Consumer technologies made a huge impact on enterprise software for the last decade. Think about many aspects of what data management, collaboration, web applications, mobile and many others. You will see traces of consumer technologies everywhere.

Unless you live under the rock, you’ve heard about CES. Giant consumer electronic annual show that drives attention of everyone in the world. It became a launchpad of many consumer technologies for the last decade. I didn’t attend CES, which took place last week in Las Vegas. However, I’m usually taking time to skim through the mass of publications about variety of CES technologies and products.

Steven Sinofsky’s CES 2018: Real Advances, Real Progress, Real Questions caught my attention – it is short, sweet an straight to the point. Here is my favorite part about cables and wireless infrastructure.

No wires. There are no wires at CES. The only wire that exists is from your high-speed internet to a router. After that everything is wireless. It is really great to see. Perhaps the one exception is HDMI but TV makers don’t talk about that anymore since they basically want you to use their apps/control centers to get to internet services. It is quite a lesson in terms of “disruption” when I think about all the booths (square footage) previously devoted to wires, wire management, connectors, plugs, hubs, routers, extenders, and so on. Perhaps this is the biggest “physical” change to the show. As far as wireless, Wi-Fi (and for audio, Bluetooth) is part of the infrastructure and not even a separate part of the show like it used to be (HDMI still has a dedicated area).

It made me think about rewiring of enterprise companies and products that might happen sooner than later. Think about your home. Don’t know about you, but I’m trying to get rid of every possible wire and switch to wireless connections – power cords are probably the only one that still feel comfortable at my place. Everything else is  candidate to be removed. You ask me – how is that connected to PLM things…

Here is a thought. All existing PLM infrastructure planned, developed and designed with LAN connection in mind. Expensive desktops, client software, rich browser interfaces still looking for interrnal networks. All these things are connected and wired. However, as wee can see, the future is wireless. Connect and disconnect is light. The infrastructure is stateless. The connectivity is transparent. It doesn’t matter if I’m in the company or outside the company – everything works. It doesn’t matter if I’m in Boston, Bangalore or Singapore. My communication is transparent, data is available, collaboration is instant. Think about it and then look at your PLM infrastructure. I hope you see my point.

What is my conclusion? Manufacturing companies are thinking global and connected. This is state of mind in the industry and the future of digitally transformed workflows. In such environment, cables are useless. You should think about is how to get to my global cloud PLM  app. Everything is connected there exactly in the same way as you entertainment portal. You think funny? Not really. This is a future as it is coming to us. No wires. Just my thoughts…

Best, Oleg

Want to learn more about PLM? Check out my new PLM Book website.

Disclaimer: I’m co-founder and CEO of OpenBOM developing cloud based bill of materials and inventory management tool for manufacturing companies, hardware startups and supply chain. My opinion can be unintentionally biased.

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