Cloud Solutions: The Criteria, the Pros and Cons for the NDT Industry

摘要

The various types of services in the cloud ecosystem offer several solutions to the NDT market. Most of the actors are looking to optimize their operations or reduce the cost of their infrastructure. Cloud services come with their own advantages and constraints while the different NDT area (oil and gas, energy, aerospace, and others) have their own set of requirements, constraints, and regulations. In a world where technology constantly adapt, this article title asks the wrong question, the good question should be: "When cloud and NDT will become a good mix and what are the critical characteristics for each precise NDT market area?". Before going further, "cloud" or "cloud computing" being a large concept, it is important to define the limits and the borders of what is considered a cloud: "cloud computing" can be easier to understand with the term "Internet computing." The Internet is commonly seen as clouds; hence the term "cloud computing" for computation done through the Internet or remotely. With cloud computing, users can access database resources via the Internet from anywhere, for as long as they need, without worrying about any maintenance or management of actual resources. Besides, databases in clouds are very dynamic and scalable. Cloud computing is unlike grid computing, utility computing, or autonomic computing. The NDT tasks related to data becomes potentially indented or interconnected with a cloud-type process to: 1. Generate data; 2. Sort data; 3. Manage data; 4. Find data; 5. Read data; 6. Visualize data; 7. Automate interpretation of data; 8. Detect defects on data; 9. Report defects.