It's time to count another major PLM provider in the camp migrating their platforms to the cloud.

Joining rivals Dassault Systemes and Autodesk, as well as the lesser-known Aras Software and Arena Solutions, Siemens PLM Software will now offer a cloud-based delivery option for its Teamcenter PLM platform. The Teamcenter on the cloud offering will be delivered through what's called an infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) model through three of the leading cloud services: Microsoft Windows Azure, IBM SmartCloud Enterprise+, and Amazon Web Services.

Unlike the more familiar software-a-as-service (SaaS), where applications can be "rented" almost like a utility with a low, pay-as-you-go pricing model and the applications are administered and controlled by the software provider, IaaS is basically a cloud version of the old hosting model. With this approach, a company outsources the application to run on the storage, servers, and networks of a cloud provider, but it retains responsibility for care and feeding of the application.

The idea here is that Teamcenter shops can scale the infrastructure for running PLM up and down based on their project needs without having to make significant upfront investments in the additional computing resources. Teamcenter on the cloud also enables customers to focus their IT resources on higher value-added services like supplier and partner on-boarding as opposed to the daily administration and management of the PLM platform, since, in theory, that effort would be centralized.

"The key benefit of Teamcenter on the cloud is the business flexibility it provides," said Eric Sterling, senior vice president, Lifecycle Collaboration Software, Siemens PLM Software, in a press release announcing the product. "In today's ever-changing global landscape, the flexibility to dynamically manage infrastructure on the cloud gives customers the ability to scale up computing resources with demand and more importantly, scale down costs if demand increases."

With this announcement, Siemens PLM Software is not trading the traditional Teamcenter model for a cloud-only delivery model. Rather, the move is designed to extend its "platform of choice" strategy, officials said, and fits in with one of its core tenets -- to deliver products based on a future-proof architecture.

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