I have the pleasure every week of meeting folks running simulations. One of the common things I hear is:
“David, cloud sounds amazing… but I only run simulations once a month.”
Being immersed in the technology every day, I can tell you that this is one of the best reasons to go with cloud.
When I was working as an engineer, I too ran simulations on a similar cadence. Regardless, I still had to purchase the same powerful workstation and analysis software. At the time, that required roughly a $70,000 upfront investment. This cost hit my department’s budget the same, regardless of my usage pattern.
Today, this would have looked totally different. I could pay for an HPC environment by the minute on the Microsoft Azure Marketplace and consume on-demand CAE licensing credits as needed. It is not even a contest. Procuring hardware/software the old way is like bring a knife to a gunfight.
At UberCloud, we partner with the top players in the CAE space. Two of the quick movers that are pioneering the consumption-based licensing are:
This trend will continue to gain steam across the industry as simulation continues to penetrate earlier and wider in the design cycle. Assuming infinite and completely elastic compute power in the cloud provides all the resources when you need it, without the penalty of collecting dust when you don’t.