Editor's Pick: Cloud Simulation Gets Real

Dear Desktop Engineering Reader:

Let’s flashback to 1990’s MBA argot: What’s your core competency? Running a data center or using simulation to optimize your designs and get to market faster and better? The reason I ask is that any outfit can get itself into a twist spending wads of money on hardware and software that’s forever progressing just beyond their grasp. Today’s Pick of the Week is an important item for engineering managers, IT and design and mechanical engineers who find themselves in a cycle of never-ending expenditures on infrastructure to support their design and analysis needs.

ANSYS has released version 16.1 of its portfolio of engineering simulation applications. A key new addition is something called the ANSYS Enterprise Cloud. I know you’ve heard a lot about the cloud and may have even tried a few things out. ANSYS Enterprise Cloud appears to be a much different solution.

For one, it makes the entire ANSYS application suite available. Two, it’s supported by Amazon Web Services, which should simplify and speed up your transition to cloud-based simulation. Three, it’s designed to give you consistent, enterprise-specific simulation workflows and data to more engineers wherever they are located.

That’s important. See, the ANSYS Enterprise Cloud supports end-to-end simulation workflows, including pre-processing and 3D graphical post-processing. That means you waste minimal time transferring files like you do with a batch cloud solution. You access it as a single-tenant environment, which further helps secure your data.

ANSYS Enterprise Cloud can also be customized for your unique simulation processes, and it supports both ANSYS and non-ANSYS applications. And ANSYS says that you can deploy to ANSYS Enterprise Cloud within days.

Still, the most important aspect of ANSYS Enterprise Cloud is that more of your colleagues gain access to the ANSYS analysis software suite and the hardware they need to run it without investing more in storage and CPUs that never seem enough. That is good stuff.

ANSYS 16.1 introduces ANSYS Enterprise Cloud for enterprise simulation on the cloud. Image courtesy of ANSYS Inc.

ANSYS 16.1 also sees upgrades to popular applications like ANSYS DesignXplorer  for parametric analyses, ANSYS AIM for integrated single-user multiphysics and ANSYS RedHawk  for system-aware SoC (system on a chip) power, noise and reliability simulation. You can learn more about that and the ANSYS Enterprise Cloud from today’s Pick of the Week write-up. Of special note: At the end of the write-up, you’ll find a link to take a test drive of ANSYS on the cloud. It's worth checking out.

Thanks, Pal. – Lockwood

Anthony J. Lockwood

Editor at Large, Desktop Engineering

Learn about ANSYS 16.1 here.