Ansys Gateway powered by AWS Delivers Greater Flexibility to Customers

Cloud computing is part of a technological revolution that enables companies to use computing resources without having to install and maintain hardware resources on-premises. Access to the cloud gives businesses more choices while helping them optimize IT costs, improve agility, and scale workloads effectively.

Ansys has a strategic collaboration with Amazon Web Services (AWS), the synergy behind a product offering in the cloud portfolio: Ansys Gateway powered by AWS. This collaboration enables deployment of Ansys products on AWS to make simulation workloads more user-friendly, along with offering scalability, flexibility, and easy access to software and storage solutions from anywhere with a web browser.

As a result, Ansys customers can deploy and access several Ansys software products in AWS cloud to reduce time to market, optimize costs, and innovate faster. 

Ansys and other simulation tools are computationally intensive. Engineers are often frustrated by the lack of sufficient computational resources on-premises, which negatively affects their productivity. To get around the hardware barriers, they might reduce model fidelity to simplify the model such that it may not capture all required details and physics — or, in some cases, reduce the design space that can be explored with simulations. Minimizing model fidelity or constricting the design space can lead to increased risks in product design.

Cloud provides on-demand access to computational resources. This empowers engineers and product designers to avoid cutting corners during the product design process. Hyperscalers such as AWS provide near-limitless computational and storage resources and enable engineers to access the latest state-of-the-art hardware (CPUs, GPUs, etc.), which enables them to gain maximum insight from the simulation tools.

Q: Are engineers facing any other challenges, and how does cloud access help solve these challenges?

Kulkarni: As products are becoming increasingly complex, engineers no longer rely on a single simulation tool to predict their product performance. It’s become very important to run multiple multiphysics simulations to capture and analyze the complexity of today’s products and their interactions with their environment. Furthermore, there’s a growing need for automating multistep simulation and optimization workflows that require complex software deployments with varying levels of, and often competing requirements on, the underlying hardware infrastructure.

Independent software vendors (ISVs), such as Ansys, offer tools that leverage the cloud for streamlining and simplifying the deployment of analysis tools to assist customers with the adoption of these complex workflows. This alleviates the burden on customers’ IT teams and enables them to focus their efforts on other business-critical tasks while also helping engineers get meaningful insights from their simulation workflows in an efficient way.

Another challenging area that the cloud addresses effectively is the need for engineers, designers, and product owners to collaborate across geographically distributed teams and suppliers. With remote and hybrid work becoming the norm rather than an exception, the cloud provides location independence by enabling users to access their simulation tools from anywhere, any time. Cloud also improves productivity by addressing the growing need for original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) and suppliers to collaborate closely during the design and engineering phases by creating ease of data and information exchange.

Q: What have you learned from our customers in recent years regarding the need for computing in the cloud, and where do you see that need today?

Kulkarni: There is no one-size-fits-all solution. All customers are different, whether they are a startup or a global enterprise. The level of need will vary when it comes to running simulation workloads. One thing we’ve learned from our customers is that they all want flexibility regarding when, where, and how they want to run their simulation workloads.

Some companies have been “born in the cloud,” and therefore, they have not invested in building on-premises compute and storage capacity. As these companies run complex workflows that generate more and more simulation data, cloud computing enables them to scale storage up or down as needed. It can be difficult to provide on-demand storage like that on-premises.

Other companies might have invested in on-premises cluster capacity but want to use the cloud to burst their simulation workloads when they have peak demand to complete urgent, time-sensitive projects.

Q: How is Ansys approaching the cloud, and how does it fit into your product strategy? How do you see the future of simulation in the cloud with AWS?

Kulkarni: The cloud is essentially an enabler for our customers to get maximum value and insight from our best-in-class simulation products. Based on our open ecosystem strategy, we believe in providing flexibility to our customers on how they want to adopt the cloud.

For some, this flexibility means enabling customers to deploy and use their own cloud infrastructure while making it easier for them to use their existing Ansys licenses as effectively as possible. This is exactly what we are offering to our mutual Ansys and AWS customers with our new cloud offer —Ansys Gateway powered by AWS.

Q: You recently announced a new partnership with AWS. Can you provide some insight? How is this partnership evolving the Ansys portfolio?  

Kulkarni: Ansys Gateway powered by AWS is now available on AWS Marketplace and provides a cost-effective platform to seamlessly deploy several Ansys applications in our customer’s AWS environment. It facilitates on-demand deployment of high-performance computing (HPC) resources on AWS with Ansys applications that are certified for optimal performance on AWS cloud hardware. This offer reinforces our strategy that is designed to make simulation software more accessible.

With Ansys Gateway powered by AWS, customers can use their own Ansys and other third-party computer-aided engineering and design (CAE/CAD) software licenses effectively while managing their own AWS infrastructure and associated security and costs.

Q: How have customers incorporated cloud computing into their workflows? What benefits did they see when including cloud?

Kulkarni: Cloud computing gives customers access to the latest state-of-the-art hardware, including GPUs and CPUs, helping them run their simulation tools as efficiently as possible.

Our customers are leveraging the cloud today for a range of use cases, including the use of high-end cloud-based workstations to perform pre- and post-processing or run massive HPC simulations involving tens of thousands of cores.

It’s well known that simulation generates a significant amount of data, and cloud provides the necessary, scalable, and highly available infrastructure to store, access, and extract valuable insights from this data on demand.

Q: What is your advice for companies who are looking at the cloud but aren’t sure how to get started? 

Kulkarni: As with all things, start small and keep it simple initially. If a company has never used the cloud for simulation workflows, our team of cloud and HPC experts can help identify workloads and use cases that would benefit from the cloud and guide them through a proof-of-concept study. For example, if a company would like to test performance improvements with the latest GPUs or CPUs available in the cloud or explore options to burst into the cloud for a critical time-sensitive project, our team of experts can serve as a trusted advisor and assist them in their cloud journey.

Still have more questions? Talk to our experts at Ansys to identify specific workloads and use cases that could benefit from the cloud.