... for the experiments
a) The end-user perspective: from the end users’ point of view all experiments go beyond their current state of the art because they perform use cases that have not been implemented in these companies so far. Thus, they clearly have experimental character for those companies and go beyond their current state of play.
b) In many cases the VARs, ISVs and/or Competence Centres supporting the experiment(s) have come-up with beyond-SotA approaches, in addition, that push the edge of current technical possibilities.
c) The first wave of seven experiments estimated an economic impact after one year and after five years w.r.t. new jobs, increased turnover, enhanced products / new services, etc.
... for the platform
With the CloudiFacturing Solution end users will gain access to all of the technologies with just a single set of credentials, including central billing and invoicing, data management, and software execution. For an end user who merely consumes executable artefacts on the CloudiFacturing platform, there is no notice of the initial two technology stacks. Furthermore, ISVs are able to implement software using different technology and at the same time make use elastic cloud computing and high-perfomance computing resources in a secure manner. This enlarges the possible breadth and variety of software solutions, benefiting both ISVs and end users. The HPC services provides a secure infrastructure-as-a-service solution which is easily portable between HPC providers and allows for bidirectional communication with running HPC jobs through web interfaces. Singularity-based containerization of the software deployed on the HPC cluster increases the flexibility of ISVs and avoids vendor lock-in. Adapters to different cloud resource providers are also available in the platform.
... for the Digital Marketplace
The CloudiFacturing Digital Marketplace complements the concept of a one-stop-shop with the concept of community. This combination of marketplace and community, coined agora, is very unique in the context of cloud-based solutions for manufacturing SMEs. By relying on the concept of agora, we will be able build and cultivate a community, where interested manufacturing SMEs will be able to have a source of know-how and also the possibility to interact with peers, who are looking for similar solutions or who have solved similar challenges. We believe that the concept of agora and the foreseen development behind the Digital Marketplace will allow us to bring the technology a step closer to the practitioners, while also giving us more ways to interact with them and to improve their user experience and their satisfaction, which we hope to successfully convert into more adopters.
