Architosh Talks to Viktor Varkonyi, CEO Graphisoft

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VV (Viktor Varkonyi):  Absolutely. Graphisoft and Apple are in a very long-standing, very close relationship. The whole company was started on the Apple platform. Even our old logo was very similar with the Apple-Apple. The Macintosh platform was always a significant competitive advantage for us. I am very happy to see that Apple continues to gain market-share in our segment. The performance, the reliability, and of course the beauty of the new Macs is a perfect fit for architectural practice.

Architects are artists. They love the beauty, they love the ease-of use, they like the fluid smooth things. Apple computers were always very popular among architects. Because today there is a huge hype around these Apple technologies, I am not surprised at all that they are gaining momentum.

AFR: And are you seeing some of that run off on you guys in a good way? Are some people telling you they are interested in ArchiCAD because they need a BIM solution and ArchiCAD runs on the Mac?

VV: Yes that is definitely happening. Let me share with you a nice story. It is very easy to support the Mac today, Apple is very popular, extremely popular. When we look around at an airport, in a coffeehouse, schools or any other place we just see the increasing market share. On the other hand I have a friend who has a quite old black MacBook but he does not want to replace it to the new aluminum one. He does not want to belong to the crowd for fashion, he wants to display he has been a Mac fan for ages.

That’s funny…that shows you about emotions. (laughter…)

AFR: Yes, definitely. (laughter).

AFR: I would like to shift gears a bit and talk about the Delta Server technology. You guys are talking about a magnitude of reduction with the file size being communicated. How important is that piece to the success of collaboration and the new Graphisoft BIM Server?

VV: That’s not file size reduction it’s communication reduction, it’s the network reduction.

AFR: Oh, yes that’s right. How important is that piece?

VV: Extremely important. I think that’s the bread and butter of it.

AFR: The bread and butter…of the Delta server technology or the BIM Server or both?

VV: For both. Because believe it or not we had no optimization for the wide area network access. None. The whole system is working over a normal DSL Internet connection. It works so well over the Internet because we did a great optimization on the LAN network. And that’s because we reduced the network traffic in a very meaningful way.

AFR: How so?

VV: Look, it is not just about being able to sync to the server in a fast and efficient way, but about what tools you can give to the customer to support the team. If we are in a team and I am being efficient I know what you did an hour ago, or ten minutes ago. And now we have the ability to communicate within the BIM model itself. I can click on a particular element and send that to you with my thoughts within the context of the building. You just click on it and ArchiCAD 13 automatically takes you to that part of the building, highlights it, and displays my note to you.

AFR: That’s amazing. But just to be clear, what I want to know is if I modify the model–some part of the building–and then sync with the BIM Server, what I want to know is does that delta in the data on my computer get subjected to a file compression schema before that change is sent to the BIM Server?

VV: No. Not at all.

AFR: Why? What is making it so small? Is it just that what I have done is small in itself?