BIM and the Cloud BIM和云

BIM and the Cloud BIM和云Chris France，方开辉CIO, Little Diversified Architectural Consulting，Little 多元设计咨询公司首席信息官原文链接：/feature/2010/BIM_Cloud.html翻译：雷群，June Lei北京柏慕进业工程咨询有限公司设计与技术总监文章正文We have heard a lot about Cloud Computing and SaaS (Software as a Service), but what about moving our high performance graphics workstations to the cloud? This article describes how Little Diversified Architectural Consulting, located in Charlotte NC, built a private cloud that included their high performance graphics workstations (HPGW). A private cloud differs from the public cloud providers such as Amazon Web Services or Google by the fact that the cloud computing infrastructure and resources are controlled by the individual business that deploys it. (See a brief discussion by Tom Bittman of Gartner on private cloud computing in this YouTube video.)我们对“云计算”（Cloud Computing）和“软件作为服务”（SaaS）这些新概念已经耳熟能详，但是能不能将高性能图形工作站植入云中呢？本文介绍了位于美国北卡莱罗纳州夏洛市的Little 多元化建筑设计公司如何建立包含高性能图形工作站的“私有云”。

“私有云”和“公共云”（例如Amazon Web Services or Google）不同之处在于前者云基础构架和信息资源由某个公司建立和运行。

（请参见Gartner的Tom Bittman 对私有云的介绍）In general, most of the current discussion around cloud computing has been dealing with the servers (or back-end systems). Only recently have businesses begun to put their desktops and workstations into the cloud. Little’s cloud is the first AEC workstation cloud in production and is on track to reduce our workstation and laptop hardware expense by 67% ($2M) over the next 10 years.总体而言，目前关于云计算的讨论大多数还集中在后台服务器系统上。

直到最近才有公司将他们的台式机或工作站放到云上。

Little 的云是AEC（建筑工程行业）领域里的首个云技术应用，其目标是在今后10年内将工作站及手提电脑硬件花费减少67%（大概2百万美元）。

Why is this solution viable now—what has changed? There are several reasons. First, the cost of network bandwidth has decreased. You can now get 10mb of metro Ethernet for the same price a T1 (1.5mb) used to cost. Also, Windows 7 and Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP) have gotten much better at moving screen images of media-rich applications. Finally, hardware costs are coming down and rack-mounted server-class workstations are within the reach of many firms.是什么变化使得这些应用目标有望实现呢？有许多原因，第一，网络带宽费用降低。

现在10 mb以城域太网的价格相当于之前的T1(1.5mb)的价格；另一个原因，Windows 7和远程桌面协议(RDP)在移动图形处理和多媒体动画视频方面有重大改进。

最后，硬件设备费用逐渐降低使越来越多的公司能够买得起专业的机架服务器.Business Benefits of Workstation Clouds工作站云的商业效用The current economy has been challenging for all organizations and has caused everyone to rethink everything. The driving force behind this cloud innovation at Little has been Building Information Modeling (BIM). Designers are now able to construct a fully documented, 3D building on a computer before they actually build it on-site. This requires a lot of computer power as well as a few obstacles to overcome. Little’s cloud strategy “kills 11 birds with one stone” and has many applications outside of the Architecture, Engineering, and Construction (AEC) industry as well. These 11 business benefits are discussed below.当前经济模式的转变迫使所有企业去思考应变方式。

Little 应用云技术的源动力在于BIM （建筑信息模型）的广泛应用- 设计人员可以在计算机上虚拟建造建筑，同时提供全套的设计施工文件、3D模型等-这需要高强度的计算能力以及克服一些其他的障碍（例如即时协同工作、信息共享、安全备份等）。

Little 的云战略具有“一石十一鸟”的效益，同时包括了AEC行业以外很多其他应用。

以下为十一项优势：1.Growing Desktop Computing Needs应对工作电脑性能不断提升的要求As an architectural and engineering firm, Little has heavy desktop computing needs—very similar to the gaming industry. Our industry applications require a lot of simulation, analysis, rendering, and 3D modeling in order to design buildings. We had been on a 2-yr refresh cycle for our laptops. Each year, Little spent between $250,000-$300,000 and the laptops were getting more expensive aswe added more software capability. In 2009, we could not afford to refresh our laptops as we normally did, but we still had increasing desktop needs. Switching to a workstation cloud strategy allowed us to shift to a 4-5 year refresh cycle by providing access to high performance workstations. Our laptops could easily operate as “cloud access devices” and new laptops could be purchased for less than $1000 when required. Now our laptops are kept until the wheels fall off. Little的多元化设计服务（包括建筑模拟、分析、渲染、3D 模型）对计算机设备性能的要求是相当高的，堪比游戏行业。

我们手提电脑的更新周期是2年，每年大约$250,000-$300,000的设备更新费用；同时随着软件越来越复杂，手提电脑越卖越贵。

直到2009年，我们再也支付不起昂贵的手提电脑更新费用，而设计师对电脑性能要求仍不断提升。

转换到云战略，云工作站更新周期是4-5年，作为接入云工作站的终端-手提电脑，则完全可以采用稍低性能的（低于$1000/台），而且能用到报废为止。

2. Collaborating Over Wide Area Geography实现跨地区协同工作As a multi-office firm, Little’s designers wou ld be assigned to a project based on their expertise and the needs of the client project. It was very common to have people in Orlando, DC, and Charlotte working on the same building model. While the software vendors are working on solutions to make their products operate over a WAN and infrastructure companies can provide WAN accelerators—this still was not good enough. Was it too much to ask to have the distributed project teams working just as if they were sitting in the same office? I didn’t think s o. Byshifting everyone to the cloud, we were able to give that “same office” experience to a distributed project team.作为拥有多分支机构的设计公司，Little的设计人员需要根据项目和专业的需求成立很多项目组。