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There have been questions about the performance and security of SaaS-based CAD and PLM solutions - until now.
“CAD and PLM as SaaS solutions for large engineering companies are now ready for the market and we can deliver it”, says David Hughes, Director of Solutions Consulting at PTC.
There are several reasons why large engineering companies have in the past preferred on-premise solutions for CAD and PLM applications rather than cloud-based solutions.
One reason has been technical performance.
“You need to be able to work in real time and in teams, and the perception has been, with some justification, that SaaS technology has not been mature enough to handle large, heavy CAD files, which need to be uploaded and downloaded, managed locally and globally, and where you need to be able to work in different teams,” says Hughes.
Another reason has been security.
“New products and solutions can be crucial to a company's future. That's why they wanted to manage these in their own secure environment, rather than putting all the information in a cloud service managed by an external provider,” explains Hughes.
PTC at the forefront of technology development in CAD and PLM
There has been a shift in the industry driven by technology developments but also the view of who can best provide IT security.
“On the one hand, there is the issue of sheer bandwidth, the availability of faster connections and 5G, and on the other hand, CAD and PLM systems as such have become better at creating and handling lightweight formats. Everything has become more modern and easier to manage from a technical point of view," he says.
For IT security, it's about a change in perception, where the resources required today to provide adequate IT protection can be better secured by a cloud provider.
“Today, SaaS solutions often offer a higher level of security than what a company's own IT department can provide for an on-premise solution. It takes a lot for an IT function today to be constantly up to date on the latest in IT security. Cloud providers simply have more resources to devote to IT security," says Hughes.
PTC strengthened its own products through acquisitions
Today, PTC can offer its own SaaS-based solutions in CAD and PLM for large industrial companies. The technology has been strengthened through the acquisitions of Onshape 2019, which was at the forefront of a cloud-based CAD solution, and Arena 2021, which developed a SaaS-based PLM solution.
“Through these acquisitions, we learned a lot about how to become a successful and credible SaaS provider because both solutions were SaaS native. This allowed us to build our own strategy for our large PLM and CAD solutions much faster.
“SaaS is very hot and more and more companies are realising that there are financial and security reasons to move to the cloud. We are on a journey and in just five or ten years all IT will be in the cloud," concludes Hughes.
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Content published by Professional Engineering does not necessarily represent the views of the Institution of Mechanical Engineers.