How Numecent's Cloud Tech Helped A Construction Company Legally Share 700 Windows Apps

Numecent, a company that has a new kind of cloud computing technology that could potentially completely reorganize the way software is delivered and handled - upending the business as we know it - has another big feather in its cap.

The company is showing how enterprises can use this technology to instantly put all of their enterprise software in the cloud, without renegotiating contracts and licenses with their software vendors.

It signed $3 billion engineering construction company Parsons as a customer. Parsons is using Numecent's tech to deliver 4 million huge computer-aided design (CAD) files to its nearly 12,000 employees around the world. CAD drawings are bigger than video files and they can only be opened and edited by specific CAD apps like AutoCAD.

Numecent offers a tech called "cloud paging" which instantly "cloudifies" any Windows app. Instead of being installed on a PC, the enterprise setup can deliver the app over the cloud. Unlike similar cloud technologies (called virtualization), this makes the app run faster and continue working even when the Internet connection goes down.

"It's offers a 95% reduction in download times and 95% in download network usage," CEO Osman Kent told Business Insider. "It makes 8G of memory work like 800G."

It also lets enterprises check in and check out software, like a library book, so more PCs can legally share software without violating licensing terms, saving money on software license fees, Kent says.

Parson is using it to let employees share over 700 huge applications such as Autodesk AutoCAD, Bentley Systems' Microstation, and ESRI ArcGIS.

While Parson installed the Numecent tech in its own data center, that's no longer necessary for other businesses. Earlier this summer, Numecent put its tech onto Amazon's cloud and started making it available as a cloud service.

Next up Numecent will change the way people can share Android apps in a project called DeepStream due out in 2014. This will turn a smartphone into a server-like a game console, where a bunch of people can play a game on it at the same time.

Numecent was founded by Osman Kent, cofounder of 3Dlabs which sold to Creative Labs in 2002 for about $170 million. It's raised about $16 million, mostly from T-Venture, the venture capital company of German telecom giant Deutsche Telekom.