Over the next few weeks I’ll be blogging about my observations on how the Cloud is going to steamroll the CAD and GIS verticals and making beer-bet predictions to keep it interesting.
CAD in the Cloud Part I: The First Wave – PC over IP
As we bravely enter 2010 and technology continues to run amok in other verticals, the CAD community is starting to get a little jumpy around the topic of SaaS and Cloud Computing and how that’s going to change everyone’s revenue models. I’ve heard the entire gamut of responses so far including: the-ostrich-head-in-the-sand, the hand wringers, the just-bury-me-with-my-roll-of-plans guys, the opportunists, the Autodesk conspiratorial theorists, the blasé shrugs and dire end-of-the-CAD-world predictions. I think someone even said there was a relevant entry in the Mayan calendar or Nostradamus Quatrains or something -
“The Sky will darken and there will be great turmoil and gnashing of teeth as the CAD vertical is forced to grow up and embrace the rest of the human race. Cats will play with dogs, Engineers will collaborate with Architects, people will actually use computers to record change orders . Suddenly and terribly everyone will realize its not so bad afterall…“
I am of course poking fun at my CAD contemporaries who despite my assurances wish we could just go back to the good ole days with the tilty desk and vellum. For the most part we know how this is going to change things and generally I think a rationality is beginning to set in that this for the first time is going to bring peace to the land and be good for the cause. We have the opportunity to move CAD and GIS into the modern world and position it alongside of other modern SaaS and Cloud based systems like CRM, ERP and other run-the-planet kinds of things. Indeed making CAD and GIS a server side entity with the ability to integrate with open technologies like XML, Ajax, REST, Flex and others will help increase the number of “Smart Technology” based efforts being touted by folks like IBM, Google and others – which is a good thing.
Breaking the Ice, Lets start the CAD cloud at the Office.
One of the first technologies I see coming to break the ice is PC-over-IP. I use this a general term for what is best described as the next step beyond Webex or Citrix. PC-over-IP basically involves hosting an app on the server, encoding the screen output to a highly compressed stream of images or video and serving that to a client side app that unpacks it and displays it to the user. Typically the same app is also involved in the capture and delivery of user responses (mouse, keyboard, usb devices) to the server side app and the cycle begins anew. This can be done with software alone, software and hardware or entirely with hardware based solutions. This approach when conditions are right yields a great solution where the user can on any device anywhere can run a high powered CAD application with full 3D acceleration and rendering as if it where right there on the local box. There are pros and cons as with any new technology but when one considers the convenience of leaving large CAD models, safely and securely on the server and being able to deliver all of the high powered features to a user remotely, its a very seductive argument. Cons for this approach are typically latency issues in that if the distance between the user and the server exceed a threshold over a certain amount, latency sets in and the lag between clicking on something and seeing the result on the screen can be prohibitive.
Software PC-Over-IP Solutions
In the software solution category are the boisterous Onlive.com folks who are going to challenge the console makers in the Gaming vertical and frankly will give them a run for their money. Onlive boasts an impressive roster of investors and game publishers who promise thousands of game titles right there on the web without the need for a fancy PC or xbox. The other entrant is the mysterious OTOY, who it was discovered through some gritty CAD journalism work by Ralph Grabowski, were the ones behind the SaaS magic at SolidWorks World. Both of these companies use proprietary compression technology to keep the latency down and utilize a client side application to quarterback the incoming remote screen view and the outgoing user mouse/keyboard events.
Hardware PC-Over-IP Solutions
In the hardware PC-Over-IP solution category there has been a sudden breakthrough in the approach by a Canadian company called Teradici who have just techno-leap frogged the incumbent Citrix HDX 3D solution. The Teradici solution utilizes a card in the server to hardware compress the screen imagery and deliver it to either a software decoder in VMware View 4 or a hardware “puck” that the remote user plugs a keyboard and mouse into to operate. A good comparison of the Teradici and Citrix offerings is here. Big guns AMD also have a pretty slick solution based on the Teradici chip and I can’t help but feel this really answers one of the fundamental CAD in the Cloud reservations “Where’s my data!”
One of the main voiced concerns of the CAD in the cloud revolves around where the CAD data is stored, who keeps it secure and what happens when someone can’t get at it. By using PC-over-IP, companies can host their own corner of the CAD cloud on premises or with Managed Services outfits and reach out to the remote or mobile users knowing exactly where the data lives and who is in charge of it.
How does this fit with SaaS?
PC-over-IP is an important first step and realistically its applications will be best utilized by targeted content providers (like Onlive and AAA Game publishers) and serious CAD content folks like manufacturers or designers who are building very large assembly products that require centralization, 3D processing grunt and collaboration. SaaS however by the very nature of its makeup is about the Web. In order to enable publishing, collaboration and integration, SaaS will continue its march across software distribution models with one all powerful promise: you’re not stuck with a siloed solution, you can integrate it with anything. Salesforce is a great example of what you can do to mix and match the core offering provided by Marc Benioff and crew and your own Web content: side by side or completely mashed up. Google Maps is another good example of the flexibility of SaaS with any number of the thousands of professional and enthusiast map mashups displaying all kinds of data easily. To some degree PC-Over-IP is like a fence post and SaaS is like the fence.
We should also expect PC-Over-IP content to start appearing on SaaS driven webpages as one of the great features of both approaches is to embed streaming content for multicasting, like UStream for CAD. This will be a big theme this year as more ISV’s utilize multicasting to Sales demo and educate the masses on product offerings and this is one of the ways it will be delivered.
next entry I’ll go into a bit more about our 2nd Generation 3D Collaboration technologies, how it picks up from where PC-Over-IP leaves off and some more CAD in the Cloud head scratching.
Well, we knew when we did this that there would be some folks who got tipped out of the apple cart and we extend our apologies to those organizations – but we have to evolve. The decision was not contemplated lightly and when Arnold van der Weide of the ODA came to visit our soggy shores here in Vancouver it became obvious the ODA membership was serious about Software-as-a-Service and they wanted to include our technology in their vision. Aftercad is a small company and running a SaaS offering is not a trivial undertaking. We did very well, with a little over a thousand active users we managed to keep everything upright and running smoothly, well within a 99% uptime SLA. The opportunity that the ODA represents though (2000+ CAD vendors) is enormous and we really had to decide if we were tool makers or store operators. In this day and age you can do both and do well but we also had to consider that we didn’t want to compete for CAD subscription dollars with our new client base so that basically was it.