Feb 27 2008

Delivering my first webinars

The flow of posts to this blog slowed slightly this week as I spent time preparing for, and then delivering two webinars for BIW Technologies [my employer]. The first of these online seminars related to use of online collaboration platforms to manage construction contract processes – particularly those associated with the New Engineering Contract (NEC); today’s event focused on construction e-tendering.

Oddly, I found it slightly more nerve-wracking speaking online than delivering a presentation face-to-face with the audience. After a couple of dry-runs, I was happy with my presentation, I was comfortable with the WebEx Event Center SaaS technology (today we managed a pretty seamless transition from PowerPoint to sharing a web-browser for a live demonstration of BIW Tender Manager, and back again), and the cordless telephone on loudspeaker mode was evidently well up to the task of making me heard, so what was different? Well, I think I missed the visual feedback one gets from a live audience.

After all, I was sitting alone in my home office in southeast London, staring at a screen displaying only written details about an audience spread across the UK and at least three continents (we had registrations from delegates in Australia, the US, and the Middle East). Apart from their responses to a couple of poll questions, and some questions in the concluding discussion session, I had no clues as to how focused they were or how well (or not!) I was delivering the information (the same probably also applied to my co-presenters at each event).

I dare say the lack of visual connection probably also affects attendees (this is something I wrote about late last year – see article linked from Web conferencing and sustainability). Particularly if they were new to WebEx, there could be an initial temptation to play with the interface rather than listen to and watch the presentations; there is always the danger that their view of the event could be subject to telecoms issues; and they may be reluctant to use unfamiliar chat or Q&A tools to ask questions or raise issues. But as use of such tools becomes more widespread and familiar, I expect the novelty to disappear, the telecoms to prove reliable, and the reticence to evaporate. (To further help bridge the speaker/audience divide, I will be investigating use of webcams or at least photographs of the speakers, and looking at ways to encourage more audience participation and interaction).

The geographical spread of delegates was impressive (reinforcing my view that ‘virtual’ events have their place in the marketing mix, not least for their low carbon footprint compared to conventional events). Without heavy marketing (a mention in a recent BIW e-newsletter, a few emails and some buttons on the BIW website), we achieved a good number of registrations – enough to encourage us to run further events (I may even run some that aren’t BIW-specific, perhaps ones more focused on Software-as-a-Service, the AEC market, sustainability and other themes regularly explored on this blog).

Permanent link to this article: https://extranetevolution.com/2008/02/delivering-my-f/

Feb 26 2008

Business Collaborator now part of Agresso

The final stages of Unit 4 Agresso’s takeover of Coda plc, parent company of UK-based collaboration technology vendor Business Collaborator, are now being played out.

A London Stock Exchange announcement today says that Unit 4 Agresso had declared its offer unconditional. As a result, an application had been made for Coda shares to be delisted from the AIM market of the London Stock Exchange, with effect from 27 March 2008. In the meantime, the company will no longer be announcing its annual results for the year ended 31 December 2007 – previously scheduled to be announced in just over two weeks (on Thursday 13 March 2008). This is a bit of a shame as it would have been interesting to see how BC had fared during the past 12 months.

(Related posts: Business Collaborator parent reaches agreement with Agresso, BC parent in takeover approach)

Permanent link to this article: https://extranetevolution.com/2008/02/business-collab-2/

Feb 22 2008

Making the CADnection

I’ve blogged a number of times recently about Microsoft SharePoint and its potential for use in the AEC industry (see posts here and here, for example). The challenge has been to transform a generic collaboration platform into something more specific for the construction sector, particularly in how that platform handles CAD files, and the latest development is perhaps worth noting. According to AECcafe.com, California-based CADnection provides a seamless exchange between Autodesk’s AutoCAD and SharePoint.

CADnection’s website says the solution is sold on a per-seat basis, linked to a license of AutoCAD, in 25 seat bundles. Pricing starts at US$6,995per bundle, plus 18% maintenance.

Permanent link to this article: https://extranetevolution.com/2008/02/making-the-cadn/

Feb 22 2008

Lurking in the shadows

Shadow IT is a term used to refer to those people performing IT functions within an organisation but who are not actually part of the official IT department. It can take many forms – from innocent reliance on advice from the unofficial Excel expert at the next desk, through use of work-arounds to bypass corporate systems, to the installation and use of untested, non-standard or unlicensed applications – but has become a problem to many organisations’ formal IT departments (sometimes prompting clamp-downs to reinforce corporate IT policies). Yet shadow IT continues to thrive (some estimates suggest shadow IT can constitute over 70% of total IT activity in some organisations).

Shadow IT arises for a variety of reasons. It can emerge as a response to new requirements that cannot quickly (if at all) be met by the existing formal IT function. It can emerge due to the arrival of new workers, perhaps with fresh, new and exciting ways of working and collaborating. The proliferation of the personal computer, and the consequent easy availability of consumer-grade software applications (including wikis, blogs and Software-as-a-Service tools) that could be turned to corporate use, has also been blamed. Whatever the reasons, much relates to the quality of service delivered by an in-house IT team compared to that available from unofficial sources. After all, to a busy manager, Shadow IT people offer several advantages:

  • Business expertise – “They work in my team. They know what we actually need to do – rather than what IT think we do.”
  • Speed of response – “I work next to them, so it’s easy to ask for their help and get things done very quickly.”
  • Focus – “They only work in my team, so don’t get distracted by other work.”
  • Less bureaucracy – “No helpdesk, no application forms, no appointments, no approval processes….”

Of course, shadow IT can also be a factor in organisations’ adoption and use of Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) applications. Returning to the above themes, let’s look at it from a construction collaboration technology perspective:

  1. Software specialisation – Corporate IT provision can often move too slowly to keep up with the specialist needs of individual departments or teams. Moreover, corporate IT solutions may not always be appropriate or adaptable to the business unit’s needs – for example, email is not appropriate for construction collaboration, and adapting or extending an intranet or internal document management system to support a multi-company project team is too laborious and time-consuming. By contrast, construction collaboration solutions are designed to meet a specific set of industry requirements; they require little more than configuration tweaks to exactly meet most team’s operational needs.
  2. Speed of implementation – With no need to buy new hardware or to install, manage and support software on internal servers, a SaaS solution can be implemented in a matter of hours. Particularly these days, with broadband increasingly widely available, users therefore don’t need to worry about infrastructure issues; hosting is taken care of by the vendor, while existing comms usually have more than adequate capacity. Most collaboration solutions also require little training, and the service-oriented culture of an on-demand vendor also means support requests are dealt with quickly by an expert in the software’s use. In an industry notoriously concerned with time and costs, these factors mean SaaS solutions immediately appeal to many construction project managers.
  3. AEC-oriented – Echoing the previous point, most enterprise solutions are not specific to AEC requirements, while today’s sophisticated collaboration solutions have benefited from years of development so that they mirror industry conventions, requiring little or no adaptation of professionals’ existing working methods. They deliver exactly what construction professionals want, with minimal ‘feature bloat’; an industry-focused vendor also doesn’t have to compromise its software to accommodate demands from other market sectors. It is also worth emphasising the “aaS”. As the service is usually purchased on a subscription basis, to minimise ‘churn’ among its customer base, the vendor must constantly deliver high levels of service availability and reliability, and prove itself responsive to customer or end-user demands for new software features, etc to meet changing industry needs.
  4. Easy to procure – With no capital investment requirement, SaaS can bypass budgeting and tender processes and be paid for out of operational rather than capital budgets, with costs proportionate to the amount of use. For many construction projects, the cost of a collaboration platform may be met by the ultimate client with supply chain members effectively getting free use of the system – I have met company IT people who were completely unaware that colleagues within their subcontractor business had been using collaboration solutions for years! And to cap it all, once the user has finished using the application, there are no megabytes of unused software filling hard-drive space.

In my view, shadow IT is obviously not something demanding a draconian corporate response. Most organisations have significant amounts of latent IT knowledge and skills that need to be nurtured rather than neutralised, and the IT environment is changing so fast that organisations need to be fluid in their response. Within the UK construction industry, I think, many initial engagements with SaaS-based collaboration solutions resulted from initiatives from the shadows, but, as SaaS has become more mainstream, corporate IT teams are increasingly seeing it as a powerful alternative to locally-hosted and supported solutions.

Permanent link to this article: https://extranetevolution.com/2008/02/lurking-in-the/

Feb 21 2008

Integrating IT, Process and People

 

Over the years, I’ve attended several excellent events organised by the SCRI Forum. The next event, entitled Achieving Seamless Delivery: Minimising Waste & Maximising Value, takes place on Tuesday 11 March 2008 in Salford, UK, and brings together leading practitioners and senior academics to “showcase leading-edge solutions and enablers: I.T., Process and People for the ‘seamless delivery of projects’”. For more details, email Karen West.

Permanent link to this article: https://extranetevolution.com/2008/02/integrating-it/

Feb 21 2008

More on Australian collaboration

I was looking at the Australian market last week (see INCITE = ThinkProject!), so this is a bit of a follow-up. In the May/June 2007 issue of Architecture Australia, architect Anthony McPhee looked at project management software and ranted about the inappropriateness of email – “email is BAD, email is EVIL. … Basically, email creates a huge, disparate, amorphous mess” – a topic also being discussed by Leigh Jasper on the Aconex blog (and in a document management article – A Thorn in AEC’s Side – in Cadalyst).

McPhee also sums up some of the main Australian project collaboration offerings as follows:

  • Aconex (www.aconex.com.au) – Simple and easy to use, but it only has basic mail and document management. Excellent training, support and help desk. Good if you are new to this type of software, but it lacks sophistication for proper project management, particularly during construction.
  • projectCentre (www.projectcentre.net) – Highly configurable system that controls contract forms well (RFIs, etc), work flow (who can what to whom) and document management (creation of drawing sets). Not as pretty as Aconex, more workmanlike. Good support and training.
  • TeamBinder (www.teambinder.com) – This is the web collaboration tool developed by QA-software, which has provided software to the construction industry for many years. Although fully featured due to their depth of experience, some of its processes are unnecessarily cumbersome and appear to be based on traditional paper-based processes.

Sadly, despite its Australian connections, there is no mention of INCITE (or Nexus Point Solutions), but McPhee does say the “architect project management software market in Australia is far from mature, and new players are bound to pop up in the near future. … The list is not exhaustive….”

Permanent link to this article: https://extranetevolution.com/2008/02/more-on-austral/

Feb 20 2008

AIR – taking web applications offline

MIT’s Technology Review has published its 2008 list of emerging technologies that it thinks are most likely to change the way we live. One of them is “Offline web applications”. The article profiles an Adobe system: Adobe Integrated Runtime, AIR.

The premise is that ‘Cloud computing’ has drawbacks: users can’t save data to their own hard drives, drag and drop items between applications, or receive notifications, such as appointment reminders, when the browser window is closed. Adobe has therefore developed AIR, which is based on existing tools such as HTML and Flash, to allow programmers to build hybrid desktop applications that people can run on- or offline.

The concept is not unique (Google has also been working towards a similar goal with its Google Gears project), but it shows that we could be moving from a strict black-and-white distinction between online and offline applications to a world in which we work in … er, grey clouds, perhaps? (As southeast London is currently (10am) swathed in thick fog, the analogy seems particularly apt!)

Permanent link to this article: https://extranetevolution.com/2008/02/air-taking-we/

Feb 18 2008

CADaaS continued (2)

My musings last week (here and here) on CAD-as-a-Service have stimulated some interest, including a SaaSblogs post, and a comment from Rami Hamodah, who, quite rightly, suggests that “offering CAD-as-a-Service is much harder to do than offering business software-as-a-service such as CRM” and wonders how demand might be stimulated.

CADaaS: not if, when

To respond to this, let’s go back ten years. In the late 1990s (pre-broadband days, remember), I expect there were people who doubted that there was sufficient technological know-how and bandwidth to allow any kind of on-demand service to be delivered, let alone to become almost normal. The challenge of sharing documents among members of a distributed construction project team still tended to focus on use of CDs and perhaps email (if the attachments weren’t too big), or – in a few isolated instances – using some kind of electronic document management system over a local or wide area network, with some external users reliant upon expensive ISDN connections to be able to access and download documents or drawings. Many industry people also insisted there was no demand, saying they preferred to use paper, and were sceptical about using web-based services, citing legal, copyright and contractual issues, security, lack of standards, the financial stability of vendors, reliability, inadequate hardware, poor telecoms, and a whole host of other obstacles (both real and imagined) that – eventually – were largely overcome.

As I wrote earlier this week (SaaS – the killer app for CAD?), many of the issues have already been addressed. The AEC collaboration providers overcame legal, professional, cultural and procedural constraints. They were also able to demonstrate that they could deliver Software-as-a-Service despite the infrastructure constraints. They created streamlined applications that were coded specifically for efficient web delivery, being designed to work even over the 14.4 or 28.8kbps dial-up connections then typically used by many firms, particularly on-site and at the SME end of the industry. In the UK at least, the drive by some clients towards ‘partnering’ and other more collaborative approaches to project delivery, also stimulated demand for online collaboration services.

Looking at the CADaaS opportunity, one could say we are in a similar situation to the late 1990s. Yes, some of the technological constraints remain, but at a different order of magnitude. Broadband availability, capacity and reliability continues to improve, investment in new application hosting, data storage and utility computing facilities continues to grow, and market sentiment towards SaaS is increasingly positive (see 2008: SaaS will soar, SaaS will surge), prompting more investment in SaaS-based projects and businesses. Just as software programmers were able to streamline document management systems for SaaS delivery, I expect they will also be able to deliver the core functionality of CAD applications for delivery via a browser. I might even stick my neck out and say that, so far as CADaaS is concerned in the AEC industry, it’s not if, but when.

One reason I say this is down to the projections for growing use, within the AEC sector, of building information modelling (BIM – see Take-up of BIM growing, Collaborative processes help US industry respond to growth pressures), which will, for many design firms, mean fundamental changes to how they manage information and liaise with other members of the project team. The transition to BIM (hopefully, accompanied by a parallel move towards greater interoperability between applications) will also mean major investments in new hardware and software, plus the costs of associated consultancy and training as firms re-engineer their processes for BIM, and it is at times like this, I suspect, that hard-pressed finance directors and IT directors may begin to think about alternative approaches.

For example, I have seen estimates (from Alibre, for example) about the total cost of ownership of owning CAD software that suggest, depending upon the product, the TCO over three years for just one user can range from $2,175 (Alibre, naturally), to $6,145 (AutoCAD), to nearly $10,000/seat (for Solidworks and Autodesk Inventor) and beyond. I suspect the figures for BIM applications are also at the high end. Such figures also ignore the associated hardware and other infrastructure and support costs – “the annual cost to own and manage software applications can be up to four times the cost of the initial purchase,” particularly if you factor in the people resources (see SaaS: the business solution).

CADaaS benefits

CADaaS solutions will be available on a subscription model that significantly undercuts the costs of internally hosted and managed CAD software (reflecting the lower costs of developing, testing, deploying, upgrading and supporting SaaS solutions). But cost isn’t everything; vendors will – as Rami says – also need to demonstrate the advantages and benefits of the SaaS approach.  While some will be financially related, other benefits are more wide-ranging….

  • No up-front capital expenditure – CADaaS requires no major investment in new internally-managed hardware or software.
  • More predictable expenditure – conventional software tends to be purchased on an up-front ‘pay and pray’ basis, whereas hosted CADaaS solutions would be delivered for an agreed fee for the duration of the contract.
  • No depreciation
  • No long-term commitment – CADaaS software subscriptions will be negotiable by the month, quarter, year, etc, and – with continued customer loyalty dependent upon quality of service – vendors have a vested interest in maintaining high levels of functionality, availability, security, etc for their customers. This contrasts with the ‘drive-by sales’ approach of traditional software vendors.
  • Faster implementation – Hosted CADaaS solutions will involve no installation, and – if we follow the precedent of construction collaboration applications – will be standard but highly configurable applications that require no customisation.
  • More uptime and reliability – The CADaaS provider remotely manages and operates its technology, offering its customer measurable availability, reliability and performance based on service level agreements. Customers benefit not only from the high-availability infrastructure, but also from lower IT-related infrastructure, labour and training costs.
  • Lower risk – Following on from the last point, with CADaaS, individual design firms free themselves of the risk that they might be liable in the event that their IT infrastructure suffers some kind of interruption or catastrophe, or that they might be blocked from accessing or retrieving information in the event of a dispute with another team member.
  • Outside-the-firewall collaborative capacity – Also drawing on the lessons learned from AEC collaboration software, it will be easier to collaborate with partners if information is not held in discrete ‘islands’ spread across different companies, but is centrally, securely shared and constantly available in real time without the need to negotiate company firewalls.
  • Flexibility – Like other utilities, CADaaS vendors can deliver as much, or as little, software power as the design companies’ workload requires. The SaaS model allows customers to pay only for the software they actually use, rather than force the customer to anticipate peaks and troughs and budget just for the peaks, leaving unused licenses on the shelf for most of the software’s lifetime.
  • Less ‘feature bloat’ –  Too many conventional software vendors promote their solutions by upselling features that are, as yet, unneeded. Indeed, such approaches mean that many such applications turn the Pareto principle on its head, with customers using only about 20% of the software’s capabilities, while continuing to pay implementation, maintenance, upgrade and support costs for the other, unused 80%. SaaS software, by contrast, is designed from the outset to deliver what the user requires (and SaaS providers are almost uniquely placed to constantly monitor which bits of their applications are widely used and which are effectively redundant). Moreover, most SaaS vendors deliver their applications using a modular structure which allows users to add some capabilities as and when they need them (and to remove them once they are no longer required). As some advanced CAD functions may only be needed occasionally, a pay-as-you-go model may well appeal to some firms – no need to buy expensive shelfware that only gets used once in five years (if at all)!
  • More customer-focussed – CADaaS will change the support model associated with conventional CAD from a reactive one to a more proactive, service-oriented approach. For a start, customers will expect CADaaS solutions to be easy to deploy and administer; as mentioned, they will expect high application availability and performance; and they will look to their vendors to be proactive in helping them optimise their use of CADaaS and to listen to user feedback and continuously enhance the solutions to make them more useful and easy to use. The SaaS model also means that applications can be upgraded incrementally (consistent miniscule changes that add up over time instead of ‘big bang’ patches or upgrades) so that users always work with the latest version representing the best practice crystallised by the vendor across numerous customer engagements.
  • Single version of the truth, blah, blah, etc … – Many of the benefits of CADaaS will reflect the benefits already delivered by construction collaboration providers: a single version of the truth, latest information constantly available 24/7, easier searching for information, fewer interoperability issues (hopefully none!) – and therefore no data translation, reformatting or rekeying, greater transparency, full audit trail showing who did what and when, work anywhere, anytime on any device, etc, etc.

CADaaS could become a viable alternative to conventional, hosted design software – particularly in the AEC sector, renowned for its fragmented and temporary supply chains, wide geographically dispersion and low margins (but there will always be enterprises that prefer to keep things in-house and use internally-hosted applications).

It could also prompt a radical shake-up in the design software market. What we currently understand as design software will come under pressure to prove its value for money. Do we, for example, need large multi-function applications that do everything? Perhaps designers will use a range of CADaaS solutions depending upon their design needs, selecting from one or more vendors depending on the suitability of their applications. Some SaaS businesses might offer high volume services that deliver core CAD functions, leaving advanced functionalities to other specialist SaaS providers from whom they can be bought on a pay-as-you-go basis when needed. As Sinclair Schuller put it in SaaS Blogs last week:

“… can every architecture and design firm afford servers that can perform photorealistic rendering? Probably not, but you can bet that a SaaS provider along with a massive render farm can give that sort of value to anyone on earth.”

 

Permanent link to this article: https://extranetevolution.com/2008/02/cadaas-contin-1/

Feb 14 2008

CADaaS continued

Further to yesterday’s post, I (and several others) have commented on Brian Seitz’s initial article, and the comments and Brian’s responses make continued interesting reading.

Scott Boutwell echoed my view about who might develop a CADaaS solution, asking ‘where are the major CAD vendors in this area of product development and future committment?’ As I commented, I suspect CADaaS might need to be developed by an existing SaaS business or by a new start-up, simply because existing major CAD vendors will be unwilling or unable to make an efficient transition to a services model. However, given the global revenues generated by existing CAD vendors, this would appear to be an attractively sizeable market within which to launch a SaaS alternative – just as Salesforce.com launched a SaaS alternative to take market share away from the incumbent giants in the CRM space.

Scott also looks at the cultural challenges from an AEC perspective, but (I think) overlooks the footprint that SaaS collaboration has already established in some parts of the global AEC industry – in parallel with the adoption of SaaS CRM technologies in other industries. In the UK, I can name several contractors (Bovis Lend Lease, Mace), consultants (Gleeds) and client organisations (BAA, Sainsbury’s) who have eight or more years’ experience of using SAAS solutions to manage major construction projects, and this footprint is expanding beyond the UK, with providers active in the US, in Australia, mainland Europe and the Middle East. Given the scale of the industry, of course, the take-up is a long way from being universal yet and, even today, new adopters can be suspicious of the technologies, but construction-oriented SaaS has a) established a credible track record, b) become profitable – itself a good test of the the technologies’ viability, and c) even become obligatory for some firms’ projects – not least for the perceived competitive edge it gives them.

Permanent link to this article: https://extranetevolution.com/2008/02/cadaas-continue/

Feb 13 2008

SaaS – the killer app for CAD?

Evan Yares’ CAD blog alerted me to a great article by Brian Seitz among the COFES blogs. Brian asks: Is SaaS the Killer App for the CAD Industry?, suggesting that:

“the business model most major CAD vendors operate under – market share and maintenance annuities – is showing its age.  It will not be long before an innovative company will introduce a new business model and value proposition; one that is more closely aligned to current engineering and business priorities.”

Could Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) be the answer? Well, there are many  potential benefits, as Brian writes:

“First, all the procurement and maintenance costs are put back on the vendor’s lap. Second, Engineers need not worry about the process of updating their workstations and are freed to focus on design issues. Engineering departments will be freed from having to have a fulltime CAD system manager and programmer. Third, the fixed costs of some hardware and software become variable expense; thus, as utility needs rise and fall, so do the costs freeing funds for other business initiatives.”

However, Brian also explains some of the possible obstacles to be overcome: ease of customisation, for example, but also intellectual property and security issues, information transparency and data access.

An AEC SaaS perspective

Brian doesn’t look specifically at the architecture, engineering and construction (AEC) sector, but I think his idea certainly has merit given the already increasingly widespread take-up of SaaS-based services to improve information-sharing and management of key project processes in the delivery of AEC projects.

After all, perhaps more than any other sector, construction is characterised by its fragmented supply chains and the need to create, share, develop and manage complex design information among a temporary community of often widely geographically-dispersed, multi-disciplinary team members. In an effort to overcome these physical and professional constraints, many project teams have adopted construction collaboration technologies (aka: ‘project extranets’) which enable team members to exchange their drawings and documents and to manage other project-related processes (from simple RFIs and submittals through to more complex contractual interactions). While some systems can be internally hosted by a team member, others are delivered online on a SaaS basis and are hosted by the vendors. As a result, we are well placed to offer the benefits of practical experience of using SaaS.

Currently, these platforms tend to act as secure repositories for numerous files created by other applications (eg: AutoCAD, MicroStation) which are then published to the system, usually in an agreed file format (eg: DWF, PDF) that allows easy information sharing even by those who don’t have the originating application. Brian clearly envisages a time where this process becomes much more seamless: designs could be created online and almost immediately shared with and developed further through collaboration with other authorised members of the project team. This ‘CADaaS‘ vision perhaps also takes us beyond scenarios of a BIM-driven world in which designers and constructors work together on nD building information models that are fully interoperable with other applications – though software compatibility and people and process issues also remain potentially major stumbling blocks here, as I’ve written before (for example, see Software incompatibility bar to interoperability, Collaboration: standards, viewing, plus industry education and Integrated Project Delivery).

Towards CADaaS

In the meantime, let’s look briefly at the pitfalls that Brian identified, and see how SaaS-based systems might deliver.

  • Customisation – Recognising that many clients, contractors and consultants will often want to present information using in-house standards, some of the more sophisticated collaboration platforms have extensive levels of configurability. As a result, the vendor can continue to maintain a single instance of the core software code, but the end-users can maintain their own branding, naming and numbering conventions, layouts, etc. Of course, this won’t be the complete answer for CAD environments but it suggests one potential route forward.
  • Data ownership – I think SaaS construction collaboration vendors tend to regard themselves essentially as neutral platform or environment providers, exercising no rights over the authorship or copyright of the designs or other information loaded onto the system. I imagine a similar approach might be adopted for CADaaS. However, among the people and process issues to be resolved is the issue of IP relating to a design that emerges as the result of multi-disciplinary collaboration by individuals drawn from several different organisations.
  • System reliability – AEC experience since the turn of the century shows that SaaS-delivered collaboration services can be incredibly reliable 24/7 – certainly, most construction organisations that I have worked with would struggle to return comparable figures for availability of internal systems. While a future CADaaS provider would not be able to overcome major infrastructure issues (damaged under-sea cables, for instance, or poor company networks), it would at least be able to offer service level agreements that contractually bind it to maintaining multiple back-up systems and delivering high levels of system availability, speed, etc – just as collaboration vendors do today.
  • System security – Similarly, SaaS-delivered collaboration services offer high levels of physical and logical security (always assuming, of course, that individuals can be relied upon to manage their user IDs and passwords, etc!). Modern data centres are highly secure facilities, whereas I have spoken to firms who’ve lost vital project data due to an office break-in. Bank-level internet security and encryption tools already help ensure that only authorised individuals have access to data – and then only to data relevant to their role and responsibilities. The best systems also maintain tamper-proof audit trails detailing all user interactions, so who did what and when is never an issue. And, since data need never be downloaded to a laptop, at least one potential security loophole is easily closed – unlike some of those managed by government agencies, for example.
  • Data access – Again, construction collaboration vendors have already tackled this challenge. Most providers offer facilities whereby all of a customer’s data can be downloaded to DVDs or hard-disk drives, complete with the necessary applications to allow offline search, access and view of all information (similar archives can also be offered for supply chain members who require them to satisfy professional indemnity insurance requirements). The UK vendors’ tra
    de body, the NCCTP, is already working towards a data exchange standard that will allow data to be migrated from one system to another.
  • Escrow – BIW [my employer] and 4Projects, among others, have escrow agreements and related hosting arrangements in place to reassure customers that they will still be able to access and extract data even if the provider ceased trading for any reason.

As a final thought, CADaaS isn’t necessarily decades away. There are already several online drawing tools available – I’ve written before about Autodesk’s ProjectDraw, for example – and there are increasingly sophisticated CAD mark-up and commenting tools embedded in many online file viewing applications.

Permanent link to this article: https://extranetevolution.com/2008/02/saas-the-kill/

Load more