HFS Highlight: HCL launched cloud PLM solution to accelerate transformation for manufacturing clients.

Manufacturing organizations have been using on-premises PLM (Product Lifecycle Management) for a long time. Due to the COVID-19, the remote working environment has become the new normal and development teams needed to collaborate for design work, so cloud PLM platform is the ideal way forward. Also, manufacturing organizations can reduce total cost of ownership incurred by ideal infra capacity due to fluctuating workload. To cater to the manufacturing clients’ needs, HCL recently launched the 1PLMCloud solution to help manufacturing firms transform their computer-aided design (CAD) and product lifecycle management (PLM) infrastructure into an on-demand, scalable and agile environment.

1PLMCloud solution is a comprehensive managed service offering with a flexible pricing model.

COVID-19 pandemic is one of the major drivers of cloud PLM adoption. Due to the pandemic situation, employees were forced to use remote desktop or using VPN connectivity for CAD/PLM work, but the performance expectation and data security issue posed a big challenge. HCL felt the need to accelerate the adoption of CAD and PLM on the cloud. But hosting complex and heterogeneous CAD/CAM/CAE and PLM is a complex task and requires a lot of domain knowledge along with solving integration challenges. HCL used the opportunity to create the 1PLMCloud solution, thus helping manufacturing enterprises migrate PLM and CAD applications & data to the cloud. HCL 1PLMCloud solution has three offerings:

• xCloud: System integration (SI) services for cloud transformation and operations, designed for companies with their cloud accounts and providers
• DesignCloud: Managed services for engineering applications where HCL owns cloud accounts and resells CAD and PLM licenses.
• EngineeringCloud (upcoming): Pay-per-use subscription-based offering for value-added services on engineering applications where HCL price customer as pay per use based on SaaS model.

Key benefits of the 1PLMCloud solution have been shown in exhibit 1 below

Exhibit 1: Key benefits of 1PLMCloud solution.

Source: HCL

HCL’s strong engineering expertise and footprint is a major differentiator in cloud PLM space.

HCL has 40+ years of engineering experience and serves 300+ global customers. As cloud PLM is the need of the hour for manufacturers, HCL can target its vast engineering client base for adoption. Some of the key differentiating factors for HCL that can drive the overall adoption of this solution are as follows

• World class partnership ecosystem: Best in class partnerships with PLM software vendors, graphics processing unit designers, and cloud service providers like AWS, GCP, Microsoft Azure to support diverse requirements across industry segments and proven experience in assisting software vendors on cloud certifications.
• Engineering heritage with strong domain expertise: Over two decades of PLM services experience in managing digital transformation initiatives of global corporations.
• End to end services: Portfolio covering traditional and digital domains across product realization.
• Innovation: Rich portfolio of accelerators, IPs, and best practices to create new opportunities with cloud and help realize a digital future.
• Flexible business models: Pioneer in introducing non-traditional engagement models aligned to customers’ requirements.

Bottom line: Cloud PLM is becoming a “must-have” for the manufacturers as it increases the speed of innovation.

Due to increasing product complexity and decreasing go-to-market time, design teams need more real-time collaboration and flexibility to scale-up. HCL’s 1PLMCloud solution will provide the necessary delivery, resource, and cost flexibility to its manufacturing clients. Its strong engineering knowledge will help organizations migrate existing PLM solutions to the cloud and necessary integration with other enterprise applications.