Forbes article Roundup of Cloud Computing Forecast in 2017 gives you a perspective on how much cloud will impact business. According to the article, 74% of Tech Chief Financial Officers (CFOs) say cloud computing will have the most measurable impact on their business in 2017.
Cloud computing is projected to increase from $67B in 2015 to $162B in 2020 attaining a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 19%. Gartner predicts the worldwide public cloud services market will grow 18% in 2017 to $246.8B, up from $209.2B in 2016.
Cloud platforms are enabling new, complex business models and orchestrating more globally-based integration networks in 2017 than many analyst and advisory firms predicted. Combined with Cloud Services adoption increasing in the mid-tier and small & medium businesses (SMB), leading researchers including Forrester are adjusting their forecasts upward. The best check of any forecast is revenue. Amazon’s latest quarterly results released two days ago show Amazon Web Services (AWS) attained 43% year-over-year growth, contributing 10% of consolidated revenue and 89% of consolidated operating income.
Another data point from IDC gives you some idea about growth in cloud computing.
It has been long time, since I started to discuss the impact of cloud technologies in my blog. And lot of changes happened in CAD / PLM industry for the last 7-10 years. Engineering software industry moved from the time it ignored the value of cloud technologies to the point when companies are actively making assessments of cloud software benefits. But comparison of cloud vs non-cloud technologies is a tricky thing. And it is not always apples-to-applies comparison.
Recent Robert Green’s article – Get a Grip on the Cloud for CAD is an example of articles trying to give a perspective on pros vs cons of cloud software for CAD. The article is walking a very fine line between “glass half-full” to “pessimist’s perspective”.
Read the article and draw your own conclusion. All points mentioned by author are valid and you can find them in many article discussing pros and cons of cloud software. Lower upfront cost, fewer IT and maintenance, scale of resources, etc. – these are usual pros. And the list of cons is full of traditional “suspects” – internet failure, security, bandwidth, etc.
I found interesting that author is looking on cloud as some sort of “outsourcing” of resources. Here is the passage from the article:
The CAD Ecosystem. If you think about it, the types of cloud resources listed above (workstations, software, servers, and storage) are the same resources we’ve always used to run and control our CAD environments. The difference with the cloud is that these resources aren’t usually located at, or owned by, our company. I like to think of it as hardware and/or software outsourcing. It turns out that thinking about your CAD ecosystem as a collection of components — whether in the cloud or not — can help you analyze your entire system. It may be that certain components of your CAD ecosystem reside on the cloud (say, software), while others (say, hardware) remain at your physical location. The point is that your CAD ecosystem doesn’t have to be completely in the cloud, or completely local — a combination of elements may work best for your needs. If you think about it, the types of cloud resources listed above (workstations, software, servers, and storage) are the same resources we’ve always used to run and control our CAD environments. The difference with the cloud is that these resources aren’t usually located at, or owned by, our company. I like to think of it as hardware and/or software outsourcing. It turns out that thinking about your CAD ecosystem as a collection of components — whether in the cloud or not — can help you analyze your entire system. It may be that certain components of your CAD ecosystem reside on the cloud (say, software), while others (say, hardware) remain at your physical location. The point is that your CAD ecosystem doesn’t have to be completely in the cloud, or completely local — a combination of elements may work best for your needs.
I think something important is missed in this comparison approach – design and engineering workflow. The comparison is ignoring modern challenges of engineering and manufacturing organizations such as amount of distributed work, speed of change, an increased needs for communication between teams, contractors and suppliers. And by doing so, the decisions seems to be narrowed to installation of proven desktop based software vs. renting cloud-based components. Here is the thing. If you decide to stay with desktop CAD, you will be forced to manage downstream and upstream workflow between engineers, contractors, technicians by emails and maybe Dropbox or Office365 accounts. Engineers will lost track of revisions and send a wrong files to the shop floor or contractors and spend time uploading and downloading files to Dropbox. Both emails and Dropbox (or similar accounts) are using cloud software anyway, so IP will make its path to the cloud eventually.
What is my conclusion? Cloud CAD, desktop CAD or hybrid CAD. The comparison should start from user experience, engineering and manufacturing workflows first to make an assessment of value proposition cloud CAD software can bring to the table and what is probably cannot be achieved by traditional desktop CAD systems. After this portion of analysis is done, you should make risk assessment and to include full workflow of information. So, if a company is using cloud-based email, the point security concern while using cloud CAD can be probably less relevant. Cloud CAD is not for everyone yet. But making full workflow analysis is important, so all pros and cons will be reflected in the decision. Just my thoughts…
Best, Oleg
Want to learn more about PLM? Check out my new PLM Book website.
Disclaimer: I’m co-founder and CEO of openBoM developing cloud based bill of materials and inventory management tool for manufacturing companies, hardware startups and supply chain. My opinion can be unintentionally biased.
Pingback: GHZ Partners | IT Services, Software()