Leaders in Cloud Technology
By Jonathan Girroir • Cloud technology is essential for developers of engineering applications, their end users, and just about everyone else involved in industries across the tech world. Since emerging a few decades ago, cloud capabilities have become a cornerstone of everyday life.
Tech Soft 3D is a proud leader in cloud technology, both in the toolkits we create and the expertise we provide our partners. Our products and experience have played a key role in the success of hundreds of applications, and we are dedicated to staying at the cutting edge of this vital technology, as we are with all emerging technologies poised to impact the industries we serve.
How did we get here, why is the cloud so important, and why are we so committed to the future of cloud technology?
Tech Soft 3D Has Been Around for Ground-Breaking Technology Shifts
We’ve been around for a while. Tech Soft 3D has 25+ years of experience in engineering software development, and in that time, we’ve seen some incredible technology shifts. And, as a provider of component technology, we follow shifts that impact our partners closely so that when they’re ready to adopt, our tools are ready. The emergence and mass adoption of cloud technologies has been one of the biggest.
After the PC revolution, desktop software and the industry built around it were the foundation of engineering application development. There was innovation and improvement, but less disruption than we see nowadays. Cloud technology has been the first major shake-up to this industry norm since, and we have been at the forefront of helping developers take advantage of its capabilities.
In the early 2000s, there was a race to help clients build tools directly into browsers. While teams debated what counted as “cloud technology”, the core benefit of which lay in the ability to connect everyone to the same data. For our part, we built the graphics kernel that would become HOOPS Communicator and later a core part of our HOOPS Web Platform.
Today, cloud technology represents access to collaboration, greater processing power, real-time feedback, and much more. It is essential for our toolkits and our partners’ products to take advantage of other future ground-breaking technological developments.
Serving our Partners Requires Expertise in Cloud Technology
Developing engineering requires that we work very closely with our partners. Our toolkits are embedded as integral components of hundreds of applications for a huge array of industries. Tech Soft 3D has decades of practice moving with evolving technology, including the vital period over the last 20 years where companies have shifted products, strategies, and development to the cloud.
We have supported over 100 of these companies through this process, learning and improving at every step of the way. Our partners include those from a multitude of 3D markets including CAD, CAM, Additive Manufacturing, AEC, BIM, CAE, PLM, MBD, and any other 3D acronym you can probably think up. This experience is one of the most important reasons we are leaders in cloud technology – we've already helped teams from a wide range of industries with their cloud-based development, and we can do the same for you.
We have seen some of the very real challenges that come with cloud-based development or moving existing applications. Server/client architecture comes with a considerable number of considerations when it comes to where to host your data, multi-user interaction paradigms, how to reconcile edits when working offline, how to minimize bandwidth with streaming and caching, and balancing the benefits of local vs remote storage and rendering. Security is an ever-present issue and concern, especially as the value of the intellectual property (designs) or workflows (critical systems) increases. Uptime, redundancy, load balancing, and cost control are all new skills and roles that a development organization needs to staff and support.
At a higher level, the nature of moving program logic to the cloud can result in latency, which can cause issues depending on your use case. Porting legacy systems can be costly in terms of both time and resources. Enterprise organizations must have total buy-in to incorporate cloud-based technology, and the reorientation of larger systems is complicated.
These organizations may have a significant customer base, which requires incentives to put their data in the cloud. On the other side of the spectrum, small teams and startups require expertise and development experience they may not feasibly have access to.
Navigating these challenges is difficult, and we won’t pretend our experience will magically solve all the issues you might have. What we can say is Tech Soft 3D is ready to help you through these concerns, providing our industry-proven, cloud-based functionality to whatever your needs may be. Both our team and our technology are built to support you, whatever your needs may be – it's a cornerstone of our philosophy on creating strategic technology partnerships.
Cloud Technology is a Keystone for the Future
The history of how we developed and maintained our expertise in cloud technology highlights our credentials, but the reasons why we continue to care are just as important.
Tech Soft 3D is constantly learning from our partners, investing in cloud technology improvements and innovation, and pushing the envelope on what is possible in this area, and for good reason – Cloud technology is the foundation of many of the current and future innovations that will change the world.
For example, industrial metaverse technology and XR are built on cloud infrastructure. Mobile applications are allowing for convenience and functionality in new areas, and many wouldn’t be possible without this foundation. Massive language models and advanced simulation capabilities from a wide array of industries rely on data streaming from the cloud. These are just a few examples of areas where the cloud’s impact is felt without even touching the elephant in the room of every discussion on the future of technology...artificial intelligence.
AI is the buzzword of technology as a whole, and for good reason – we haven’t even scratched the surface of what it will be capable of. The nature of this technology stands poised to revolutionize every nearly industry it touches in ways we have never seen before. It will require reinventing how we manage data, generate and store power, and handle information streaming. We don’t know exactly what it will look like, but we can be sure that cloud technology will be indispensable in making it happen.
Tech Soft 3D is a leader in cloud technology because we want to stay at the forefront of engineering software development. To do this, we simply must continue to learn, innovate, and advance our expertise in cloud technology. We have the history, partnerships, and people to maintain our leadership in this critical space of our industry.
If you want to chat about cloud technology, our toolkits, ask a question, or anything else, please get in touch.