It’s that time of year again. Everyone who is somehow connected to Autodesk technologies and products is coming to Las Vegas to attend Autodesk University extravaganza – thousands people event with the size and scale that you can spend a week there without meeting some of your friends and colleagues also attending Autodesk University. The running joke and question – what AU are you attending? is actually a dead serious.
So, my AU this year will be mostly around Forge DevCon – a gathering of partners and developers working on Autodesk Forge platform and other development tools. Forge DevCon website is here and Forge website is here. I’m looking forward to learn more about what Autodesk team is preparing for this new year.
The Forge Platform makes Design and Engineering data accessible to almost anyone, anytime, anywhere. With simple, standards-based web development, Forge helps developers and companies address tough challenges with cloud solutions. And Forge is more than just cloud-based tools – it’s an innovation community.
DevCon website is promising keynotes and learning how to make cloud-based platforms pushing the limits of design-to-manufacturing processes, learning from customers and Autodesk team.
I was skimming online information and news from Autodesk before the event. The following article caught my special attention – Deploy Autodesk Forge on AWS with New Quick Start.
This Quick Start builds an Autodesk Forge environment on the Amazon Web Services (AWS) Cloud for customizable building blocks in the form of web service application programming interfaces (APIs), tools, and services. The deployment takes about 15 minutes.
Autodesk Forge is a cloud developer platform for building custom software applications, workflows, and integrations across industries such as manufacturing, architecture, engineering, and construction. With Autodesk Forge, teams, third-party developers, and customers can design, build, and integrate workflows. For example, developers can use Forge to overlay Internet of Things (IoT) data on top of 3D information models, to later perform data analysis and create visual reports.
A suggestion based on the title is that you can get you own Autodesk Forge environment. Well… not so much. You can build an environment to develop solutions for Autodesk Forge. The devil is in the details and I checked out architecture link.
Here is what I found. The following pictures gives you an idea of the architecture.
What is my conclusion? Autodesk cloud platform is only available on public cloud. I never heard anything from Autodesk that confirm the availability of Autodesk Forge Platform on private or hybrid clouds. However, if Autodesk Forge runs on AWS, it might be a possibility that it can be rolled out into your own AWS accounts. That can be an interesting technological option and maybe even business opportunity. I’m going to learn more during DevCon and report back. After all, existing CAD/PLM vendors are offering their platforms on different environments. So, Autodesk can have a competitive case here. Just my thoughts…
Best, Oleg
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
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