In my previous posts I already touched on “cloud services” aspects of product delivery and operation. There are multiple examples of cloud services available today, starting from probably the most established Amazon S3 and Amazon EC2, followed by Google, and, as well, the latterly announced Microsoft Azure Service Platform. These services may become very popular and useful in the PLM area for applications related to common data sharing, data exchange and collaborative access. But in order to make it really happen, we will need to develop a reliable application available to support such a service. Actually, the service platform needs to be invisible, providing reliable user experience on top of these services without particularly mentioning the notion of cloud services.
A good example of an application that supports such an approach is SolidWorks’ BluePrint Now. You can run the application inside the browser and store your drawing directly in the Web storage. This implementation combines two coexisting services – the ability to run a Web- based design editor together with the ability to store files on a cloud.
Another example of applications available as services that will be able to be connected in the future to a cloud service-oriented approach is the applications available from the DS 3DVIA brand. Some of them are tools (such as 3D Via Shape), but potentially can be connected to cloud services for a variety of options for storing and exchanging information. More on http://www.3dvia.com/software/3dvia-shape/tour.
