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Suggested Additional Road Map Themes: Cloud Services, Security, Interconnected Systems of Systems, and Ethics


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VECTORWORKS CLOUD SERVICES:

Interoperability, Collaboration, Common Data Environments (CDEs), Digital Twins, and Performance Simulation are implicit subthemes in many of the road map features listed. 

 

Really, all of these subthemes are vestiges of Cloud Computing. 

 

Vectorworks offers cloud computing services and integrations and/or interoperability with collaboration platforms and tools, common data environments, digital twins, and performance simulation tools (including arch viz, energy analysis, crowd flow, lighting effects, structural analysis, and lighting control systems logic).

 

Please consider making Vectorworks Cloud Services a major theme of the road map.

Please address more explicitly the roadmaps for the subthemes of the Cloud Services theme listed above. 

 

The post about Omniverse is interesting in part because:

  1. there are many ways to participate in NVidia's Omniverse, including as simply as export/import of standard file types all the way to bi-directional real-time integration;  
  2. the partnering companies range from small specialty software companies to very large multinational companies;
  3. the partnering companies come from a wide range of industries, and so participation is about more than just participation in another competing AEC CDE upstart, but rather participation is about access to and collaboration with potential clients, collaborators, and vendors from across a wide range of industries;
  4. ultimately it does not matter if Omniverse or the Microsoft Cloud or the Oracle Cloud or the Amazon Cloud or any of the other many, many cloud vendors achieves a network effect, or if conversely, as the name omniverse suggests, there are many, many unique compositions of public and private clouds across a wide range of scales and capacities that are all reliant on the same underlying server and computing architectures.  Rather the big point is that participation in project delivery and participation in commerce and civil society is already in large part participation in a number of distinct and integrated cloud computing ecosystems and this new dynamic will only continue to grow as a business concern.  So part of the roadmap should be how the Vectorworks tools and platform engages cloud computing concerns and workflows.

 

SECURITY:

Assuming that almost all of Vectorworks' users already have to execute projects across a range of cloud services, and that the percentage of Vectorworks users whose project delivery is dependent on cloud services will only continue to grow, please also consider making Security a major theme of the feature roadmap.  This can include:

  1. security of the program system architecture,
  2. security of file and data transfer to and from the Vectorworks Cloud Services and other cloud services,
  3. security as part of user workflows (especially collaborative workflows), and
  4. security as it relates to the Community Board and Vectorworks' other social media platforms (given the increasing prevalence of social engineering-based phishing and spear phishing facilitated by mining social media platforms and forums).

 

Please consider adding a Security theme to the roadmap.

 

INTERCONNECTED SYSTEMS OF SYSTEMS:

Internet of Things, (IoT), (Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT), Cyber-Physical Systems (CPS), Ultra-Large-Scale Systems (ULS or ULSS), Complex, Large, Integrated, Open Systems (CLIOS), Intelligent Buildings, Interactive Architecture, Complex, Interactive Architectural Ecosystems (CIAE), Socio-Technical Systems (STS), Social-Cyber-Physical Systems (SCPS), Ubiquitous Computing, Augmented Reality, Virtual Reality...... and beyond (But let's say Interconnected Systems of Systems as shorthand for these concerns).  There are so many ways in which the focus of our design activities engages the design of interconnected systems of systems.  Vectorworks' own ConnectCAD and pioneering efforts developing the GDTF file format and participation in OpenBIM standards development already engage this set of concerns.  The pandemic accelerated the adoption of interconnected systems of systems technologies, and now these are becoming normal project requirements for the design of any business, retail environment, home, leisure/hospitality environment, entertainment environment, public environment, healthcare environment, outdoor environment, educational, environment .... any/all environments.....any most large-scale organized, social activities

 

Please consider adding an Interconnected Systems of Systems theme to the roadmap.  This can track how the Vectorworks software features enable designers to address these emerging project requirements.

 

ETHICS:

Whether it is Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR), Environmental, Social, and Corporate Governance (ESG), or the various 'World's Most...' ethical/just/... companies lists, or the 2030 challenge and other similar pledges and activities, companies are increasingly judged and valued not just based on their technologies and growth forecasts and balance sheets but on how they conduct business and how their products and services enable (or impede) how ethically their clients and users conduct business and how ethical their consultants and vendors are judged to be.  In addition, since so many emerging technologies and work practices exist partially or completely beyond the bounds of existing legal and regulatory frameworks, to a certain degree, companies and service providers and consultants and vendors who enable use of emerging technologies are on the honor system to do what is right and just and ethical, regardless of whether or not there is a legal or regulatory mechanism in place to enforce compliance (e.g., RFID tags, drones, exoskeletons, computer vision, robotics, mechatronics, automation, and motion capture technologies on construction sites and IoT equipment in homes and commercial, institutional, entertainment, and business facilities).  Given this, the topic of ethics is increasingly a major point of concern for clients, collaborators, and end users.  In addition, and specifically with regard to Vectorworks' user base, design is fundamentally an ethical act.  What we design and how we implement it fundamentally impacts people's health, wellbeing, performance, behaviors, comfort, and perception of the world.  Ethics is a primary concern for all designers.  So it makes sense that Ethics is a considered dimension of features enabled by the tools that we use.

 

Please consider adding an Ethics theme to the roadmap.

 

(Note:  The terminology is not my focus.  Call it something different if more appropriate.  But please consider adding themes to the roadmap that address the concerns described above.)

 

Edited by jmanganelli
consistency
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