Issue link: http://digital.copcomm.com/i/997235
www.postmagazine.com 31 POST JUNE 2018 WORKSTATIONS rendering/processing. Likewise, M&E, manufacturing, and construction firms stated they had more interest in VR than aver- age, while AEC firms were more interested in cloud rendering/processing than average. China and North America showed more interest in VR than average, while the US and China have a higher interest in 4 k. One of the misunderstandings the general press and others make is when they see the terms "VR" and "workstation" together; they think of a user wearing a head-mounted display (HMD). However, the major role for a workstation in VR is content creation as opposed to content enjoyment. However, VR can be a partial supplement for a CAVE or can augment one. A CAVE, or Cave automatic virtual environment, is a virtual-reality system that uses projectors to display images on three or four walls and the floor. By creating a VR walk-through of the proposed facility in the very early stages, manufacturers can engage with equipment suppliers and vendors, which allows them to better plan how operations will be conducted in the facility. Workloads in the Cloud According to the survey, there is a strong progres- sion to the cloud. The respondents indicated they are actively moving both storage and computation to the cloud in the near term. Less-regulated firms in the US and UK will see the largest jump to the cloud, while firms already in the cloud have not seen a drop-off in workstation CPU needs. AEC, M&E and manufacturing see more move- ment to the cloud in both areas than average, while finance and health care/biotech are more resistant to moving to the cloud. China expects computa- tion to stay more local, while the US and UK are more open to the cloud. The survey results correlated well with our find- ings for JPR's CAD in the Cloud study (see "CAD in the Cloud," CGW, July.August 2017). There really isn't one "CAD market," there are several CAD markets. CAD is such a universal tool; it is used in dozens of other markets. CAD usage in one field can look quite different from CAD usage in another field. However, there are a couple of segments that dominate the use of CAD: AEC and manufacturing. Those two seg- ments compose about 70 percent of the market, and for the purposes of analyzing the data, the rest is categorized as "other." Similar levels of current and planned implemen- tation are seen across the main industry sectors. There are higher levels of ongoing evaluation in manufacturing and AEC than "other" sectors, of which almost half have not investigated CAD-in- the-cloud solutions at all. CAD is not the only engineering application to move to the cloud: Finite-element analysis (FEA), computational fluid dynamics (CFD), and sub- terranean geophysical exploration modeling are some other applications that need the distribu- tion and storage capability of the cloud to allow secure collaboration worldwide. It's a constant trade-off between local processing and storage, versus cloud storage and local processing, and cloud storage and processing. And even within a company, on a given project, all three arrange- ments will be employed. There is no single answer (one size does not fit all), and it's the flexibility that remote computing and storage offer that has helped propel the productivity gains in the face of increases in dataset sizes. Product Introductions and Buy Cycles Generally speaking, the workstation suppliers are in- troducing new products every two years on average to keep up with expanding workloads and soft- ware upgrades. Survey respondents reported that they try to look at the workload software upgrade specifications a year before they buy and plan their refresh around those requirements. Large companies are moving toward two-year leases to automatically stock the best workstations. For AEC firms with users not involved in rendering, workstations are replaced every three to four years. Manufacturing, M&E and energy/oil and gas are refreshing faster than the average. In the past, large organizations would use a purchasing agent or IT manager to choose which workstation would be given to the company's en- gineers. These buyers' motivations were different from engineering: IT was looking for stability and communally for ease of maintenance and sup- port, while engineering was looking for maximum performance. Typically, the engineers needing maximum performance were the minority and didn't have a voice in the decision process. Today, that's totally reversed because large and small organizations have learned that with the demands of time to market, product differentiation, trace- ability, and quality control, it's the engineers who need to be driving the selection of which type of workstation they use. Germany and France's refresh cycles are longer than the average. The US and UK have shorter re- fresh cycles than the average. Refresh cycles also are different for every organization, usually driven by budget cycles, and many tiers are out of sync with the realities of the market. For years, accountants and financial 0% 5% 10% 25% 15% 20% 30% Overclocking ability Runs multiple monitor screens Solid-state drive (SSD/flash) storage Handles 3D designs/programming/rendering Strong network connectivity Easy to manage and deploy Powerful processor (CPU) Powerful graphics processor (GPU) Su€cient memory (RAM) Certified for my software applications FUTURE INTERESTS 39% 4K Video 17% Virtual Reality 18% Cloud Rendering (or processing) 24% Augmented Reality 2% None of the above Decision tree for technical and business decision-makers who recommend, approve or actually purchase workstations. The future interests of workstation users.