Global electronics manufacturer Würth Elektronik has deployed Peer Software's PeerGFS to synchronise 800GB of active engineering data across servers in the US, Germany, and China — reducing AutoCAD and SolidWorks file open times from over five minutes to seconds, and eliminating version conflicts between regions.
The deployment serves roughly 2,000 engineers spread across three continents who share CAD models and design files as part of daily work. Before PeerGFS, accessing a file from a centralised server across the Atlantic or Pacific could stall an engineer for the duration of a meeting. The company runs four Windows-based file servers spanning North America, Europe, and Asia.
The file locking problem was the harder half of the brief. CAD software tools such as AutoCAD and SolidWorks rely on local file locks to prevent two users from writing conflicting versions simultaneously, but that protection breaks down across distributed systems unless the locking state is synchronised in real time between sites. PeerGFS handles this through distributed file locking — the server at each site communicates lock state to peers before allowing edits, so engineers in different regions can work on shared assemblies without overwriting each other's changes.
Greg Foley, IT Manager at Würth Elektronik, explained the priorities behind the project: "Performance wasn't our only concern. File integrity was equally critical. When engineers in different regions access the same files simultaneously without proper file locking, conflicting versions can corrupt work, delay projects, and undermine confidence in shared data. We needed a solution that could enforce consistent file locking across every server location, not just within a single site."
The deployment has also provided a resilience dividend. When a server in China failed, PeerGFS automatically resynchronised current files to the restored system after it reconnected, avoiding both data loss and manual intervention by the IT team.
Jimmy Tam, CEO of Peer Software, noted the economics driving this kind of deployment: "Engineering organisations can't afford to have productivity slowed by waiting for files or dealing with version conflicts. Global manufacturers need their data available where work is happening while maintaining a single source of truth."
Peer Software positions PeerGFS as an enterprise file services layer for environments that span on-premises, cloud, and hybrid storage. Würth Elektronik is a division of the Würth Group, the German fastener and assembly materials multinational with operations in more than 80 countries.
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