Eric Suesz
We kicked off the day early with an 8 am session Info360 Operational Digital Twin for Water. It was the first live demo of the just-released Info360 Plant, and Product Manager Michael Pennell didn’t disappoint.
Mike walked the attendees through the Info360 platform, reviewing trends in operational Digital Twins and how we’re moving simulation models to the cloud to enable powerful, real-time simulations. And, of course, we covered some of the most exciting aspects like machine learning and AI modeling approaches that can be used to optimize simulations in real time.
One detail that really seems to hit home to people in the audiences in these sessions is how Info360 Plant can automate custom compliance reports, spitting out an Excel file in a ready-to-submit regulation-required format. It really can save massive amounts of time.
Water Industry Futures Briefing
Autodesk VP of Design Strategy Theo Agelopoulos opened up this session about the future roadmap of Innovyze products with an interesting statement about Autodesk, which acquired Innovyze 18 months ago: “We are evolving from being a product company to being a platform company”.
And after 18 months, we see that happening on the Innovyze side with the release of Info360 Plant. Innovyze was already working on SaaS applications before the acquisition, but that has accelerated rapidly.
Sitting next to me in the audience were two civil engineers from Breda in the Netherlands – the same country where I live. I heard them speaking Dutch and couldn’t resist practicing my fledgling Dutch language skills. I struck up a conversation and learned that they use an Innovyze offering, but they were curious to hear more. They were very intrigued by Theo’s statement about Autodesk becoming a platform company.
After running through the existing analytics in Info360 Plant, Mike talked about what’s coming next, itemizing a list of things they’re working on with different types of machine learning models. Some of these future plans exist in other Innovyze products and can be relatively easily incorporated into Info360 Plant.
A real wow moment in this presentation – which continued with roadmap details on Info360 Asset and Info360 Insight – was showing just how quickly a simulation can run in the cloud. Hydraulic simulation modellers using desktop products have probably learned to live with waiting hours for a complex simulation to complete, but we were able to see how a large set of models can run in the cloud in a matter of seconds. It was just like watching a file download quickly via a progress bar on a high-speed connection. Lickety-split fast.
A question that people often ask (a question we heard in one session, in fact) is, “That sounds great… but does it scale?” The answer is yes – thanks to the muscular power of Amazon Web Services. We’re extremely excited about the time savings (and cybersecurity) we can offer customers by moving simulations to the cloud.
A fruitful week at AU
The future roadmap session was an excellent ending to a very productive week for Innovyze at Autodesk University. We’re extremely excited about the Info360 platform, and we’re committed to bringing customers with us on every step of this journey. In fact, we’ve created a public roadmap for Info360 Plant that you can peruse at your leisure.
It was a fruitful week at Autodesk University, and we hope you’ll join us next year if you couldn’t make it this year. Be sure to peruse the Autodesk University site. You can watch some of the main stage presentations now, and, in the coming weeks, many of the presentations will be available to view for anyone who couldn’t make it.