What is the next file system that will be available for our disposal? Cloud file system. Really? In the past few years, I’ve been writing about the future of moving CAD and engineering content to the cloud and various options that will be available to make it happen. Navigate to read some of my previous posts related to this topic – Google Cloud: Ready for CAD/PLM? or CAD, New Collaboration and Online Storage Services.
It seems to me some cool elements of “cloud dreams” started to become a reality these days. Dropbox was clearly one of the most successful pioneering cloud storage. Apple iCoud and Microsoft Sky Drive are two additional players in this space. One of the interesting events in the last few days was the introduction of Google Drive. If you haven’t had a chance to read about that, navigate to the following link to read more.
Engadet just published an interesting article comparing four different cloud storage services – Google, iCloud, Dropbox and SkyDrive. You can see prices and other features and functions. It is worth reading.
What CAD vendors are doing at this space?
My earlier prediction is that cloud will become a good place to store cloud files. One of my old posts about that was – Is Google Docs a good place to store CAD Files. Engineering and manufacturing community is actively discussing “cloud” topic. No single opinion. Read my Product Lifecycle Data and Cloud Trap Debates. At the same time, I have to say that things are starting to move, and some of the CAD / PLM vendors are running fast to introduce their support for cloud drives.
I was reading AutoCAD WS blog yesterday – AutoCAD WS launches Google Drive integration. In a nutshell, it sounds dead simple. AutoCAD WS is an application that can be used natively on Google Drive to open AutoCAD files.
CAD vendors, Cloud and competition
It is interesting to see, but it seems to me some competitive friction may happen between cloud storage vendors and CAD/PLM companies that focusing on collaboration. Products like Autodesk Cloud, SolidWorks n!Fuze and few others will have to provide visible competitive advantages compared to Google, Apple and Dropbox. CAD vendors need to take a note, in my view.
What is my conclusion? Cloud storage and discs become very powerful. The ability to keep everything in a single virtual connection(s) simplifies many questions related how to access information from disparate places by multiple people. For many years, it was one of the most complicated questions – collaboration in design environment. With the introduction of the cloud discs, we are getting an additional way to simplify the access and improve collaboration. Just my thoughts…
What do you think about “PLM Collaboration”?… Yes, I can hear you – boring. However, what if I tell that collaboration can be cool again? Over the past year, I was tracking few vendors investing and playing with a collaboration topic. Today I decided to give you my perspective on what I believe will re-invent “collaboration” to the degree that will allow to regular people work and love these new collaborative tools.
Easy To Get
This one is simple. Nobody wants to deal with installations these days. If you want to provide a collaborative system, please make it available online or in the way that simplifies a path to start using a tool. This is absolutely critical.
Access and Mobile
Access is one of the very important things, collaboration needs to adopt. Collaborative tools need to be available everywhere and not restricted to a particular environment, infrastructure or device. This is in the past. Nowadays, mobile and BYOD rocks the field. All together it will create a significant challenge for IT, but it is just must go this way.
Collaboration and Cool
Cool is important! Don’t make it boring. You may say cool is not important when it comes to the business. I think opposite. Even if enterprise companies are still driven by old generation people, “new influencers” become more and more visible. People want to keep the same cool devices and use the same cool systems as they use at home.
New Gen of Collaboration Tools
I’d like to share few videos related to new collaboration tools I’m following. The first one is Vuuch. The company was established back in 2009. The idea of Vuuch is to improve collaboration by social interaction. Last version of Vuuch – V5 introduced additional features that make a deeper connection to working processes. You can see a video here. My guess usability is one of the biggest topics.
SolidWorks n!Fuze is a system to help engineers to collaborate mostly with SolidWorks files. It adopts cloud and improves connection between people and files outside of organization. It was released last year (2011). It was a flagship product for SolidWorks and use Enovia v6 cloud platform. At the same time, SolidWorks admitted many mistakes that were made.
Autodesk Cloud. This product is kind of n!Fuze remake together with the attempt to bring easy collaboration with files. It looks a bit Googlish, but fundamentally lack of many functions. The user experience of Autodesk cloud shows that customers are more in focus.
TeamPlatform. This is a newest addition to my “collaboration collection”. I found the application behavior slick and nice. This system clearly taking the cool and best experience of consumer web. You can navigate here to learn more. It supports few scenarios around file collaboration, managing projects and other files. It is too early to say what TeamPlatform can do, but it looks interesting.
What is my conclusion? I think more companies will try to challenge large vendors with new type of applications leveraging cloud, mobile and other best practices. It is interesting how they will be able to find a precise scenario to interest engineers and other people in organizations to start using that. We will need to get back to this topic in few months to see trajectories of collaborations.
Best, Oleg
picture credit David Castillo Dominici / FreeDigitalPhotos.net
One of the companies I’m watching is GrabCAD. Earlier, I was talking about GrabCAD’s idea of open CAD library and community for engineering. Another topic I discovered with GrabCAD in addition to be an open library was “crowdsourcing”. Navigate to the following link to read Manufacturing Crowdsourcing and Cloud PLM. The ideas of crowdsourced engineering projects are getting more and more popular. With companies like Quirky and Local motors, the interest to community-based development is growing.
With such a background, I was listening to GrabCAD webinar about new features that will be developed in GrabCAD soon. Here is the video from that webinar. It is a bit longish, but you can watch first half only, since the second half is Q&A.
The following topic GrabCAD folks discussed is interesting – integration with DropBox. GrabCAD founders Hardi and Indrek mentioned that “collaboration” between GrabCAD users is one of the functionalities they have been thinking about long time. The story of collaboration seems to be interesting. In one of the early blogs about GrabCAD, Deelip Menezes mentioned that GrabCAD would be “more than just CAD library“. Navigate to the following link to read more. Here is a very interesting passage:
The plan here is not to limit GrabCAD to small CAD services like paper to CAD conversions, 2D to 3D conversions and the like. The plan is to offer a complete end-to-end solution which will include conceptual design though to manufacturing.
I’m looking forward to seeing GrabCAD / Dropbox integration release. Until now, I wasn’t able to see it released on GrabCAD (maybe I just miss dates and emails with the announcement).
What is my conclusion? “Collaboration” together with the “design though manufacturing”. What does it smell like? What does it look like? In my view, it smells and sounds like PLM. Is it a direction GrabCAD is going? I don’t have the answer. I know, GrabCAD is very dynamic and young company. So, everything is possible…
Best, Oleg
Freebie. GrabCAD didn’t pay me to write this post.
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What is the next file system that will be available for our disposal? Cloud file system. Really? In the past few years, I’ve been writing about the future of moving CAD and engineering content to the cloud and various options that will be available to make it happen. Navigate to read some of my previous posts related to this topic – Google Cloud: Ready for CAD/PLM? or CAD, New Collaboration and Online Storage Services.
