Working Together Up in the Clouds

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I got my engineering degree from the United States Merchant Marine Academy in Kings Point NY. One of the best parts of the program was the sea year in which every midshipman spent a year on a US merchant ship. I learned a lot during that year but one thing that impressed me was when we went under the Golden Gate bridge it was just us on the ship. If anything happened on the ship we had to fix it or we weren’t coming home.

After graduation I went into the US Navy where I qualified as a nuclear watch officer and in submarines. Once again after we submerged if anything happened to the ship, we had to fix it to come back home.

After coming onshore, and working in construction I was allowed to come home every night. While at work, if I had any problems that were difficult to solve, I picked up the phone and got in touch with the people who could help me out. I quickly discovered how powerful it is to collaborate with other when problem solving.

While working as a start-up engineer I had access to equipment vendors, the design engineers, as well as the operators. When we had a particularly difficult problem, it was amazing what happened when we all got in a room to formulate a solution. There was only drawback though, when you wanted to work effectively together on a project, everyone needed to be present or the lines of communication could easily break down. It would have been difficult to keep everyone on the same page otherwise.

When I started Engineered Software, I initially thought that our PIPE-FLO® program would be used by mainly design engineers. As time went on, I discovered that a large portion of our customers were actually at manufacturing and industrial plants that were already operating and working in operations or maintenance. They told me they valued the clear picture the software provided to everyone on their teams. I know how important it is to effectively communicate the scope of a project to all involved.

In 2002, Jim Vinson, one of our long time PIPE-FLO users asked if there was any way he could provide a working model to vendors and engineering firms that didn’t have a copy of PIPE-FLO. I saw an opportunity brewing here.

I had noticed when we would contract with a graphic artist to get something created, they would use a specialized graphics program and then submit us a draft as a PDF or Portable Document Format, offering a link to a free reader program like Acrobat® Reader®. Using a powerful design program, then saving it in a format that could be shared with others that did not have the full design program. Ingenious! That got me actively thinking, and figuring out how to apply that to our products.

Many of our customers would create piping system models and wanted the ability to share a read-only version of their design with their team or their customers who may not have the PIPE-FLO program. That idea resulted in the PIPE-FLO Viewer program and the PSV file format that can be opened and calculations viewed using the free viewer program. It is amazing how many PVS files are shared and how many copies of the free PIPE-FLO Viewer program that have been downloaded.

Now we are looking at better ways to offer collaborative tools that offer not just portability, but interactivity. We are gearing up to release our newest version of our PUMP-FLO.com program, a web based pump selection portal. This new version is a step towards the cloud computing of the future. A collaborative environment, where people can share information and never have to even be in the same location. It’s official, we’re a cloud provider.

In addition to offering a program available to users on the internet, the new online PUMP-FLO Premium software will store their data for them on a secured server, and will allow users to share, evaluate, collaborate their saved data searches. Not only can you save a pump selection project, but you can share it with others.

For example, a pump buyer can enter their pump requirements into PUMP-FLO Premium creating a saved search list. Once this information is entered by the pump buyer, they can share their system design requirements with specific pump suppliers. The pump suppliers are sent an e-mail notification about their customers pumping application and can then select the best pump from the products they carry, and modifying a search list. Once the selection process is completed by the pump supplier, the pump buyer can evaluate the selected pump and move forward on the purchase.

This collaboration of pump system data represents a major advancement in the process of selecting pumps. I am particularly excited about the new program we are about to release, including all the new features and what this means for the future of collaborative pump selection. This is cloud computing, or collaborative computing is how we plan to move in the future with all of our software products.

** The PUMP-FLO Premium is now in final beta where it is receiving rave reviews by our PUMP-FLO Premium beta users. The PUMP-FLO Premium service is scheduled to go live, Summer 2010. Sneak Peak

Now it’s time to hear from you. Please feel free to share your experiences, or opinions on this blog entry or any other subject that is of interest. I can be reached at blogger@eng-software.com.