(18.04.19) In my last blog post, I provided some insight into Ceetron’s medium-term roadmap.  In this blog post, I will share with our readers some insight into another part of our larger product strategy, that of Ceetron CAE Frameworks.

Framework used to be a bad word in the software community, with connotations of massive source code packages, not maintained, not documented, not supported.  Well, in our case it is simpler. We already have a significant number of products and IMHO a reasonably clean and complete product structure. Still, we have had gaps in the product structure or gaps between customer code / customer workflow steps and our code. In such cases we have, typically in response to customer request, delivered code as frameworks, but officially not as part of our product structure. These frameworks only work together with other Ceetron products. Often, they are provided for free to licensees of such products, and one has generally not found them in our web shop.  What is new is that we have decided to make these products available to the full Ceetron developer and CAE communities.  For more info, see https://ceetron.wpengine.com/frameworks/.

Two products are currently included in Ceetron CAE Frameworks: Data Provider Framework and CAE2VTFx.

  • Data Provider Framework is a framework for connecting 3D Components and Cloud Components to virtually any data source, whether a real-time solver feed or a traditional file repository (incl. with proprietary solver formats).  For more information, see https://ceetron.wpengine.com/data-provider-framework/.
  • CAE2VTFx is a batch converter for converting most industry-standard CAE formats to VTFx, typically used by major manufacturing companies to support high-volume CAE workflows.   For more information, see https://ceetron.wpengine.com/cae2vtfx/.  (And, yes, I guess you are right if you think that framework is not the correct technical term for this batch converter.)

There is more to come.  We are currently considering extending the framework product family with source code licenses for some of our CAE tools, including Analyzer Desktop.  Coming from the open source community myself, as head of sales in Trolltech, the Qt guys (later Nokia, later Digia, now the Qt Company), source code licensing has always been close to my heart.  Trolltech was indeed an early proponent of free software (free as in free speech, not as in free beer), and commercial business models built on open source licensing.  With an official source code license Ceetron will be joining a steadily increasing community of major software firms, including Cisco, IBM, and Microsoft, that make some of their software available to their customers as source code.

If you want to know more about our frameworks, or if you have functional needs that we do not deliver on today and the solution to which could be an interesting extension of Ceetron CAE Frameworks, let us set up a WebEx with Fredrik or Tor Helge. I can be reached at grim.gjonnes@ceetron.com.

Grim
Head of S&M in Ceetron