Moving your BIM software in the cloud gives you access your from any device. Let Advance2000 help your firm with a cloud computing solution specifically designed for the AEC industry.
Table of Contents
- Benefits Of Moving Your Bim Software To The Cloud
- Advance2000 Compute
- Hardware Agnostic
- Software Agnostic
- Need For Collaboration
- Real-Time Feedback
- Cloud Agility
Advantages of Moving Your BIM Software To The Cloud
Advance2000 understands the needs of the AEC industry. In the early days of cloud computing, our CEO Brian Maouad recognized the need for better team collaboration first hand. That need inspired us to build our proprietary project cloud platform, Compute™.
Simply, Advance2000 hosts an AEC firm’s entire IT infrastructure in our privately owned US-based data centers (Infrastructure as a Service, IaaS). Each of our clients, regardless of company size, has affordable access to enterprise-class hardware.
On our hosted infrastructure, we set up virtual desktops (VDI) for each firm employee. When an employee signs in, they have access to their company desktop and any applications installed on their VDI, including BIM programs and all their project files.
The benefit to AEC firms is employees can access their workstation from any device. This means a designer can make late night changes while working from home on a laptop, or while visiting a client with only their iPad. VDIs untether employees from their desks allowing them to access critical or sensitive data from anywhere with any device through a secure portal.
Here you can find 5 reasons why you should move your BIM software in the cloud and the benefits:
Advance2000 Compute™
Whether you use a Mac, PC, tablet, or iPad, BIM and CAD managers connect to their Virtual Desktop to work on projects from any device running any operating system.
Our AEC project cloud platform, Compute™, is created specifically for collaboration. We developed this technology directly with the AEC industry, so our expertise with the software you use daily enabled us to create the cloud platform AEC firms have been missing.
Using Advance2000’s servers as your office computer, your BIM software is loaded on our VDI and not on your local laptop or office computer. Our project cloud Compute™ exceeds the hardware system requirements for Dassault, Autodesk, and more. All the computing power happens on our end.
Hardware Agnostic
You no longer need expensive physical workstations to meet the software’s’ system requirements; your local computer acts only as a device to connect to the cloud environment. The VDI’s are platform-agnostic, so the resources of the local device used to connect to them become less important. Employees of your firm can bring their own devices (BYOD), such as a low powered laptop or tablet, and still access their files with the efficiency of a high powered workstation.
Software Agnostic
Installing BIM software in the cloud gains economies of scale. Prior to hosted cloud technology, small firms were cost prohibited from creating their own internal virtual desktops to run BIM software. The high acquisition price of the hardware needed to support the software shut them out. Instead, Advance2000 engineers, with support staff experienced in the AEC industry, have built a cloud platform specifically designed to support BIM software. Now small firms can install their designer programs of choice on a world-class VDI using their existing hardware.
Compute™ is built to be entirely software agnostic. Since we offer a full Windows 10 Pro OS, you can run any program compatible with Windows. Your cloud VDI can run any application whether it’s Revit, Solidworks, or ARCHICAD. For example, if you use AutoCAD and Solidworks for design, that’s not a problem in our cloud. You can run either application in our high-end virtual environment. We support any Windows application from any software vendor.
Need For Collaboration
Projects demand collaboration. In this linked video about AutoCAD, Autodesk explains how engineers need feedback from inside and outside project stakeholders, and feedback needs to be timely and accurate. Our cloud platform brings teams from different firms and multiple locations together in one digital place to connect and utilize this feedback in real-time.
Some projects require lead architects to bring in outside firms or consultants–the ‘project stakeholders.’ Firms that do not utilize digital collaboration often set up colocation offices at an additional project expense to bring outside project stakeholders to the same network to work together.
A project cloud allows all project stakeholders to access the same network with the most current files from their own office regardless of physical location. They have the same smooth collaborative experience without the additional cost of an office colocation.
Real-Time Feedback
Traditional BIM has limitations. Project stakeholders will typically rely on email or other slow methods of communication. Feedback is sporadic and the feedback is often communicated without enough information or without describing the problems well. Sharing and updating data and files takes hours.
These issues are eliminated when a project is hosted in a project cloud, where users come to the data in real-time and give feedback directly in the application. The more immediate the feedback and communication during the design phase, the less likely the project will incur costly errors during the construction phase.
Cloud Agility
Advance2000’s Compute™ brings the agility of the cloud to your firm. We mean “cloud agility” in two ways: business responsiveness and IT responsiveness (these are explained in further detail in this article by CIO Bernard Golden).
Our project cloud allows AEC firms to be more responsive. They can collaborate between offices more easily, add resources to meet project demands, and protect intellectual property from outside threats. We enable IT responsiveness by providing a virtual IT infrastructure that scales rapidly to meet a project’s needs, compared to traditional IT infrastructure with long hardware installation and lead times. When the project requires it, we can add resources on demand, and in a few minutes clients have the resources needed to continue operating as usual.
Accessing your designer software on a hosted VDI changes the AEC business model. Firms remove the required upload/download time commitments by bringing project stakeholders to the data. Through a hosted virtual infrastructure with Advance2000, all users are securely connected in one central-shared file location.
If you want better collaboration, security, responsiveness, and scalability for your AEC projects, it’s time to move your BIM to the cloud. Our project cloud platform enables your firm to continue to use your existing hardware while running your design applications in an enterprise-class virtual environment. Bring all project stakeholders and their software-of-choice to the data regardless of their location. For more information about how our project cloud platform can support your AEC firm’s project needs, contact us now.
