PLM SaaS Adoption: The Barriers Persist, But Don't Rule It Out

With the costs of product life-cycle management (PLM) applications under more and more scrutiny, software-as-a-service (SaaS) is getting more attention as a viable alternative approach to on-premise deployments. Today, however, the adoption of SaaS for PLM remains very modest relative to other application categories, with companies reporting security risks, total cost concerns, and integration requirements as primary inhibitors of adoption. Product development IT professionals should take note of SaaS success stories for human resources (HR), sales force automation (SFA), and customer relationship management (CRM) applications and explore how SaaS PLM offerings can lower upfront costs and make functionality both faster and easier to deploy. In terms of vendor support, emerging SaaS players including Arena Software and Datastay are already working to prove the viability of their SaaS PLM offerings as additional options among the panoply of other small and medium-size business (SMB) offerings from Dassault Systemes, PTC, and Siemens PLM.