AtomicBIM and UUID

Last February I wrote (here, here and here) about the possibility of CAD applications being delivered as Software-as-a-Service – a concept I called CADaaS. Then, realising that CAD is likely to be superseded eventually by building information modelling (BIM), I updated the concept in June to BIMaaS. Noting along the way posts on the topic from Solidworks and Autodesk bloggers, among others, in October I found more support for this notion from US architect and writer John Tobin who talked about atomicBIM.

Now (and this is a side-benefit of opening one’s eyes to other software areas), I was reading a post on PLM (product lifecycle management) software on Jos Voskuil’s weblog where he took a look ahead to where we might be in 2050:

• Data is not replicated any more – every piece of information that exists will have a Universal Unique ID, some people might call it the UUID. In 2020 this initiative became mature, thanks to the merger of some big PLM and ERP vendors, who brought this initiative to reality. This initiative reduced the exchange costs in supply chains dramatically and lead to bankcrupcy for many companies providing translators and exchange software.
• Companies store their data in ‘the cloud’ based on the previous concept. Only some old-fashioned companies still have their own data storage and exchange issues, as they are afraid someone will touch their data. Analysts compare this behavior with the situation in the year 1950, when people kept their money under a mattress, not trusting banks (and they were not always wrong).

Sad to think that Jos may well be right in that it could take 40 years for this notion to become reality.