Laura Hyde |
When working on simulations, engineers must have the means to work quickly, efficiently and unhindered by technical difficulties.
To ensure it can deliver simulation solutions that can fulfil these needs, Ansys carries out frequent surveys to identify engineers’ biggest pain points, says Dr John Baker, EMEA cloud business development manager at Ansys. “Currently, one of the top barriers our customers face is the need to reduce design cycle times as simulations continue to get more complex and require larger computational capacity.”
The firm’s cloud solution, Ansys Access on Microsoft Azure, addresses this problem by providing customers with access to high-performance computing (HPC) infrastructure in Azure.
“Ansys Access on Azure provides an interface for engineers that allows them to easily create virtual machines, autoscaling HPC clusters and shared storages, and having them in the cloud means they can scale up and down as needed,” says Baker.
One of the key features of Ansys Access on Azure is the HPC Platform Services (HPS) capability.
“HPS is Ansys’ new job submission tool, which allows users to submit jobs to remote clusters easily and without having to leave their Ansys application interface whether they are in the cloud or on-premises,” says Krishna Samavedam, cloud lead product manager at Ansys.
Whilst there are several benefits to using the platform, the power of ‘bring your own licence’ (BYOL) and ‘bring your own environment’ (BYOE) are “the main driver and the primary use cases for Ansys Access on Microsoft Azure,” according to Samavedam.
“Customers are sensitive about their engineering data, and they want to ensure that it doesn’t leave their cloud environment,” he explains. “Our service allows customers to bring their own cloud environment and licences. Another advantage of BYOE is that customers can install third-party tools manually to complete their end-to-end engineering workflow.”
Businesses around the world have benefited from adopting Ansys Access on Azure, including Movares Europe, an engineering consultancy firm based in the Netherlands.
“Some of our customers really valued the ability to create standard desktops for day-to-day work but still have access to a much larger, more powerful machine when needed,” said Baker. “This provides them with flexibility in both power and capabilities, which has a positive impact on cost too.”
Many organisations need to increase flexibility and scale up their operations. “Currently, a customer facing a hardware barrier may reduce their model size and compromise on running large simulations,” says Samavedam. “Ansys Access on Microsoft Azure removes these barriers. This can be achieved through a lift-and-shift or a hybrid approach by submitting jobs using HPS, providing them with the flexibility that is right for the organisation.”
Ansys is constantly looking for new ways to enhance Ansys Access on Microsoft Azure to improve the user experience and provide further simulation efficiency and cloud integration.
In addition, the firm is intent on extending its strategic partnership with Microsoft through further innovation.
“Computer-aided engineering is at the heart of what we do, and we need to partner with great organisations like Microsoft to be able to provide our customers with the best performance possible,” says Dr Baker. “Ansys has been a Microsoft partner since 2019 and so far, our journey together has resulted in the creation of two generations of cloud platforms: Ansys Cloud Direct and now Ansys Access on Azure.
“It’s a very strong partnership which will continue to grow, and we have some exciting things in store that we can’t wait to show our customers in the near future.”
Discover more insights like this in the Winter 2024 issue of Technology Record. Don’t miss out – subscribe for free today and get future issues delivered straight to your inbox.