I think "on-demand" software has its place in the future in the CAE industry. Not sure if "on-demand" is the correct way to categorize it all, but I think it explains it fairly well. I am referring to applications that reside on a remote server and are accessed via the web, rather than run locally from the desktop.
It already exists in certain aspects. It was about 10 years ago that I came across "bom.com". It was a company that positioned handling all of the data management, bill of materials etc via the web. At the time, I thought it was a very cool idea, but they were the days when we were paying for AOL by the minute. As cool as I thought the concept was, I thought the name of their company was even cooler. I never imagined that the web would evolve into what it is today. Obviously the guys at bom.com did, as they have evolved into Arena Solutions. I snagged the above image off their site. They can explain what they do way better than I, go check them out.
Today, all of the CAD companies each have their own flavor of on-demand PDM and project management tools. I recently used Autodesk Streamline while working with a client in California. We used it to share files for a project. Sure beats the security nightmares of ftp sites.
I have recently become completely obsessed with on-demand solutions. I am using Google docs daily. I find its a great way to keep my files in order, available wherever I am, plus it allows me to share the files with members of our team. There are numerous other on-demand applications that I am looking into. Stay tuned, a bunch more to come on this topic.
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