Computational Engineering in the Cloud: Benefits and Challenges

Cloud computing services, which allow users to lease time on remote computer systems, must be particularly attractive to smaller engineering organizations that use engineering simulation software. Such organizations have occasional need for substantial computing power but may lack the budget and in-house expertise to purchase and maintain such resources locally. The case study presented in this paper examines the potential benefits and practical challenges that a medium-sized manufacturing firm faced when attempting to leverage computing resources in a cloud computing environment to do modelbased simulation. Results show substantial reductions in execution time for the problem of interest, but several socio-technical barriers exist that may hinder more widespread adoption of cloud computing within engineering. DOI: 10.4018/978-1-4666-2059-9.ch017