What a difference a year makes. Or, more to the point, what difference did the past year make in terms of SolidWorks news? This year, the new CEO of SolidWorks, Bertrand Sicot, made a brief statement to clarify the announcements about cloud direction for the company.
We will always have a desktop CAD.
It will never be an either/or choice for you.
Sicot made a sincere effort to clearly state that a destktop version of SolidWorks will always be available. However, I’ve seen companies make promises and statements all the time, then change their plans, sometimes the next day. Even still, I’m glad to see the clarification from Sicot.
It appears they will continue to develop down the path to eventually offer CAD as a service over the Internet (commonly referred to by the term cloud or Software as a Service in some contexts). At SolidWorks World 2010, the word cloud was spoken an uncountable number of times. So far at SolidWorks World 2011, the word cloud has not been spoken by any SolidWorks representative. What a difference a year makes.
