A blog by Oleg Shilovitsky
Information & Comments about Engineering and Manufacturing Software

Cloud CAD and PDM will become easier for Android and GDrive?

Cloud CAD and PDM will become easier for Android and GDrive?
Oleg
Oleg
22 January, 2014 | 2 min for reading

cad-data-android-gdrive

The topic of network performance is one of the favorites when it comes to discuss viability of cloud storage and cloud systems. Will it perform well for slow network and disconnects? In my view, technology is going towards better transparency of network for connected and disconnected apps. And, for the sake of truth, most of us are using it already today. Think about our loved and hated Outlook. It syncs data transparently and practically seamlessly for users.

However, mobile world is a bit different. Mobile device memory, OS and browser capabilities are different. With growing capability of mobile devices, to leverage device storage can be a straightforward solution to solve slowness of network (especially when work with heavy information such as CAD data). Engadget article Google Drive dev tools promise better and more powerful apps shows new capability of Google Drive API available for Android devices. If you are developer, watch next 6 minutes video.

The following passage is key in my view.

The main attraction is a feature called transparent offline syncing, which, for users, means that cloud storage is treated the same way as local storage. So, you get the benefits of massive amounts of storage provided by GDrive, without needing to spend on more storage in your phone. And, should you not have a good enough connection to the cloud, the API automatically shifts to storing your data locally until it has good enough reception to send it to the servers. Because of this, developers can design more capable, powerful and generally better app user experiences for less endowed (read: cheaper) and flagship handsets alike.

What is my conclusion? As we move forward, technological showstoppers will disappear. I can see CAD viewers application leverage transparent offline syncing to bring better viewer performance and experience. Later, I can see cloud data management apps (read “Cloud PDM”) smoothly transfer data from devices to cloud storage. Technological leaders must take a note. Just my thoughts…

Best, Oleg

Recent Posts

Also on BeyondPLM

4 6
6 December, 2011

Mobile is very important nowadays. More and more people these days discovering opportunities to use “mobile version of something“. It...

27 October, 2009

PLM is moving fast towards social computing and social product development. I had chance to share some of my previous...

23 February, 2017

In a modern business, consumers have a lot of power. Business competition is changing and switching from competition on price...

3 July, 2019

Unless you’ve been under the rock for the last five years, you’ve heard about DevOps. Still confused about DevOps? Start...

17 December, 2023

Selection of PLM technologies and software can be a daunting process. In a competitive market of PLM vendors, the decisions...

18 July, 2017

For very long time, security was one of the top concerns stopping enterprises and manufacturing companies from adopting cloud technologies....

26 February, 2013

Simplification is a trending topic these days. Finally, everybody wants to simplify everything. Vendors are crying to simplify portfolios, developers...

16 June, 2011

As you probably know, I spent the beginning of the week in Las-Vegas attending Planet PTC Live 2011. Those of...

4 June, 2013

IaaS, PaaS, SaaS… Most probably you are familiar with this abbreviations. These are fundamental layers in cloud computing these days....

Blogroll

To the top