CloudFlow will enable the remote use of computational services distributed on the cloud, seamlessly integrating these within established engineering design workflows and standards. CloudFlow aims to empower the different engineering disciplines with on-demand access to scalable computational services, allowing them to start any process when desired and without the need for a complex local infrastructure of cutting-edge high performing computers. The new engineers’ workplaces do not need to be equipped with expensive software (CAD, CAM, CAE, PLM, data archival) and their required operating systems and versions, or with special hardware (CPU, RAM, GPU) and their dedicated drivers. Therefore, the engineer will not need multiple computers for different tasks; or in the case of limited computers, the engineers will not need to wait for the availability of the resources. In order to master these challenges, CloudFlow will address different aspects of computational cloud services for engineering. From a technical point of view, the project will focus on: data (exchange and integration); services (adaptation, interoperability); and workflows (integration, co-operation). The technical aspects will consider the current situation at the engineering workplaces and they will adapt and customize the existing technology to better serve the current needs in an agile and flexible manner. From a user prospective, the project will deal with: usability and accessibility; business models; and competitive calls (for application experiments). In this context, it will prepare the engineers to use the computational services on the cloud, it will investigate and create new business models to use these kinds of services on demand and it will continuously be refined by means of involving more users and more system vendors, with different needs, and with different application experiments being called for in competitive calls.

Web resources:	http://www.eu-cloudflow.eu https://cordis.europa.eu/project/rcn/109868/factsheet/en
Start date:	01-07-2013
End date:	31-12-2016
Total budget - Public funding:	8 742 828,00 Euro - 6 623 000,00 Euro
Call topic:	Application experiments for robotics and simulation (I4MS) (FoF.ICT.2013.7.1)