Synchro Software Platform 2017 Release Announcement

Synchro PRO 2017 will be available for download May 15, 2017.

 Synchro PRO 2017 will be available for download next week.

This will be the 30th Synchro Software product upgrade from over $10m of product development investment since PRO was first released in early 2008.  Synchro has moved from primarily a workstation to a 4D digital construction project platform. 10 years ago our vision was focused on meeting the demands of the companies operating at the commanding heights of the industry.  The ones who set the pace and most importantly set the standards for how great projects get done.  4D digital construction has taken hold and the early adopter's commitment to Synchro has proven to be a wise choice.  Perseverance and a constant focus on project success, continuous improvements to the software to support the digital process, advanced interoperability and innovation for how the modern construction team plans, manages and delivers great projects was ambitious on Synchro's part but ost of all it is working alongside the innovator's in the industry that is helping make all the difference.

For many years, we have enjoyed the support of an active and vocal user base. We receive feedback on a daily basis, many of the improvements requested and accomplished in this release have come from your teams from direct interactions with our Synchro product management and support teams. Our hope is that you are as excited as we are to get this release in your team's hands.

Tom Dengenis, Synchro Software, CEO

Looking forward, both the industry and Synchro will continue to evolve.  Synchro is now in an era of an exciting new platform with its recently announced partnership with Microsoft for the roll out of Synchro Software on the Microsoft Azure Cloud Platform.  "Migrating to the cloud represents a major opportunity for our customers." said Greg Demchak, Synchro Software Product Manager "At the core of the platform offering is Synchro Workgroup Project (SWP) which is now bundled with our API called LINK."  Synchro SWP and LINK is a powerful combination that enables project teams to move the Synchro projects data to the cloud providing automatically enabling real-time working in a single model environment. SWP eliminates the limitations and challenges when working with project model files aloneare.  Project teams are now able to work with a project model database that can be accessed from all of Synchro’s applications: Synchro PRO for authoring 4D, the free Open Viewer (OVR) for viewing Synchro models, Synchro Scheduler (SCH) for creating traditional CPM-based project programmes and schedules, SITE for tracking progress in the field, and the brand new SITE app for the Apple iOS iPad, Microsoft Surface and HoloLens platforms (SITE will be released as beta and production releases will be available within two months following the new release). The partnership with Microsoft’s Azure Platform is not exclusive, Synchro remains committed open to what fits the customer’s deployment needs best, whether it is in a self-hosted facilities, Amazon Web Services, LoadSpring or other third party facilities; our partnership with Microsoft brings with it all the focus and value of Microsoft’s Cloud architecture, including security, global reach for local connections, scale, reliability and connectors to other Microsoft platforms such as Power BI and HoloLens.

Synchro is also announcing the ability to run Synchro PRO and Synchro Open Viewer as remote apps that leverage the power of the Microsoft Azure N-Series Virtual Machines. With this additional offering, the connection and data exchange speed and reliability between the project data on Synchro SWP and the users on Synchro PRO are accomplished at the backbone speed of the Azure Platform and our customer’s networks are only responsible for streaming the user interface screens to the user's PC.  The benefits of using Synchro PRO on the N-Series VM’s is the high-end NVIDIA GPUs designed for graphics intensive applications which are perfect for Synchro users pushing project complexity boundaries with massive models.  In the increasingly complex project culture of construction, for the end-user, it is as easy as launching Synchro PRO from their desktop, but all the processing is actually being done in Microsoft’s Cloud.

In addition, to Synchro’s workstation applications, the Synchro LINK API enables Synchro's entire user community, as well as third party independent developers, to build new data exchange connectors for boundless interoperability with systems of their choice. For instance, the new API enables developers to build custom project and portfolio dashboards, bespoke specialty applications, or connect to existing corporate information infrastructure for real-time planning and controls data exchange. Synchro Software is excited to see and support new achievements in systems interoperability that the community will create.

The cloud capabilities accompanying the 2017 Release of the Synchro Platform is a major highlight that comes along with improvements to the products that are loaded with updates and new features supporting a completely re-designed user interface. "We spent a lot of time on this design, with our most advanced and challenging users focused on streamlining the user experience to solve some tricky problems with required data access and screen layouts.  said Kate Hester, Synchro Senior Software Design Specialist, "The user interface changes include re-designed Menu Ribbons, Synchro Navigator dialogs, the Properties dialogs, and separately, the ability to save custom configurations as user defined Layouts."

Other improvements include the following items:

  • Resource Groups for Task-level growth simulation;
  • Issue Tracking for creating and tracking issues Workgroup Project;
  • The ability to Synchronize to/from Excel;
  • A Schedule “Health Report”;
  • Support for the New "Time Machine Controller" device for model navigation
  • Integration to the rendering bridge Render4You for processing Iray animations
  • And over 100 improvements across the entire platform.

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