BIM, SaaS and mobile driving Newforma developments

Great article by Paul Wilkinson

BIM, SaaS and mobile driving Newforma developments

Once scathing of the attractions of Software-as-a-Service, Newforma is now actively embracing the cloud, SaaS, BIM and mobile, and eyeing potential social media ideas for future product development.

BIM-in-The-Cloud Has New Competition With Newforma | ENR: Engineering News Record | McGraw-Hill Construction

BIM-in-The-Cloud Has New Competition With Newforma | ENR: Engineering News Record | McGraw-Hill Construction  $$

Model-driven project delivery on jobsites could be taking a big leap forward with a license deal between project information management (PIM) provider Newforma and M-SIX's 3D software platform, called VEO.
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Accessing BIM models on projects by construction teams "can be a challenge for mere mortals to master," Batcheler says. Using the VEO platform, project teams can access the geometry of commonly-used 3D models through the cloud "without the risk of an untrained person damaging or corrupting the model," he adds.

Nasuni Enables AEC Organizations To Securely Store Files And Easily Share Them... -- NATICK, Mass., July 24, 2012 /PRNewswire/ --

Nasuni Enables AEC Organizations To Securely Store Files And Easily Share Them Among Offices (via PR Newswire)

NATICK, Mass., July 24, 2012 /PRNewswire/ -- Nasuni®, a provider of enterprise storage to large, distributed organizations, today described how its solution is ideally suited to solve the specific IT storage challenges that global architecture, engineering and construction (AEC) organizations face…

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"With the increase in collaboration across geographies, we need to give our people access to the files they need with good performance," said Mike Driscoll, infrastructure architect at Walsh Group. "Nasuni synchronizes all our file data, gives our users the feel and performance of local access and enables us to effectively address an ever-growing volume of files while making it possible to easily and securely share those files with our employees no matter where they are located. It is very much a set it and forget it experience, and I've not gotten much feedback from my people, which is a good thing. No phone calls complaining that they can't get to the data they need means Nasuni is doing what it needs to do."

"The AEC industry is facing IT storage challenges that traditional storage solutions cannot overcome," said Andres Rodriguez, CEO of Nasuni. "With Nasuni, AEC organizations can provide primary storage to every office with instant access to as much storage capacity as needed.  It's a first for the storage industry and finally enables AEC IT professionals to stop worrying constantly about storage capacity and management of complicated remote access schemes, so they can focus on more strategic initiatives."

PR Newswire (http://s.tt/1iQZz)

The Top 500 Design Firms Start to Rise Above Economic Woes | ENR: Engineering News Record | McGraw-Hill Construction

The Top 500 Design Firms Start to Rise Above Economic Woes | ENR: Engineering News Record | McGraw-Hill Construction

After four years, it appears the U.S. construction market has bottomed out and is beginning the slow climb out of recession. For many large U.S. design firms, this development is cause for both relief and celebration. But for other design firms, particularly in the public infrastructure markets, uncertainty about the future remains a constant.

20 IWMS, CAFM and CMMS Blogs To Watch in 2012

20 IWMS, CAFM and CMMS Blogs To Watch in 2012

Review of The VID Delusion by Brian Madden, et al.

 The VDI Delusion by Brian Madden, et al. reminds me of what one professor wrote on my Hunter "Thompson styled narration: "floats like a butterfly, but ....where's the sting." I recommend this book to clarify the industry and understand some of the greatest blog, tweet, flames going on in the industry today.

http://www.brianmadden.com/ is fantastic resource on vid with a great podcast.

It really does describe a lot of the chaos caused by company marketing as well as technology challenges. Also adds to confusion about some of the acronyms. Great explanation of different technologies here http://www.virtuall.nl/request-whitepaper-access

I think the book misses on two major points:


1. "It's the data, stupid". In some industries, we are already in a multi-device, multi-os scenario that is not being solved by iCloud  or dropbox. Add to this the requirement for multi-company collaboration on large data-sets. The compute power must be reside with the data and it must be accessible from multiple remote locations without planning or device constraint - ie the application I need to make since of the data doesn't execute on my iPad or my iPhone or my Android or my Macbook or on the little standard issue $300 XP based PC the corporation gave me.


2. My 10-50 person company doesn't have an IT department to handle all of the tasks outlined as the successful, time-proven desktop strategies  to solve the desktop dilemmas. Outsourcing the entire desktop to a provider can be a good solution.

10 most powerful IaaS companies - in alphabetical order

10 most powerful IaaS companies

"We assembled this list with help from analysts at Cloud Technology Partners, Current Analysis, Enterprise Strategy Group, Gartner, IDC, and Neovise who watch the public cloud Infrastructure as a Service scene very closely. Each was asked to name the companies they believed have the most influence – whether that’s measured in market share, mind share, revenue, existing enterprise pull or underlying technology links – in the world of IaaS. They are listed here in alphabetical order."