers as part of their subscription. Users will have to migrate to the new version of Fusion Lifecycle to use the new PDM functionality.There is no change in the price – subscription fees still ranges from $25 to $150 per month, with most licenses priced at $75 per user per month.

Commentary on PDM in Fusion Lifecycle from Customers and Analysts:

Customers, industry analysts and Autodesk representatives all have their own perspectives on the announcement, including:

• What PDM in the cloud means to Autodesk's customers
  
• Will users adopt PDM in the cloud?
  
• Will this announcement convince more companies to consider PLM in the cloud?
  
• Future direction for Autodesk PLM
  

What PDM in the cloud means to Autodesk's customers

Chad Jackson, industry analyst at Lifecycle Insights, commented, “PDM has been on the Autodesk PLM product roadmap for a while. They did it right by delivering a full feature set rather than just doing the minimum to put a check in a box on a feature list.”

Allan Behrens of Taxal agrees, saying, “It’s reasonably featured for a first release. The interesting thing to see will be the performance on the cloud.”

Until now the Fusion Lifecycle platform centered primarily around workflows and collaboration, including modules for:

• BOM management
  
• New Product Introduction
  
• Engineering Change Management
  
• Supplier Collaboration
  
• Quality management
  

Notice that none of these modules actually have to touch product geometry. You might think that a BOM tool that didn't have a tight integration with CAD would hamper functionality, and you would be right. So Autodesk customers can now look forward to a BOM tool that can show images of parts and when a part is updated in their CAD tool, Fusion, the BOM updates in the PDM system. – Kerri?

According to Brian Roepke, Sr. Director at Autodesk, the new PDM solution includes support for all Microsoft Office attachments, Autodesk CAD products Fusion360, Inventor and AutoCADand integration with SOLIDWORKS. Autodesk plans to aggressively add more CAD packages to the list of products they support. “We are working on an integration to Siemens NX right now and hope to launch an integration to PTC Creo by the end of the year…but no promises,” added Roepke. He also noted that they are researching how to integrate with Siemens Solid Edge.

The basics you would expect to find in PDM are here, though with one important bonus and one caveat. Every time you save a file, it automatically updates on the cloud and is instantly available to everyone who has access. However, saving to remote servers on the cloud may be slower than local file saving.

Mark Zeni, Director of Engineering Operations at First Solar, had issues with performance when implementing an on-premise PDM some years ago.“The project failed because users wouldn’t accept such poor performance,” said Mark.

Users might wonder whether Autodesk's cloud based PDM will suffer from similar performance issues.To combat the risk of unacceptable lag time, Autodesk is introducing a technology they call “transfer avoidance,” the ability to only update the files that have changed rather than re-saving entire assemblies. This will save bandwidth and transfer time. Zeni is optimistic that Fusion Lifecycle will deliver on performance, adding, “We want to get a sandbox for the new Fusion Lifecycle going right away to test the PDM functionality.”

The viewing features also include mark-ups and commenting to support both real-time and asynchronous design reviews. According to Jared Sund, Sr. Program Mgr. PLM at Autodesk, the full PLM suite remains a “100% cloud-based product with no download.” This means that collaboration with people outside of the company should be easy, since suppliers and consultants won’t have to download software in order to participate in a design review.That is, of course, if they are using Chrome or Firefox browsers.Internet Explorer can still be a challenge as because versions 10 and earlier do not support the Web GL standard.

Will Autodesk Users Adopt PDM in the Cloud?

Many Autodesk customers Vault, the company’s on-premise PDM application. One of the challenges with Vault is collaborating with external parties.Most customers follow a process of emailing documents or setting up collaboration environments in tools like Dropbox, OneDrive or Google Docs. For those struggling with collaborating outside of Vault, this new cloud-based PDM could be an answer. “The bad thing about these tools is that they are disconnected from the product development process,” says Sund. “With PDM in Fusion Lifecycle, even downstream users get the benefit of all of the documentation that is within the CAD data.”

The PDM system can be used to manage other important product data beyond CAD files, including RFIs, RFPs and quotes. Thinfilm Electronics is one company that was searching for a document management system.According to their VP of Quality, My Nguyen, they decided to implement Fusion Lifecycle and use its Document Management features. The reason they chose a PLM system to solve a document management problem was“we know that we will need the things that a full PLM solution can bring soon – things like NPI, BOM and change management.So choosing a system that we can grow into made sense.”

Nguyen has had front-line experience in rolling out other systems. One thing he learned is that the User Interface is absolutely critical to user adoption. “I love the new UI on Fusion Lifecycle,” he said.“I even liked the last one. The UI was one of the biggest reasons we chose Fusion Lifecycle over Arena PLM.”

Not all Fusion Lifecycle customers will be able to take advantage of the PDM functionality right away. “Vault continues to be an important solution for on-premise data management. We don’t see everyone moving to PDM in the cloud straight away” said Sund.

Rick Noriega of Vacco Industries agrees, saying, “We put everything into Vault now, and we have no short-term plans to put everything into the cloud, but it would make collaborating with external suppliers much easier.” Rick is concerned that Vacco would have difficulty maintaining their ITAR compliance if they were to use the PDM-in-the-cloud functionality. He currently supports their ITAR processes with cloud-based workflows, however. “We maintain our ITAR compliance by setting up rules within Fusion Lifecycle,” he said. “For example, we block emails of sensitive data from going outside the company or outside the country. Having all this data in the PLM system provides traceability for an audit.”

Will More Companies Consider Cloud-based Product Development?

Autodesk can now offer many companies a way to conduct their entire product development cycle in the cloud.By adding ever more functionality, the company intends to make cloud-based product development more appealing to more customers. The graphic below outlines the company’s “Product Innovation Platform,” spanning design, configuration, PLM and IoT.

Last year Autodesk acquired Configure One, a server based product that enables highly engineered products to be configured according to pre-set rules.This year the company announced that Configure One would join the cloud based solutions as Fusion Configure.

“These new features will be pretty dangerous to other PLM-in-the-cloud vendors,” said Allan Behrens.“The situation will only get worse for them as Autodesk's feature sets evolve.” By comparison, “the integration with the Fusion cloud-based CAD tools looks simple and elegant.”

There are many things that are driving the adoption of cloud-based product development. First is the ease of sharing data. According to Scott Reese, VP of Cloud Products at Autodesk, “Putting product development data in the cloud allows rapid collaboration in a way that desktop software never will.It even enables people using smartphones and other devices.”

Second, cloud-based solutions are typically packaged with subscription licenses, allowing a low up-front cost and flexibility in rolling out additional licenses.Third, the ease of setting up a cloud-based service makes it attractive to companies that have limited IT resources. According to Nguyen, “Cloud-based was key because we have a small IT team and we don't want to take care of all the infrastructure of an on-premise solution. When it comes to updates, we really don’t want to manage point to point connections.”

Marc Halpern, analyst at Gartner expressed concern about users surrendering control of their data to a cloud-based host. “This model takes away the customer’s control of their data long term,” he said. Although there are standards that allow customers to move their geometric CAD data, that’s not necessarily true of PLM data.“There is no common standard within the database. It is very difficult to migrate an environment.”

It seems that ever more companies are willing to trade the risk of control over their data for the convenience of getting started quickly. When it comes to PLM, “A lot of customers of Fusion Lifecycle started by tackling non-engineering problems first. That stands in contrast to traditional PLM deployments that started with PDM,” said analyst Chad Jackson. “But when they start with PDM, a lot of them get stuck trying to roll-out company wide all at once. They get frustrated when that part of the project winds up taking 3-4 years,” he added.

Autodesk announced a partnership between their Fusion Connect IoT product and Nutonian, a company that specializes in artificial intelligence, machine learning and predictive analytics. The predictive analytics functionality is intended to analyze historic data sets within Fusion Lifecycle and automatically create equations that describe the past, and thereby predict the future. The feature can be automated so that, for example, if the operating conditions change within a piece of equipment running on a factory floor, it will update the predictive algorithm.

This type of functionality can also be applied to managing field service for installed products, an area where competitor PTC has made significant investments with Thingworx , their IoT product.