Gareth Webb: 0:03

Many customers, because they're perceived crown jewels are in their product lifecycle management solutions. You know, this is the DNA of many companies. They want to make sure it's protected and that it sits in a secure environment, but also make sure that they are optimally delivering, their whole new product life cycle

Tom Raftery: 0:21

Good morning, good afternoon, or good evening, wherever you are in the world. This is the digital supply chain podcast. The number one podcast, focusing on the digitization of supply chain. And I'm your host global vice-president at SAP Tom Raftery. Hi, everyone. Welcome to the digital supply chain podcast. My name is Tom Raftery with SAP and with me on the show today, I'm welcoming back Gareth. Gareth, welcome back to the podcast for those who are not familiar, would you like to reintroduce yourself?

Gareth Webb: 0:52

Of course and good da y to you, Tom. So, my name's Gareth Webb. I work as part of our digital supply chain solution management team. And it's my responsibility to work with all things that are related to the very exciting partnership that we have with our friends over at Siemens. So today we're going to be talking specifically about Teamcenter, some of the new exciting developments that we've got coming up in and around that product suite. Yeah. And

Tom Raftery: 1:16

you were on the podcast a few weeks back, Gareth, and we were talking about Teamcenter and version 2.0 of Teamcenter that had been released and how it, was a big upgrade from the first version. But during Sapphire, there was an announcement that there's an intention to release a version of Teamcenter in the cloud. Is that right?

Gareth Webb: 1:38

That's absolutely correct. Yes. So very important announcement. And obviously as part of our partnership the key goal, the key aim has been about optimizing customers, product, life cycle management processes, and obviously what we see in the market surrounds us these days is not only about optimizing the process of bringing new products to market. It's also about optimizing, costs And all the other factors that are incorporated in cloud transitions. And therefore helping customers become even more efficient with their processes. So the integration that we spoke of a couple of weeks, is key part of the overall story and obviously, as we announced at Sapphire, we now have the intent to deliver a cloud solution, which is inclusive of the Teamcenter product suite, and also, sold alongside some of our own technologies with our wonderful integration that we spoke about a couple of weeks ago. So tremendously exciting time. And obviously the integration is a key enabler for us to now sell a complete digital thread incorporating Siemens products, SAP products, as an integrated solution set in the cloud.

Tom Raftery: 2:47

And what's the advantage that that conveys? It means that

Gareth Webb: 2:51

you can control the processes much better. You can get some scale in terms of performance and security, obviously, as well as a key aspect of the overall, transition to cloud and many customers, because they're perceived crown jewels are in their product lifecycle management solutions. You know, this is the DNA of the many companies. They want to make sure it's protected and that it sits in a secure environment, but also make sure that they are optimally delivering, their whole new product life cycle. So putting it alongside SAP, in the cloud can help facilitate that. Okay. And

Tom Raftery: 3:26

it's also, alongside the whole new Rise with SAP offering is it?.

Gareth Webb: 3:31

Absolutely. Yep. So for a customer that's looking to take advantage of RISE, that has a product lifecycle management solution, whether that currently be Teamcenter or maybe if you're looking at an alternative, then now SAP can obviously offer alongside a RISE transformation, the extension of the portfolio into the product life cycle management domain with Teamcenter Okay. Is there a

Tom Raftery: 3:56

big appetite for this? Well, what

Gareth Webb: 3:59

we've seen over the past sort of four or five years is a gradual take-up of companies wishing to move their product lifecycle management workloads to the cloud. It has been slow to take root as it were. And that's because of the reasons I outlined, you know, many companies are very fearful of their crown jewels being held in somebody else's data center. And obviously, people getting access to their IP in that sense. But one of the things that I think has happened over the past couple of years is actually as a result of obviously the pandemic and as a result of. forced changes in working patterns with more people working from home, being more flexible about where we conduct work. That's changed the perception around the use of cloud for these types of processes. I think also technology has also changed, you know, we're now at a point where complex product lifecycle management processes that they're using, you know, very complex authoring solutions like computer aided design software that would have traditionally run on desktop PCs and things like that in the past. Now technology's evolved to such an extent that actually those types of things can now be virtualized and therefore the constraints that were previously on an enterprise around their product lifecycle management solutions are now no longer there. And therefore what we are seeing is a much greater transition at real pace, I'll be honest. A pace that's kind of surprised us even, in terms of the adoption and the willingness to want to transition to cloud because of the obvious s avings in terms of physical infrastructure and you get the ability to upgrade that in the PLM domain certainly historically has been quite a cost to many companies. Now that process has kind of taken away from you. So there are lots of, lots of benefits of that transition to cloud happening now. And a lot of the constraints have been removed. So we're seeing quite a shift, and many, many companies that were previously not even entertained the cloud transition now, looking at that as a key transformation agenda for them.

Tom Raftery: 6:03

Okay. And walk me through the process with this in the cloud now. How does that work for organizations?

Gareth Webb: 6:10

Well, very simply. We've obviously developed a cloud solution based on the Teamcenter portfolio. As many people will probably know there are multiple products we sell related to that portfolio. We've built a core infrastructure platform upon which dependent on the size and scale of the enterprise that wishes to get started on this journey. We can vary that physical, all the virtual infrastructure that supports a customer, and then a customer can purchase the licenses that they need. We're not predefining templates at this point in time, because we see certainly with the Teamcenter portfolio the need for different flavors of product, different mixes of licenses. And what we don't want to do is necessarily prescribe what customers should do at this point in time. So you can come along, purchase the licenses you would purchase in a normal kind of on-premise capacity, but have all of the advantages of cloud. So it is as simple as almost picking up the phone, talking to one of the SAP sales guys we can start that journey and transition you across to an enterprise cloud solution. Okay, and when will

Tom Raftery: 7:19

this be available? Because it was In Sapphire, it was an intent to deliver.

Gareth Webb: 7:23

So commercially, we hope to have the product available in quarter two of this year. And then technically our target is to be able to provision the service for customers in quarter three of this year. Obviously those timelines dependent upon certain risks but that's the timeline that we're looking at to actually make this commercially available to our customers. Okay. And

Tom Raftery: 7:44

our customer biting your hand off?

Gareth Webb: 7:47

We've been unbelievably surprised at the uptake. Obviously RISE is very important strategic move from SAP. and the fact that we can now extend that portfolio into the product lifecycle management space with Teamcenter has been a real catalyst, I don't think any of us were really expecting. I mean, we're even in a position where we've got customers wanting to sign deals before we've really released the prices for the solution. Because, of the advantages of purchasing it alongside the broader enterprise transformation, that RISE offers. Yeah, literally biting our hands off, can't move quickly enough. Phenomenal

Tom Raftery: 8:25

phenomenal. We're coming towards the end of the podcast I think Gareth. Is there any question I haven't asked that you wish I had, or is there any aspect of this we haven't covered that you think it's important for people to be aware of?

Gareth Webb: 8:37

I think the obvious question why should I buy a cloud solution from SAP rather than purchasing something from the Siemens, Team, et cetera. I would say obviously the advantage of purchasing such a solution through SAP is as described, when we opened up the podcast today, it's a single transaction. It's a single contract. You get advantages of scale in terms of cost saving for purchasing SAP alongside Teamcenter. But the main, most important thing is that connected, integrated value proposition in a single cloud offering. Anywhere else, any other type of cloud offering you're going to need to end up integrating across different cloud solutions, which inevitably there could be limitations of such an approach whether that be performance or, technically. Therefore having it under a single roof, if you like, that is planning for responsibility that we the SLA is that we establish is a real benefit to customers. And that's where we see, a real differentiation in terms of purchasing this solution through SAP as opposed to other vendors.

Tom Raftery: 9:49

Okay. Super, super. Gareth, that's been really interesting. If people want to know more about yourself or about the new cloud edition or any of the things we talked about today, where would you have me direct them?

Gareth Webb: 10:02

As per usual, Tom we'll provide links in terms of the outputs from the podcast in terms of where people can contact us. But, there is also an SAP community page, that will direct straight to the relevant people in terms of getting more information, getting more, further insight into what's coming when. Fantastic.

Tom Raftery: 10:21

Gareth, that's been great. Thanks a million for coming on the podcast today.

Gareth Webb: 10:24

Much appreciated. Thank you for your time.

Tom Raftery: 10:26

Okay, we've come to the end of the show. Thanks everyone for listening. If you'd like to know more about digital supply chains, head on over to sap.com/digitalsupplychain, or, or simply drop me an email to tom.raftery@sap.com. If you like the show, please, don't forget to subscribe to it in your podcast application at choice to get new episodes, as soon as they are published. Also, please don't forget to rate and review the podcast. It really does help new people to find the show. Thanks, catch you all next time.