Read this ZD net article saying that the cloud must be the future because criminals use it. It’s this kind of thing that shows I’m an amateur at this kind of thing. I would think that if you combine criminals and security vulnerabilities, you’d come up with something bad rather than something good. Oh, so much to learn…
If you have an opinion about SolidWorks in the cloud, this is the time to discuss it. SolidWorks is in the process of forming their strategy of how to deploy, license, support, etc., and it may mean big changes to some areas of the business as it touches users. Really, SW is looking for input from various places, and your voice needs to be heard.
This blog will host part of the discussion, although not in a formally sanctioned way. The stuff you write here is read by SW. SW employees keep telling me that SW Corp takes this blog more seriously than I take it. For once, we can use that fact to our advantage rather than my disadvantage.
I think we need to take advantage of this time to help important topics filter to the top. We all understand there are a lot of concerns, and some of the concerns are obvious. We all understand there are some advantages as well. From the chatter around here, it seems that SolidWorks is looking for some sort of “devil’s advocate” type input – some of the critical analysis that I have said seems to be missing from most SW development projects. So NOW is the time.
So. I just want to restate a few things in bullet form:
Again, now is the time to make the most of your input.
So there are some advantages to some ways of looking at the cloud. But there are also an entirely new set of issues that it raises, and none more interesting than subscription.
On the good side, it means you never have to apply another service pack. That will become an automated function on the server farm. But, will the whole system be available during the update? Do we have to talk about multiple server farms so that the cloud itself is redundant, and one can be updated while another continues to run? My guess here is that this is an area ripe for dissatisfaction. Whenever you update something, you’re going to make someone unhappy.
Also good is that every license would be a floating license. Well, that’s good until we find out that cloud-capable licenses are not interchangeable with serial numbered installed software. There may be some sort of a price differential, probably finely tuned to make it marginally worth while to use the advantages of a cloud-based license.
Licensing terms? Do you have to pay extra for the “distributed” computing aspect of the cloud? Are there levels to how many CPUs you can occupy at any time? an average value? a total time limit?
There has been an assumption that tech support disappears on the cloud, but it doesn’t. Bugs still exist. You still have to report them. But aside from training, what is the VAR there for?
What happens to your access to the software, and indeed your access to your own data when you drop subscription? Other pay-as-you-go software models have not been successful, but it doesn’t make sense for SW to allow you access to the software if you have not paid, because they now have to pay for the server farm.
And then you need to use old version for some reason. Is SW going to serve up multiple redundant clouds for each of the last 4 versions? No. This is another source of lack of control, and a source of potential frustration with this scheme. I don’t believe that this is a system that will find universal acceptance or something that solves all problems. It does look like a solution to a few problems, while it causes others, so you just have to make the call if swapping the old problems for new problems is going to be worth the additional cost.
Additional cost??? You betcha. They can’t set up (or rent) all of those “thousands of servers” for nothing. If you aren’t required to buy your own workstation, you’re still gonna pay for that, because no one is going to give it away. Cloud licenses are going to cost more per year than the licenses we have now. Driving that recurring income is what this is all about.
Up front costs could be handled in different ways. The $3995 purchase price doesn’t seem to have a place in the cloud, but I guarantee you they will take advantage of the fact that you expect to pay something for the software other than maintenance. In the same way that a car lease still expects you to make a big down payment, I think this will work that way. Leasing as a finance option is a great option to avoid if you can, but I think we can expect this excuse to rewrite the sales and subscription/support rules to be used as an opportunity to make more rather than less money. There is clearly the option to offer customers stuff that they find more cost effective, but I’ll be willing to bet that it will be priced so that in the end you wind up paying more rather than less.
Then what happens when they change vendors for the cloud service? Do you ever get to keep your real data?
So we may dream of ultimate flexibility and control, but I doubt we will see that dream satisfied. Cloud is going to solve some problems, but it will also create some problems, and the best you can do is to make the call between which gives you the best net functionality for the best price. It will be interesting to see how this winds up playing out over the course of the next few years.
I had a friend who used to say “the water is always cold”. By that I think she meant that starry-eyed dreaming about what could be will always be interrupted by reality. It seems easy for some people to get caught up in the “wow, this is gonna be great!” enthusiasm, but any deal that is that good for you would probably be not so good for SolidWorks. I guarantee they will look out for their best interests first, and while you may get some stuff you want, there will be a “cold water” trade off, and you will have to pay more than you do now to get it.
Ok, I’ve been talking with all sorts of people about the potential implications of the “cloud” announcement. Since we don’t really have anything firm, the only thing to do is to speculate.
I think what SolidWorks announced on Monday may have been the victim of incredibly bad communication. I think the word “cloud” may have been used rather injudiciously. I don’t really know this for a fact. If it were a fact, someone else would report it and I might be uninterested at that point.
What if… what if SolidWorks really didn’t mean “cloud” when it said “cloud”. What if it really meant a much older technique of simply giving a user the ability to install the software on one computer (call it a server or a bob or whatever) and run it from another computer (say maybe something called a terminal with a thin client).
Well, that’s not nearly so scary as hosting your company’s IP data on a Google server, is it? That means you install on your server, and run on your own computer with or without appropriate hardware, OS or whatever.
Ok, there are some savvy people out there who may have been around for a while. You may remember that back in ’97 or ’98, SolidWorks actually had something that may have been called a “network install” (not 100% on the name) which was very different from what we think of as a network license today. In fact, it was just what I described above – one computer runs the software and the user sits on another computer. So if this is what SolidWorks means by the word “cloud”, then it is just a case of a bad choice of words, and also not nearly as scary as some believe, and beyond that, possibly even a good thing in terms of accessibility.
Of course it would shoot to hell the theory that “cloud” operation reduces IT overhead.
There have been two versions floating around of what actually happened on the stage demo of the “cloud”. One was that the Amazon server farm was actually used. Another is that the cloud was a computer behind the stage. I tend to think that the Amazon farm was used for development, but the demo performance was that local cloud computer behind the stage. All of this is of course conjecture, but at this point I think it’s conjecture with some basis.
So, the word “cloud” has come to be a bit emotionally charged, and while it may still be technically descriptive, I think it at least gives an incomplete view of what we should expect.
1) I do believe that SolidWorks will offer some sort of cloud software-as-a-service option where a bank of servers are contracted from a large and pre-existing provider such as Amazon. I think some users will find this convenient, but far more are terrified of being forced into this model, but I doubt we will be forced into it in the next 10-15 years. I think initially this will be an option. It is great for distributed computing (using a lot of computers to work on big FEA or rendering jobs), and for people to do demonstrations, basically taking a lot of horsepower to where ever you can find a computer connected to the internet with great bandwidth. Oh, and when someone doesn’t mind their data being stored in some location where someone working at the cloud facility could randomly or specifically misappropriate data. This is not paranoia, this is anticipating crime, which happens all the time.
2) I really hope that beyond that, SolidWorks provides users with the ability to create their own cloud, which basically means resurrecting the server-client network installation from 12 or so years ago.
I think these two paragraphs sum up the possibilities. 1) is the stuff most of us don’t want to see, but is the sexy dotcom bubble type hype that software vendors are eager to show. 2) is the type of thing that will be useful to a lot of companies, but for reasons that are different from 1).
Again, I can’t cite references to back this up. Some of it is simply hope that SolidWorks has thought about the possibilities and done something reasonable.
Comments?
So I’m working on a Sunday, sue me. I went for some help in the SolidWorks Help at 9:50 AM, which as you can see just happened to be unavailable at the time. When I do maintenance, I usually do it at a time of my choosing. When some cloud provider does it, they do it at their convenience. To me, the unpredictability of when something is not going to be available is reason enough on its own to avoid cloud applications. Add to the maintenance time the time your ISP leaves you off line for some reason, as well as times when you are simply not connected. With that possible combination of causes, you could be without access to your Help more than is useful. This is before we even talk about if you are able to find what you are looking for in the Help.
So are the claimed benefits of updating the Help really worth the inconvenience? You update anyway for service packs. And if you don’t, why would you want the Help updated? No, I believe the Help belongs on the machine that the software is on. Didn’t anyone live through the time when you had to timeshare on a mainframe? Maybe you did this in college. Sharing a mainframe was ok for stuff like word processing, but not for anything very involved. At RIT we had a VAX system in the early 90s. There were also PCs, and some Unix workstations. The PCs were always in short supply, because you got to work on your own, and you just felt more in control of your situation.
Honestly, what is different between working in “the cloud” and timesharing on a VAX mainframe 20 years ago? I’m not in school any more, and I’ve got a job and a choice about how I will work. I should have learned not to trust the shared community resources 20 years ago, but then I turned on the SolidWorks Web Help. Won’t do it again. Work locally. Update my help files locally. Don’t make me dependent on resources I can’t control.
Of course all of this is punctuated by the recent cloud failures with cloud companies losing customer data, or becoming temporarily unavailable. Sidekick/Microsoft, Amazon, Palm, T-mobile, all names that are big enough to know better, and all names that have lost customer cloud data or connectivity. Every time Gmail goes down, it makes the national headlines. You can buy a terabyte of storage for less than $100. That’s 10^9. That’s a lot of SolidWorks models for cheap. There is a valid argument for backing up data off-site, but the security issues as well as speed/infrastructure and reliability issues point to solutions other than the burgeoning cloud storage industry.
The techno-optimists keep trying to sell this like A) it’s something new which it isn’t and B) it’s better than sliced bread which again, it isn’t. So you are being dragged into this issue whether you want to be or not. SolidWorks is putting your help files in the cloud. And while you have a choice to use the local files or the web-based files, Solidworks may not be updating your local files in the same way. We’ve heard a lot of solid arguments against SolidWorks application running in the cloud, but now they’ve put the Help there, and I’d like to hear what you have to say about it.
Ralph Grabowski scored an interview with Jeff Ray. It must be that grousing about embargo dates won him some sympathy. If there is something the “real press” is definitely better at than bloggers, it’s interviewing. I think a lot of SolidWorks blog readers forget about Ralph because he does so much on the Autodesk side, but I like his perspective. He takes a chance here and there by expressing an opinion. Opinion is what differentiates something interesting from a regurgitated press release.
Anyway, like I did when Devon captured some of Mr. Ray’s comments at a user group, I’m going to selectively comment on Jeff’s comments in Ralph’s interview.
When Ralph asked about SolidWorks 2010:
The feature wars are behind us
This sounds like an echo of Dick Harrison from PTC saying “CAD is a solved problem”. It sounds like he’s saying that SolidWorks has done all they’re gonna do in terms of adding geometry creation power to the software. From here on out, it;s more bells and whistles. That’s a defeatist attitude. I think there is plenty to be done in geometry creation.
Ralph asked about direct modeling:
No direct modeling.
Ok, I’ll buy that. It’s not really true, it just means SW isn’t gonna gut the product to ride the hype wave that has already passed and fizzled. The Move Face is direct editing, albeit in a history format, so are several other existing features in SW.
Ralph asks about Linux and Mac:
Mr Ray has no interest in “just” porting to Mac or Linux, but to be even more flexible than that.
Right, this must be the “we’d be driving faster horses” bit. Maybe he should have also framed it in terms of 10, 20 or 30 years in the future while he was at it. SW running on a browser is where this is going. Ayyy. It’s ok for CAD to solve the lack of compatibility between OSs, right, because CAD vendors have such a great history when it comes to interoperability. whoa, sarcasm as a color really is more effective!
And then the most telling moment of the interview:
Only SolidWorks can kill SolidWorks
Isn’t there anyone at SolidWorks that lived through the demise of PTC? Why do we keep coming back to PTC when we talk about present day SolidWorks?
Ralph asks about CAD in the Cloud:
Insanely overhyped
Well, I’ll agree on that one too.
Ralph asks about Dassault:
For the first dozen years, SolidWorks had to fight it alone. But now it is time to cooperate
Customers are fed up with not being able to share data between Catia and SolidWorks.” At some point, a translator will be delivered.
“At some point” could easily mean just after SolidWorks transcends hardware and operating system, you know, in 30 years or so. Oh, so much purple today.
All this time I thought Mr. Ray was blind to fed up customers, but I must have been wrong. He just ignores them selectively.
If you read this all the way to the bottom, you should go to Ralph’s site and read the entire thing there.
Jeff Ray is the CEO of SolidWorks. Somehow, he just has not become the real spiritual leader for the software that Jon and John were. This is probably because he’s a business type, not an engineer. So when he has something to say about the future of the SolidWorks software, it seems maybe a little antiseptic, or distant or whatever. I don’t feel absorbed by his vision, maybe that’s the best way to put it.
So Jeff made a couple of appearances at user group meetings on the west coast, and Devon Sowell was there to capture some of what Jeff had to say. Devon listed Jeff’s points, and I’m going to restate them here, and then react to each individually. Devon’s post was short and informative. Mine will not be short on anything but facts. It’s called conjecture, and its the thing you do when people don’t answer the questions that you really have.
Open Catia files in SolidWorks and SolidWorks files in Catia, this will happen.
Well, that’s good news. About effing time too. When? But then SW and DS have been saying something like this for years. Who knows. Some people say DS is too jealous to give SW too much access, but I disagree. The display in Barcelona didn’t tell much about the software they were talking about, but putting Bernard Charles on stage with Jeff Ray did send a message. I think DS understands a few things about profitable companies, and SW is profitable. There is no religious turf war here. The decisions are made by the bean counters, and sometimes that can be a good thing. SW and DS are coming closer together, and I believe the initiative for that has come from above, not below. John McEleney was removed for a reason, and I believe that reason was that he was seen as too independent. DS wanted to pull SW a little closer, and Jeff Ray was seen as that kind of player.This is a complete guess, of course, but I think it makes sense. I doubt anyone who knows the situation will chime in to correct me.
What doesn’t make sense is why the file incompatibility has persisted for so long. I guess keeping the data separate means that SW is not canabalizing any Catia sales. So in that sense I guess it doesn’t make sense that the bean counters would approve of this. I mean, SolidWorks has more compatibility with NX, Pro/E, AutoCAD, Inventor, Solid Edge, etc than it has with Catia. Then of course is the conjecture about the Catia V6 kernel being used in SW. That’s the big one for me, because it makes sense. Rewriting SW for Mac doesn’t make sense, but making the change to Catia V6 kernel would make sense. That’s the question that should have been answered. I mean answered directly, not the standard SW playbook answer “We are constantly evaluating technology to provide the most possible value to our customers”. See, I’m so good at that, they should hire me as a VP of PR or something. ;oP
Release cycles; currently every 12 months, they may become sooner, like every 8 – 10 months. Look for more functionality additions and changes in future SolidWorks Service Packs.
Wha???? Remember a long time ago, when release cycles were every 6 months? and new functionality actually DID come in service packs? Customers have been screaming for longer cycles, not shorter. Not just SolidWorks, but AutoCAD users too on the AutoCAD blogs. The time between 2009 beta and 2010 beta was closer to 14 months. This sounds like a complete disconnect here. I have to say I don’t know what to make of this.
SolidWorks & SaaS (Software as a service (SaaS, typically pronounced ‘sass’) is a model of software deployment where an application is hosted as a service provided); this is coming.
You could almost feel the air currents in the room change with the collective gasp and eyebrow raise of Twitter-prone SW users when they heard SaaS and SolidWorks in the same sentence. You could mention anything at all that is considered web-progressive in conjunction with SolidWorks, and a predictable group would be microblogging from iPhones as they run back to their rooms to change their soiled undergarments. It really is that silly. Does anyone remember Paul Salvador’s invention of Web Noodles? Prophetic.
Here’s a little history lesson. Once upon a time, say 1997-9 or there abouts, SolidWorks was trying to integrate the internet into the software in anyway they could. Remember at that time the same sort of “irrational exuberance” existed around anything even remotely connected to the web in general that exists around anything vaguely connected to social media these days. One product of that period was what is now known as 3DContent Central, which like Photoworks, is in a constant state of overhaul. Another product was … and who could forget… then there was some manufacturing connection site, which it seems is all but defunct these days, and most notably, something called 3D Instant Website. 3DIW was a way to basically put an eDrawing on a SolidWorks hosted web server and allow people to comment on it. Wow. So you’ve got Cloud Data, SaaS app, collaboration, 3D, threaded conversations about CAD data – I mean, what other buzzword pop fad could they throw into that one? Anyway, very few people today remember 3DIW, and even fewer know that it is still available. (if you follow that link, you are greeted by a Silicon Graphics workstation with a CRT monitor, if that tells you anything about how old this stuff is.)
The ironic thing is that this is the one web app that I wish had caught on. It actually worked (just not on Netscape, Firefox, Opera, Safari or Chrome), and it was a great communication tool. I liked using it for technology impaired customers who were too clumsy even for eDrawings.
Anyway, back to the “SolidWorks & Saas” comment, the implication here is that SolidWorks will run over the web like, well, like Twitter, or like WordPress blogging software, instead of locally like software did in the 1990s. The set of SW users who are always dreaming about tomorrow, but not quite sure what to make of today predictably embraced this idea, even though it was not clear exactly what was being said. SolidWorks running over the web is a long way off. Can you see it running as a Flash application? Geez, Flash is horrid! Facebook has some Flash games that are slow, and crash frequently – which by the way is a description you might confuse for Twitter. (In fact, people generally dislike the SaaS interface for Twitter so much that most access it through a locally installed application rather than through the actual SaaS interface – even among the purists, there are limitations to belief). There are other ways to do it, but none frightens me as much as Flash. Well, maybe Java. Remember the Java SolidWorks viewer? It was dead slow, and never saw the light of day as a real released software. I believe it was killed in beta release. Remember the internet Dot Com bubble crash? Does anyone else think we are headed toward another social media bubble pop?
I think what is really being said here is that something related to SolidWorks is going to work like SaaS. But not necessarily SolidWorks proper. Maybe they meant licensing, or possibly just viewers, and not the executables. That much is already happening with activation and all. Maybe they mean something like Blueprint Now, which is already a SW Labs app. Don’t worry, CAD in the cloud is a long way off. I hope that before they try to do something like this, they consider the issue from some other perspective than their own highly biased and purely optimistic point of view. I hope they employ a skeptic to try to actually explore and understand the downside of this type of implementation. There is far too little realism involved in some of this starry-eyed bs. I hope they consider the implications for CAD Administration, data security, off-line use, military use, web performance, scalability. In the end, it seems clear that they will need to at least offer the option of a local install. SaaS is not a one-size-fits-all type of shoe.
Theoretically, the advantages of SaaS are many. The software runs on servers that SW would control. So local workstation requirements would be less, and would affect stability less. Also, upgrades would happen in a central location, and would cut down on sending out disks or the expensive download bandwidth for service packs. It would stall piracy (the piracy would just shift to take a different form), where maybe all you need is a username and password to use the software from any device that is web connected, and the browser would be the OS, so this whole blasted argument about my OS is prettier than your OS would disappear. Of course the holy grail would be to Twitter SolidWorks documents from your iPhone. (If sarcasm had a color, what would it be? I think sarcasm needs a color.)
Once SolidWorks is “on the cloud” (SaaS), your designs will be “live” and “on” all the time. No need for File Open, no need for Check In and Check Out. Just like video game environments.
Ok, maybe I was wrong. Maybe they really are talking about full-on SW in the cloud. Honestly, I don’t get the rest of this comment. SW data in the cloud would be unacceptable to a lot of companies. I don’t think SW in the cloud will see widespread acceptance. There will be that extremely vocal and over-connected set (they want you to believe it’s an entire generation, but it isn’t, it’s a very small subset from a wide range of generations) who will say otherwise, but know that it isn’t true.
Service Based Charges; when SolidWorks is hosted SaaS, SolidWorks is consideringworking towards Service Based Charges, for example; pay a fee, based on time, to use a SolidWorks application.
Oh, ok, Rich Welch will be redeemed. Only pay for what you need. Hold it, where is the reseller? Where is the subscription? Where is the upfront cost? You can bet this new way of doing things will go nowhere if it isn’t significantly more expensive than the old way. The cost of doing business will go up while they tout one of the reasons for going to this model is that it costs less. That’s just business people, though, with that uncanny ability to talk out of both sides of their mouths at the same time. I wonder if it makes the same sound to them that it does to the rest of us?
Real Time Simulation; access analysis results as you model a new part.
Ok, whatever. It would be cool, but I’ll believe it when I see it. I’ll also believe the results when I see the software automatically apply boundary conditions. You can make the software so automatic that even a monkey can get results, but you still can’t make the monkey understand why or how or what it all means.
Social Networks such as Facebook and twitter are looked at by SolidWorks and will play an important part in the SolidWorks application.
What does it sound like when a bunch of microblogging techno-optimists all jizz in their pants at the same time? Again, I invoke the memory of Paul Salvador who could recognize over-ambitious techno-market babble and useless bs when he saw it. I think the CAD industry has an illustrious history of glomming on to uber-popular buzzwords (shall we also invoke the patron saint of meaningless buzzwords, JB the CADCAM Terrorist?)
SolidWorks looks at sales figures daily.
Wow, now there’s one I don’t doubt for a minute. I’d guess it is safe to say that this is a gross understatement.
Last year SolidWorks had $405 million in revenue and was profitable. This year will show less revenue but they will show a profit.
Ok. What’s the break down of the various types of licenses and maintenance?
SolidWorks position in Dassault Systemes; SolidWorks has 10% of the headcount, 24% of revenue, and 40% of the profit.
Alright. SW folks know numbers. So do DS. In fact, I think it is telling that numbers are the one thing that go back and forth between French and English without any need for translation. With numbers like this, I don’t believe that any sort of techno-religious jealousy is going to have much weight with the management.
SolidWorks is betting big on R & D.
Well, yes. We all expected this. This says nothing about the direction of the R&D. It just says “we got a big gun and we’re gonna shoot it”. Yes, of course. But in which direction will you aim the blasted thing? That is the real question. I don’t believe SW has a great track record in the last couple of years of making technical decisions about the software that are good for the users.
But, as is always the case when talking about things out there on the horizon, it remains to be seen.
Much thanks to Devon for reporting on Mr. Ray’s comments.
Anyone who was “business aware” and lived through the first internet bubble is probably a little skeptical about “the cloud”. The first internet bubble was really about irrational optimism, and a belief in technology for which there was no currently profitable application. The addage “if you build it, they will come” turned out to require some qualifiers.
There may still be some people out there who don’t really get the concept of “the cloud”, and why it is still shown in quotes much of the time. “The cloud” is a term that is used in several ways, but primarily meaning that applications can be run from and data stored on servers on the internet. This is not so much a future technology as a way of describing technology that already exists, with the hope that rebranding it will create a new market for the same old thing.
When you read your email online, that’s a cloud operation. When you use Google docs, same thing. Any time a website calculates something for you instead of just displaying existing data, that’s a cloud function. Web programming is not just html text and images, there is executable programming in the site code. Of course you are familiar with nefarious uses for active code on websites, but other highly useful things like on-line banking make use of this sort of thing as well.
So lots of everyday stuff is already in “the cloud”. You already use it. Why not put your CAD application on the web? People have been asking and trying to answer this question for a while now. Several years ago, Paul Salvador, one of the regulars on the usenet newsgroup comp.cad.solidworks when it was a useful destination, dubbed the proliferation of web applications for SolidWorks as “Web Noodles”, basically meaning stuff that sounded appealing but had no real substance.
It may have been six years ago when Bernard Charles (Dassault CEO) claimed that interoperability was going to come through the web. Rather than the OS being the platform, the browser would be the platform. This has yet to be completely fulfilled, but it is one of the implications of “the cloud”.
In Barcelona, Jeff Ray talked about “the cloud” and said that he knew people were frightened by what “we” (I assume this means DS) were planning. Why would people be afraid of that? Another idea Jeff put forward was to quote Henry Ford when he said “If I’d asked people what they wanted, they would have said a faster horse.” I think SolidWorks has misused Ford’s concept to mean “we will give you what we think you want, not what you really want, because you are not smart enough to know what you want”. Good ideas can always be twisted into something they were never intended to mean.
Anyway, let’s start with baby steps. CAD in the cloud. 3D Content Central. CAD data, online, configurable. This is CAD in the cloud, and many people find this highly useful. Instant 3D Website? I3DW has not enjoyed a lot of acceptance, but I like it. It is CAD collaboration in the cloud. How about on-line viewers? Have you been to SolidWorks Labs recently? This is a bunch of small CAD apps in the cloud. Viewers, even Cosmos, er… SolidWorks SimulationXpress.
All of that is small potatoes compared against say putting the entire SolidWorks application on-line. Could it be done? Well, yes. Does it make sense? That is the better question.
SolidWorks, and truly, any full-on CAD application, takes a huge amount of processor power. It also requires a lot of graphics crunching. Does it make sense to centralize all of this, and to transmit the graphics across the web? What if you have 10 people using SolidWorks at the same time? The bandwidth eaten by transmitting the display real time is simply non-existent for most SW users. The centralized compute power to support multiple users is not there either. I don’t think cloud computing for heavy duty CAD apps is going to exist any time soon. Hardware and infrastructure have a lot of catching up to do to make that a possibility.
Another “cloud” concept is distributed computing. This is almost the exact opposite of most of the things we have been talking about until now. The cloud apps that SW runs above are centralized, I’m assuming they run on a single server. Distributed computing takes one application and runs it on multiple computers. This is like a set of computers set up to do rendering or analysis or other types of complex computing. This has been the realm of government projects, or Hollywood movie making. Distributed computing is really dependent on the development of multi-processor capabilities, which are still in their infancy for history-based CAD.
I don’t know if it is still available, but SolidWorks used to have a form of network license where the application was actually run on a remote computer. This used the local machine like a terminal, and the server like a mainframe. This worked great for security, but the display was slow. The “new” ideas are really just recycled forms of really old ideas, repackaged, rebranded, and with lots of shiny new stuff on them. Like The Who said in Won’t Get Fooled Again,
Ill tip my hat to the new constitution
Take a bow for the new revolution
Smile and grin at the change all around
Pick up my guitar and play
Just like yesterday
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