Have you noticed? It’s getting cloudy. Just about anywhere you turn today, the cloud is there. Maybe not in the sky, but it is there…on the radio, in the paper, in the news, and in manufacturing. This cloud, however, has nothing to do with the weather and everything to do with the advanced computing technologies already permeating the consumer space—and now poised to capture the manufacturing market as well.
Powerful and ubiquitous, cloud computing is an Internet-enabled technology that can reside virtually anywhere. The end user does not have to own it. If a facility decides to redesign a product and its engineering department moves to build a prototype, it may take months to purchase, install, and commission the additional computer services for the task. But in the cloud, these tasks can be procured and configured in minutes. And, if managed properly, they will cost less.
Using the cloud, facilities can accommodate operational spikes more easily, procuring computer resources when needed—and only when needed. The cloud elastically grows and shrinks with demand. More importantly, the customer pays only for what is used. Laden with the need to manage huge volumes of data for and from processes and machinery, industry already knows the advantages of being able to share and access information. Thanks to the cloud, it can improve data management even further and move performance and profitability to a level once thought impossible.