The Cloud is coming. The title of this blog post is self-explanatory. Inforbix, Cloud, and Security are important topics I believe have to be explained in the context of each other. There is much discussion about the cloud these days relating to companies in the engineering and manufacturing domain. Major CAD vendors such as Autodesk and Dassault are betting their success with cloud strategies. For example, here are two recent cloud related announcements by two major CAD players: Autodesk and Dassault.
Giants, Oracle and IBM, are also on the road to have more business around the cloud. Oracel’s recent announcement is here and IBM’s here.
Inforbix and Cloud Inforbix is also betting on the cloud. At the same time, we understand people’s concern in manufacturing companies for their product data and company IP. So, we decided to do something interesting: Inforbix uses the cloud, but Inforbix does NOT move actual data to the cloud. Kenneth Wong of Desktop Engineering made an excellent clarification of what Inforbix does on the cloud in this article, yesterday. According to Kenneth:
Inforbix is not a remote data storage (like Dropbox). The information stored in Inforbix’s cloud server is strictly confined to data about your data (attributes from your CAD files and Office documents). It does not create duplicate copies of your data in the cloud (your CAD files and Office documents do not get uploaded to Inforbix’s cloud).
So, Inforbix keeps all your files in their original place so you don’t need to alter your work behavior. Inforbix is using the cloud only to process the meta-data collected from your files, index them, and semantically connect pieces of data together (e.g. PDF files with associated SolidWorks assemblies or AutoCAD drawings) and allowing you to access this information via a standard web browser and share it with everybody in the company.
Inforbix and Security We’ve learned that the first thing everybody wants from us is to make all information available. Guess what the second thing is? Yes, you are right: to make it NOT available (LOL). It’s called security. People are always asking us about security when they just finished remarking they want all their information available using Inforbix.
This situation is not unique to Inforbix. Other vendors, e.g. Autodesk, are facing similar questions from their customers. I just had the chance to read Autodesk’s blog by Scott Sheppard about the same topic in the context of Autodesk Photofly project and data security. I found some of the arguments made by Scott very compelling.
So here is our informal version of what I call the “Inforbix security manifesto”:
- We don’t move your original data to the cloud;
- Our servers are in secured certified locations, e.g. Internap, Amazon;
- Metadata is sent to the cloud in an encrypted and secure fashion;
- The metadata on the cloud is processed in such a way that a significant effort from outsiders would be required to reverse engineer it to make any sense of it;
- The risk of your metadata being hacked and used in any meaningful way is much lower than that of your email transactions being intercepted or someone taking off with your data from your desktop using a simple USB drive; and
- Security is a permanent and ongoing effort we are learning from and improving all the time.
Conclusion. Inforbix is taking the cloud and security very seriously. We believe we have an innovative approach that will appeal to manufacturing companies. We’d like to hear from you, and are open to your questions and concerns in order to learn and improve.
Best, Oleg
Follow Us!