Cloud Computing as an Information Technology Infrastructure for Civil Engineering SMEs

One of the key challenges of IT for architecture, engineering and construction is to provide the efficient, effective and flexible access to information and to provide all possible channels of communication. The world today is becoming increasingly mobile and users often do their work with the help of several different devices during their day. That is why the unified access to networks, servers, storage, applications, and services is needed. In order to achieve that mentioned resources cannot reside on local devices anymore, they should rather live in "the cloud" and be accessible via Web services to a vast spectrum of devices from different locations. Cloud computing is still an evolving paradigm that is rather difficult to define but it usually described as a model for enabling convenient, on-demand network access to a shared pool of configurable computing resources that can be rapidly provisioned and released with minimal management effort or service provider interaction. The continuous process improvement via the strategic implementation of innovative information and communication technologies is essential for the long-term survival of construction firms. Unfortunately because of the specifics of the AEC sector SME construction companies have difficulties keeping up with the pace of the advancements in the technology and software. The paper examines the cloud computing model and other upcoming technologies and trends through civil engineering SME specific requirements.