Push aside our fear about security and PLM on the cloud. I was reading Washington Post’s “Video Viewing on Netflix Accounts for Up to 30 Percent of Online Traffic“. The following link leads us picture comparing web traffic coming from various providers. Video is king on the web.
CAD files, visualizations and other heavy weighted stuff. It is not lightweight Twitter 140 chars status updates or Facebook low resolution picture sharing. Cloud service providers from Amazon to Google and Rackspace are building data centers to accommodate the future of cloud applications. It made me think “What if PLM on the cloud succeeds?”, what will be the cost of this solution? CAD and PLM companies are starting to offer solutions to share data on the cloud for better collaboration and data exchange. I wrote about such a type of the solutions before.
The following quote from Wash. Post article is interesting:
Last week, Cable One introduced metered prices for U.S. customers that include 50 to 100 gigabytes per month. According to its Web site, the company (owned by The Washington Post Co.) will charge customers 50 cents for each gigabyte beyond the caps, but it will continue to offer a flat-rate monthly plan also.
Beginning this month, AT&T began limiting data usage to 150 gigabytes for DSL subscribers and 250 gigabytes for its UVerse broadband customers. Users will be charged an extra $10 a month if they exceed the cap. Comcast also has a 250-gigabyte cap for its broadband users.
What is my conclusion? The PLM on the cloud conversations is always about the security and never about the price and cloud usage. I don’t know if my drawings will be stolen faster on cloud. The question what if the transfer of my drawings, models, animations and rest of the stuff on the web will be costly. It might be significantly more costly than today’s software licenses. What is your take?
Best, Oleg
