How Cloud Product Development Helps

While pain points, regulatory hurdles, and adoption rates can vary widely across industries, one challenge that impacts every IoT company is the critical need to speed the introduction of safe, high-quality products. To ensure first-mover advantage in highly competitive industries, more companies rely on a cloud-based product lifecycle management (PLM) or QMS solution to design, develop, test, and ship products on time.

The key to speeding development is having a cloud system that acts as a single source of truth for all internal teams and external supply chain partners. Cloud systems provide faster deployments and highly secure platforms that can be set up quickly and used intuitively with minimal training. That is critical for supply chain partners that dot the earth and have limited resources to learn new tools. “What I see most often with IoT customers is that they want to get up and running quickly with basic functionality,” says Keer. “It’s part of the lean startup mentality. And as these companies grow in size and complexity, they need solutions with the capabilities to support them as they scale—without the need to switch during a critical business ramp. The vast majority of companies do not want to be burdened with the installation, setup, and IT maintenance of on-premises software solutions.”

The speed of disruption is so fast in the IoT space, engineering teams must be rock solid in their delivery. Many failed IoT companies were unable to meet aggressive design and delivery schedules because they did not have the proper systems in place to manage product design and quality information.

Manny Marcano, president and CEO of EMA Design Automation, a company that offers a design automation solution for Cadence^® OrCAD™, explains that “A lot of these companies are charging fast to grab a piece of the IoT market. And a lot of times they’re starting with a back-of-the-napkin design and quick prototypes to get VC funding and then they’re off to the races,” says Marcano. “Companies in the IoT space are actually rolling out PLM at the same time they are building products and taking orders. So, if you have a design solution that can be implemented quickly—without a lot of overhead to get a consumer electronics stamp and FCC approval—that’s a big value to them.”

For OEMs, the key to moving fast in the rapidly changing IoT market is maintaining rigor, discipline, and forward-looking strategies. Successful companies keep abreast of tech developments and make well-researched judgment calls about how and when to pull the trigger and adopt new innovations into a product design. However, companies without the vision and tools to respond to change and adopt new technologies quickly could lose the razor’s edge in this competitive high-tech market.

Innovation is the holy grail of many product companies as they seek to differentiate their products from those of competitors. Connecting product and quality processes throughout the product lifecycle gives today’s global companies the competitive edge they need.