CAD in the Cloud

Focusing on the recent announcement by Autocad that they are going to follow a web strategy for their products we finally start to see engineering apps moving into the cloud. These were the ones that I feared would hold up the advancement to full cloud. With services like OnLive also expanding it is becoming clear that graphical applications no longer need to be positioned locally on the fastest box you can buy.

Indeed with the amount of processing available in the cloud it is likely that graphical apps delivered in this way will surpass the locally installed ones. These applications will also deliver a new degree of collaboration and maybe allow organisations to truly operate in a fully global manner.

The web programs will remove issues of software patching, whilst at the same time ensuring that all users are working on the same edition of the software.

Not only that but because these applications will require accredited logins to access them so pirating of the programs will become much harder, maybe even impossible. This will of course allow these companies to remove the work associated with protecting the products from theft massively reducing the price ;-)

This could be the start of the point where more complex users can become full cloud citizens, if the integrity of the data it uses can be guaranteed.