Web Enabled Flexsim

Over the last few years we hear more and more requests from people who ask "Is Flexsim web-enabled"?

So, our question to the community is, what does that mean? What do you expect from a web-enabled simulation tool? What types of usage scenarios would you see for a web-enabled simulator? How would you interact with it? Where would it execute, on your local machine or out on a server?

There are many many questions that arise when we try to define what Flexsim would be if it were web-enabled. What do you envision?

This is in no way a promise of built-in web capabilities coming to Flexsim any time soon, but rather, trying to better understand the current and future needs of our customers. Thanks!

By the lack of responses, is it safe to assume that no one has a clear idea of what web-enabled simulation would look like? I'm guessing that when people ask for "web-enabled simulation", its merely a bullet point that they want to cross off, not a real feature that they have an idea about how they would put to use.

I've had the "web-enabled" question asked of me several times (perhaps some of you have, too?), but it really came into focus for me when Google showed off Chrome OS for the first time. The idea behind Chrome OS is that you buy an inexpensive netbook or laptop, and the only thing that it can run is a web browser (Google Chrome). Its simple, inexpensive, and for what its made for, quite fast.

In Google's Chrome OS launch presentation (view the whole 80 minutes here), they made mention that Microsoft recently completed a killer app that would make Chrome OS a success. What app were they talking about? The online version of the popular Microsoft Office productivity suite - designed to run in a browser and share documents in "the cloud." (If you don't know what the cloud is, its just jargon for a collection of servers somewhere online).

Their presentation got me wondering if this is the sort of "web-enabled" Flexsim that people are asking for. Do users want to access their simulation models over the web through a browser? Perhaps sharing and collaborating on the same model with colleagues around the world, maybe simultaneously? Do users envision the models being run on some far away super-computer cluster (think Amazon's EC2, or Windows Azure), with visuals and data streamed to their browser to display tables and 3d views, enable local downloads of output data or video files, etc.? Would models actually be built from scratch within the browser? Do users want to tune in to their simulation via their home PC, MacBook, Android mobile phone, or any other device that can access the Internet with a browser, and allow anyone else they invite to view it likewise at the same time?

For those of you who actually read this far, what do you think? Is this far-fetched, or is this what people are after? Is it too soon to tell if "cloud computing" is a viable usage scenario for simulation? Or maybe you think that "web-enabled simulation" should be something entirely different. Share your thoughts with us.

Ben - What you describe is EXACTLY what I am looking into and trying to find products to compare. FlexSim is one of the products I am trying to gather information on.

So here is the scenario I am trying to work out if FlexSim can fit into.
Model built using a development/designer.
The intent of the model is to be flexible and configurable enough that it can be re-configured in code - not to achieve totally different things, but to allow different scenarios of the same business problem to be simulated, e.g. adding more course to a training pipeline, or adding more attributes to people in the pipeline.
Deploy the model to a server (or farm).
Interact with the model via code, and a UI delivered via a browser.
Supported by a database to contain input and output datasets from the model.

Concept of use would be a single user configuring each instances of use of the model, but with the possibility of multiple (possibly concurrent), geographically distributed uses interacting (configuring and running) with modelling system and separate instances of the model.

So what flexsim components are required to: build models; and then interact with them from code.

UI within the model is not important as this will all be achieved through the browser.

Thanks for any light you can shed on this subject.

Del..