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Chapter 8
ANOTHER LOOK
Plex Systems Cloud Community
Founded in 1995, Plex Systems developed out of a project initiated at an automotive supplier.
The company has expanded its customer base and develops software for a variety of
manufacturing companies. In particular, Plex provides a complete, cloud-based ERP solution
for manufacturing companies. Plex moved to cloud computing in 2000 and developed its
cloud strategy using the multi-tenant model versus a hosted environment. In a hosted
environment, a separate system is created and managed for each customer, while in a multi-
tenant model, there is only one system and each customer is a tenant in the system.
Plex chose this approach because it wanted to leverage customer enhancements.
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Because there is only one copy of the Plex system, whenever an improvement is made to
it, the update is available to all tenants. Plex makes sure enhancements are designed
to add functionality that might be valuable to multiple customers, but customers are not
required to adopt every update. Customers can choose whether or not to adopt a change
through simple configuration settings.
While manufacturing environments are complex, Plex decided that users needed a
simple interface design for the shop floor. The simple interface makes the software easy
to use. In addition, the interface is configurable so individual users can organize icons
and buttons and control them with user authorizations as they are provided with Plex’s
screen building tool. A sample Plex screen is shown in Figure 8-6.
Source Line: Plex Systems.
FIGURE 8-6 Sample Plex screen
(continued)
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