The topic of cloud CAD has attracted wide attention from the industry since the all-cloud CAD software Onshape was released for public beta and received $64 million in seed round financing. In fact, in recent years, several major CAD software providers have explored the strategic measures of CAD cloudization to varying degrees, but there are not many cases that have been widely used.
On the one hand, cloud computing is the general direction of IT technology trends; On the other hand, changes in business models may have an impact on the company's performance. How to choose the future strategic action of CAD is very important. Brian Thompson's answer is that depending on the customer's choice, the customer will choose according to his own needs and technology application stage. What PTC should do is to make a good technical reserve.
In fact, in recent months, PTC has deployed Creo on Amazon AWS in the United States, Europe, Japan and other markets, while the China market is slightly lagging behind due to policies and regulations. Brian Thompson said that PTC currently has some pilot projects of cloud CAD, but specific customer cases will take time, and PTC will continue to conduct research, investigation and investment.
For the tepid global CAD market in recent years, Brian Thompson thinks it still has the potential of rapid growth. In Brian Thompson's view, there are two important factors that promote the development of CAD market at present. One is 3D printing technology. The deep integration of CAD technology and 3D printing technology will stimulate the further growth of CAD market. The second is the Internet of Things technology. At present, the manufacturing industry still has great potential in deploying Internet of Things applications, which requires upgrading CAD applications to a level that can support the enterprise's Internet of Things strategy.
In addition, Brian Thompson also pointed out that the integration of CAD technology with Internet of Things, additive manufacturing, AR and other technologies is only the tip of the iceberg in the future of CAD. The future development direction of CAD will definitely collide with applications such as machine learning and big data, and more intelligent applications will be derived.
For example, Brian Thompson said that there is currently a functional Creo performance consultant in Creo. If there is a problem with a function of Creo, it will be reported directly to PTC with the permission of the customer. PTC will automatically retrieve similar questions in the knowledge base, and if there is a matching answer, it will directly transmit it to the customer to help solve the problem. This is actually a simple intelligent application based on knowledge system with the help of big data technology. And in the future CAD, maybe you can expect more.