Standing on the beach, overlooking the bountiful, yet imperfect, harvest, he pondered the situation in front of him. “Why are all of my troop mates eating these sand-covered sweet potatoes? In the beginning, they were delicious…and without the sand. Now? these wonderful treats are all but inedible. What if I…”

This is the beginning of tale based on a scientific research project, though may have evolved into something of an urban legend. The idea is that scientists in Japan, circa 1952, were studying the behaviors of an island full of macaque monkeys. At first, the scientists gave the monkeys sweet potatoes. After a period of time, the scientists then started covering the sweet potatoes in sand to observe how they would react. Not surprisingly, the monkeys still ate the treats, however begrudgingly. Then, the story goes, a young monkey took the vegetable to the water and washed it off. He discovered that it tasted as good as it did before the sand. Excitedly the young monkey showed this discovery to his mother. Approvingly, his mother began washing hers in the water as well.

Still, the vast majority still went on, crunching away on their gritty meals. Over time, a few more monkeys caught on. It wasn’t until a magic number of monkeys were doing this – we’ll say the 100th – that seemingly the entire troop of monkeys began rinsing their sweet potatoes off in the water.

Call it what you will – social validation, the tipping point, the 100th monkey effect, etc. It all comes down the idea that we may not try something new, however potentially beneficial, until it’s “OK” to do so. Cloud solutions for PLM could be coming to that point.  These products have been in the market for a few years now, and they mature with every update (and no upgrade headaches, either).

In the near future, it is forecasted that “Within the next three years, organizations have the largest plans to move data storage/data management (43%) and business/data analytics (43%) to the cloud,” as reported by IDG Enterprise in their “2016 IDG Enterprise Cloud Computing Survey.”  Another survey, “2017 State of the Cloud Survey” by Rightscale, is seeing that overall challenges to adopting cloud services have declined. One of the most important matters, security, has fallen from 29% of respondents reporting it as a concern to 25%. Security is still a valid concern, though I think the market is starting to trust the cloud more and more.

With our experience and expertise with PLM solutions in the cloud, Tata Technologies can help you chose if, when, and how a cloud solution could be right for your company. Let us know how we can help.