A Legacy BIM App SaaSified and
Streamed Globally in 4 Weeks on AWS
BuildingHOW Team is a Greek pioneer in Building Information Modeling (BIM) software, accepted into the ELEVATE GREECE initiative. Since 2014, its flagship product holoBIM — a graphics and compute-intensive, Windows and MS SQL based 3D structural engineering application — has been used globally by professionals in Construction, Steel, Rebar, Cement, and Concrete industries for designing, calculating, and managing complex projects.
The problem was delivery. holoBIM had to be downloaded, installed, and configured on each client's desktop, demanding significant CPU, memory, and storage depending on project scale. This made it impossible to offer instant demos to potential customers worldwide — or to manage releases centrally. Onboarding a new user took hours or days rather than seconds.
BuildingHOW wanted to SaaSify holoBIM — letting any potential customer anywhere in the world access a fully functional demo in a single step, with no installs, no special hardware, and no procurement overhead. They also needed to modernise four legacy web applications and four MS SQL databases still running on outdated versions in Azure.
LCM Go Cloud began with a migration readiness assessment of the holoBIM workloads, then ran an extensive Proof of Concept comparing Amazon WorkSpaces vs. Amazon AppStream 2.0 — evaluating streaming quality, user experience, costs, and SaaSification potential. The verdict: Amazon AppStream 2.0, a fully managed application streaming service that provides instant access to holoBIM from any device, anywhere, with no local install required.
LCM Go Cloud installed holoBIM on an AppStream 2.0 image builder, created fleets and stacks with auto-scaling policies to handle demand elastically. For the web application migration, a 2-step approach was used: first upgrading the outdated IIS and MS SQL editions, then migrating all four web apps and four databases to AWS EC2 and Amazon RDS for MS SQL via the AWS Database Migration Service.
The full environment — four web applications, four databases, AppStream 2.0 streaming, WAF, CloudFront, Route 53, IAM, and CloudWatch — was live in just 4 weeks. holoBIM users around the world can now access a full demo session in seconds or minutes, from any device, without purchasing a single piece of specialist hardware.
BuildingHOW now has the ability to SaaSify holoBIM without incurring the high costs of doing so the traditional way — and potential customers can access a full demo in seconds, from anywhere in the world.
LCM Go Cloud built a resilient, secure, and globally accessible AWS environment — combining End User Computing, managed databases, CDN, security, and monitoring to power holoBIM's transition from desktop install to cloud-streamed SaaS.
LCM Go Cloud specialises in Microsoft Workload migrations and AWS End User Computing — taking legacy Windows and SQL applications global, fast and cost-effectively.
