I’d like to figure out several trends – CAD Data Management, Globalization and Cloud Storage Services.
Trend: CAD vendors are investing into development of data management satellites. Most of this data management packages are focusing on managing metadata around CAD documents as well their revisions. I can see definitely situation where each CAD manufacturer will have best in class data management tool dedicated for their CAD solution. In the end, these data management packages becomes standard add-in for CAD, allows to manage revision and share CAD files between designers.
Trend: Cloud computing is ramping up and we can see reliable and very attractive from economical standpoint cloud storage services. One of the examples is Amazon S3. This services can be used for backup solutions as well virtual storages.
Imaging CAD-Save/Open command allows you to store files directly on cloud. It will resolve problem of global teams looking how to make design data available everywhere in global company. Such ‘global file vault’ can be used by data management packages focused on management of metadata and file revisions. Since cloud storage have efficient business model allow you to pay only for traffic cost of such solutions can be compared to globally established WANs.
