Tech Briefs Magazine - September 2021 - 20

Cloud Software
inherent risk of losing concurrency and
visibility cost? Leveraging the cloud for
engineering applications is a business
decision, not a technology one. It is im -
portant to also consider it is not necessarily
an either/or discussion. Companies
may find value in using a mix of both onpremises
and cloud-based environments.
Lopez: A core advantage of cloud
software is that it requires very little upfront
or long-term capital investment
compared to on-premises software. Onpremises
software options require significant
investment in equipment, plus the
power and networking inputs and staff
required to keep it running and up to
date. That can represent hundreds of
thousands of dollars. In comparison,
cloud offerings can typically be provisioned
within a day, turned off just as
quickly, billed based on usage, and updated
inexpensively.
Effectively, the cost difference of cloud
versus on-premises software parallels that
of on-demand versus on-premises manufacturing.
When starting up on-premises
manufacturing, there are high costs to
buying machines, setting up processes,
and staffing. In contrast, using an ondemand
cloud manufacturer simplifies
that process, so businesses only pay for
the production they need without sacrificing
quality.
Jonnalagadda: There are many total
costs of ownership and business flexibility
advantages to cloud software that
need to be considered before jumping
right to the bottom line and trying to
compare on an apples-to-apples basis
with on-premises software. For example,
cloud software enables " pay-as-you-go "
and " pay for only what you use " pricing
structures that simply aren't offered with
on-premises software. By choosing daily,
monthly, or annual pricing for the software
extensions they use, customers can
receive unprecedented value by scaling
the cost of capabilities they only use
occasionally.
Tech Briefs: What other points need to
be considered before selecting a cloudcapable
software?
Lopez: There are five key considerations
when evaluating a cloud-based software
solution: velocity, stability, security,
cost, and agility. You should evaluate
velocity in terms of time to implement
and update - how often there are new
functionalities and bug fixes and how
long those take to implement. For stability,
consider your team's tolerance for the
software being unavailable or offline and
the software's guarantees for up-time.
When thinking about security, evaluate
the sensitivity of your data, the impact of
unsecured data, and the software's security
practices. Cost should be considered
both in total and in terms of the strategic
value it will allow you to provide to your
customers. And finally, evaluate agility to
identify any gaps between your needs and
the functionality the software provides.
Rushton: A cloud solution should be
capable of not only what you want to
achieve today but also have scalability for
the future. You do not want to hit a glass
ceiling or wait for the software vendor to
develop more functionality for you to
grow the business. You also do not want
to have to change to a different solution
altogether to facilitate that growth just
because your software vendor packages
solutions that way.
Lafleche: It is critical to consider if you
are prepared for a true digital transformation
before switching to a cloud-capable
solution. It is not enough to do a simple
copy and paste of your current engineering
process. To give your company a
competitive edge, reimagine your incumbent
CAD and PDM workflows. The key
to successful implementation of a new
platform is cultural change. Get your
team's input and consider being more
agile. Look at what the capabilities of the
new platform provide for improving
design speed with global co-editing and
data never needs to leave a company's envir " With cloud-based solutions,
events of the " The
past 18 months have
definitely accelerated our
clients' desires to more easily access
their data, particularly for remote
and home workers.
"
Mark Rushton
review. Instead of lobbing a file over the
wall at the end of a design project, think
about how you can get your supply chain
involved sooner to optimize design for
manufacturability (DFM).
Brown: Throughout the process, companies
need to keep in mind what they
want to achieve by deploying cloud-based
solutions. The cloud is not the answer to
every issue and companies need to have
a business goal. Then they really need to
look at the partners they choose. It is a
customer's choice of how they deploy
their technology - they should not feel
pushed into a direction that they do not
feel meets their business goal.
Jonnalagadda: As CAD, and computing
in general, turns this significant corner
toward the cloud, there are a lot of
exciting new trends and opportunities as
well as some concerns surfacing. It's im -
portant to step back and take a macro
view sometimes: shifting to the cloud is
change and change can be a difficult
challenge for both companies and individuals.
With the cloud, we have an
opportunity to remove a lot of the burdensome
work we've grown accustomed
to doing, making room for more
thoughtful, creative, and engaging work
than we've had time for in the past.
FOR MORE INFORMATION
Autodesk
http://info.hotims.com/79417-125
Dassault Systèmes
http://info.hotims.com/79417-126
Fast Radius
onment.
No matter where people are working from, the data
remains inside the firewall - no e-mailing files, no moving files using file
transfer systems, no need to move files on USB memory sticks.
"
Paul Brown
20
Cov
www.techbriefs.com
ToC
http://info.hotims.com/79417-127
PTC Onshape
http://info.hotims.com/79417-129
Siemens PLM Software
http://info.hotims.com/79417-128
Tech Briefs, September 2021
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Tech Briefs Magazine - September 2021

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