Last week Autodesk announced their latest set of simulation tools called Autodesk 360 Simulation. It introduces a new pay-as-you-go option that they expect will help them bring CAE solutions to a broader generation of users than traditional CAE did before. This represents yet another significant step forward for Autodesk along the path to their vision of engineering solutions in the cloud.
To me the interesting thing about this announcement is that it illustrates Autodesk's delivery strategy in bringing cloud-based solutions to a market that’s accustomed to heavy client-installed tools, that also demanded costly hardware in order to perform adequately. Those solutions have dominated the market the past few decades. Cloud-based solutions such as this should significantly reduce both the cost of outfitting an engineer's toolset, but also making them both more flexible, and more productive.
Autodesk Simulation 360 tools are delivered via thin client apps delivering the rich user interface that calls cloud-based functionality to deliver its results. In other words, the high powered computing happens in the cloud, while you just tell it what to do. This reduces hardware demands on the client systems, and off-loads simulation calculations leaving the local system resources free for other tasks.
Although it's initially available for Windows, as it matures I would expect that we'll also see other incarnations become available on a variety of operating systems, alternate platforms, and mobile devices. That's the flexibility this architecture provides.
I certainly can't be the only one out here that sees the ability to run CAE tools on non-workstation-class systems appealing. ...right?
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