Civil Engineering Reference
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cost. Users can be prepared for unanticipated high IT demand but are not burdened
with excess costs when the demand drops. The level of IT needs varies throughout a
project lifecycle. For example, the amount of storage space needed for building
information and documents increases as a project evolves. Also, there is a stronger
need for computational power at project design phase due to the extensive use of
architectural and engineering analysis tools. Since using one hundred cloud-based
servers for one hour costs no more than using one server for one hundred hours,
cloud-based system users can boost up the computing power quickly and complete
complicated analysis in a shorter time at the same cost, not to mention the increase
in maintenance cost and space requirement for the additional 99 servers.
12.4.4 Facilitation of system maintenance and software updating
Many people have experienced disposal of their obsolete computers, installation of
patches for their Windows operating system, and purchase of software programs
for a newer version. These could be avoided and outsourced to system providers in
the cloud computing model. Operating systems and computer software are
increasingly computationally demanding as time goes by. IaaS and PaaS providers
continuously maintain their systems and deliver IT resources such as CPUs,
memory and operating systems as individual services. Users can select and
customize the system configuration according to their changing needs. Besides,
SaaS providers can fix the bugs and keep their software programs updated at the
back-end without the actions of end users. End users can always get access to the
most updated version of software on demand.
12.5 Challenges of cloud computing adoption
in the construction industry
12.5.1 Data security and governance
Data security and governance would appear to be the biggest barrier to adoption of
cloud technologies. Firstly, online storage vendors like FlexiScale, Carbonite, and
The Linkup have lost data and were unable to recover them for customers.
Secondly, proprietary and sensitive data may be reached by the wrong hands.
However, with the more recent advent of very large and powerful players of the IT
industry (like Google, Microsoft, and Apple) proposing their own proprietary data
storage models and data centers, this apprehension should be addressed in due
course. Like any other new technology, it will take a few of the major players of the
AEC industry to take the lead; this will then force the smaller players in their supply
chains to follow suit.
12.5.2 Interoperability issues
Interoperability has long been one of the major research themes in construction IT
(Froese et al., 2000; Froese, 2003; Gallaher et al., 2004). Interoperability is
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