AWS re:Invent 2025 - Modernizing Legacy Systems: Boeing's PLM Cloud Transformation (IND321)

Source: Dev.to

Overview

AWS re:Invent 2025 – Modernizing Legacy Systems: Boeing’s PLM Cloud Transformation (IND321)

In this session, AWS and Boeing discuss modernizing PLM operations on AWS. Justin Iravani from AWS Professional Services outlines key PLM challenges—including performance, data friction, and global collaboration. Jim Gallagher and Dan Meyering from Boeing detail their migration of Dassault Systèmes 3D Experience from on‑premises to AWS, achieving:

• 99 % reduction in environment provisioning time (from 30 days to 5 hours)
• 78 % decrease in manual tasks
• >40 % cost savings

The migration leveraged Infrastructure as Code with Terraform, EC2, RDS, EFS, and Application Load Balancers to eliminate bureaucratic bottlenecks and enable parallel deployment of hundreds of environments. The session concludes with future opportunities using generative AI and Amazon Bedrock for natural‑language PLM queries and automated workflows.

Introduction: PLM Modernization Challenges and the Boeing‑AWS Partnership

Presented by Justin Iravani, Senior Cloud Infrastructure Architect, AWS Professional Services.

Key PLM Challenges

1. Performance & Scalability – Growing 3D model fidelity, business intelligence, and metadata complexity increase data velocity and distance across regions, organizations, and functions.
2. Data Friction – Legacy on‑premises architectures create functional and data silos, often driven by security and access controls.
3. Global Collaboration – Distributed engineering activities, mergers & acquisitions, and new technology partnerships amplify the need for seamless, real‑time collaboration.

Barriers to PLM Migration and the Three Pillars: Digital Twins, Threads, and Fabric

Manufacturers face daunting obstacles when upgrading or migrating PLM systems:

• Service continuity – Downtime must be minimized.
• Knowledge retention – Significant investment in training and expertise must be preserved.
• Complex integrations – Tight coupling with ERP, MES, SCM, and custom applications adds risk.

The Three Pillars

1. Digital Twins – High‑fidelity 3D representations and behavioral models hosted on AWS using storage and database services. Boeing pioneered this space with its early “virtual airplane” project.
2. Digital Threads – Connectivity that stitches together disparate data sources, delivering real‑time, context‑rich information for better decision‑making.
3. Digital Fabric – An ecosystem that interlinks twins and threads, enabling global stakeholder collaboration and resource sharing.

AWS Modernization Approach: Customer Obsession, Automation, and Iterative Value Delivery

AWS emphasizes:

• Customer obsession – Tailoring solutions to specific PLM workloads and business outcomes.
• Automation – Using IaC (Terraform) and managed services (EC2, RDS, EFS, ALB) to provision environments rapidly and reproducibly.
• Iterative delivery – Deploying value in small, frequent increments to reduce risk and accelerate feedback loops.

Visual Highlights