When Howard and I were with Industrial Science, we constantly spoke with potential clients about simulation.  “Simulation”, we said, “is a highly custom experience for a given firm.  Don’t fall prey to those who try to sell you a packaged application or model.”.

Today we are at BSG Alliance, a company that delivers applications on demand, one of which is simulation.  Have we abandoned our principles?

No we have not…I still believe that selling canned models is a dubious endeavor, and that clients should never buy such things.  It isn’t our position that has changed; it is the nature of application software these days.

Software as a Service (SaaS) strikes me as the best blend of a highly custom user experience and the scale economy of common componentry.  When simulations are delivered this way, via a hosted platform, “tenants” get the same kind  of highly custom experience, mapped to your login credentials, as you would if you were using a custom app built just for you.  Yet behind the scenes, we here at BSG Alliance can determine which components can be assembled together in smart ways  - some written specifically for the tenant, some common.

And that’s not all…

We can’t be so omnipotent as to know how our clients will be using our simulations.  Perhaps a simulation could get “mashed up” with another application that shares similar data.  Perhaps the result of a simulation run could be brought into a collaborative environment for group discussion.  Again with simulation inside of a SaaS framework, all of this is just a few clicks away.

None of this negates the hard work and rigor that goes into the process of building a simulation.  That is still a hand-to-hand experience, with smart people around the room debating, in a healthy way, how a system works.  We codify the results of these conversations in numerous graphic depictions that are preserved in a way that “tells the story” behind the logic in the simulation model.  Institutional knowledge is captured.  The art of that process will NEVER change.  But is it certainly incumbent upon us to find ways to deliver simulations that make their final form convenient, intuitive, and pervasive.  Welcome to Simulation as a Service.