Feature
Bentley Systems embraces the cloud
Bentley is taking a measured approach to cloud services, allowing its users to set their own pace as they embrace data mobility, simulation and flexible licensing by Martyn Day & Greg Corke
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s a consequence of an industrywide move to Building Information Modelling (BIM), it is without doubt that collaboration has become harder. File formats have given way to relational spatial databases; lines, circles and arcs have become parametric models of real-word components; drawings are increasingly seen as a byproduct, or legal requirement, not an end goal. To this backdrop, one of Bentley CEO, Greg Bentley’s favourite topics is that of collaboration, what he terms ‘Information Mobility’. At Bentley’s recent Year in Infrastructure event in London Mr Bentley reinforced the problems faced by the federated infrastructure industry. Project information must not be locked inside corporate databases, accessible to only the privileged few, but made available in a controlled fashion to all project participants. BIM presents new challenges as well as new opportunities to revisit the whole ‘connectedness’ of project information and its flow. Bentley’s ecosystem of tools, servers, mobile applications and i-models (containers for the open exchange of infrastructure information), is aiming to ease this flow of data between industry standard applications. Bentley recently sponsored a SmartMarket report on Information Mobility, along with Bluebeam, BIMForum and the Building Smart Alliance. The free 48-page document makes for interesting reading, highlighting that only 20% of companies track project information to or from other firms and 41% track internal flows (tinyurl.com/IM-smart-report). Improved collaboration helps every aspect of the design and build process, from scheduling to versioning, with new mobile devices and applications enabling onsite information to be fed back into the system. Everyone knows that reducing errors, decreases costs and providing
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Bentley Systems today Bentley Systems has come a long way from being known as the developer of MicroStation 2D drafting software. It now has annual revenues of over $500 million and remains a privately held firm, with over 3,000 employees in 45 countries and is a major player in all the AEC, plant and infrastructure markets. With MicroStation still the founding platform technology, the company has developed a plethora of industry-specific solutions and applications to create, manage, and distribute complex design data. The company specialises in supporting major projects through its ecosystem of desktop, mobile and server-based design and analysis tools together with its management / collaboration platform, ProjectWise, which lies at the heart of many major multi-billion pound projects, such as the UK’s Crossrail. Every year it compiles a list of the top 500 Infrastructure owners, in terms of billions and trillions worth of assets owned. The kinds of firms and government bodies listed are an indication of the typical Bentley customer. As the company’s products have developed it’s clear to see that Bentley is not just engaged in adding ‘features’ to products but is just as focused on attempting to solve the many process issues that face us in creating complex models and sharing this rich 3D design information from client to construction worker, from concept through lifecycle to demolition.
access to accurate information can be achieved just by using existing tools. When asked what formats firms use to exchange project information, as probably expected, PDF and CAD files, paper drawings and handwritten notes took the lion’s share of responses (72-92% for each). However in two years’ time, the majority of firms predict that ‘central’ cloud storage
will host their data, with the majority (89%) expecting a major reduction in the use of paper and handwritten notes. The combined benefits of ‘digitalisation’ of project information, the centralisation of management and the expanded reach of mobile devices such as smart phones and tablets, means that projects can be better connected end-to-end. Mr Bentley highlighted how increasing mobile bandwidth such as 4G (LTE) certainly helps in cities but other technologies such as satellite data is also being employed to enable WiFi onsite. By utilising these cloud-enabling services, design and construction teams can be connected, getting the latest design information to those in the field and the latest reality on site back to base. Mobile apps like Bentley’s Field Supervisor for the iPad and iPhone are helping shape this vision. To highlight the importance of collaboration to the entire BIM world, Mr Bentley has taken to calling BIM, B/IM, where IM stands both for Information Modelling and Information Mobility. We are unsure how many other CAD vendors will take up the convention but can see how Bentley’s strength in management and distribution technology would make it want to give it equal billing in the move to the industry adopting new complex processes.
Bentley leverages the cloud With the focus on connectivity and the benefit of cloud within the design ecosystem, last year Bentley announced ‘Bentley Connect’, a cloud-based storage and sharing service, which provided each user with full audit trails, versioning and data file transfer. Now Bentley has fleshed out some soon to be available cloud-based services, some of which could radically impact the way core applications are located and accessed. Bentley has been experimenting with Microsoft’s Azure cloud service for a numwww.AECmag.com
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