There is a word that begins with the letter “C” that is uppermost on the minds of many people these days, and it isn’t COVID. It’s “collaboration,” and the term has become essential to getting basic work done, from the mundane to the highly complex.

A global pandemic has placed significant emphasis on the use of technology to collaborate on tasks and projects that used to be accomplished in person. Although PTC Inc. couldn’t have known what the world would be like a year after its acquisition of collaboration technology provider Onshape, the purchase has proven to be a timely one indeed.

Onshape is billed as the industry’s “first pure SaaS platform that unites robust CAD with powerful data management and collaboration tools.” Onshape’s cloud native approach is riding a wave of momentum created by the pandemic in a SaaS market estimated by Gartner Inc. to grow to $104 billion by the end of this year alone.

Onshape provides technology that allows global design teams to work collaboratively on the same set of models and data.

“It’s hard enough to ideate and design, but historically customers have been restricted in the way they had to work because of the technology that was available,” said Clint Poole, head of marketing at Onshape, during an interview with theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s livestreaming studio. “It wasn’t built for global collaboration. We really unlock that challenge for them and give them the power to work in the way they want to for the modern era.”

On December 9, starting at 1 p.m. EST, theCUBE will provide inside coverage of Onshape’s “Innovation for Good” digital event. TheCUBE hosts will interview Onshape’s co-founders on the PTC acquisition and discuss how the company’s technology accelerated product innovation. Coverage will also include interviews with innovators and educators on how engineers can leverage Onshape’s expertise to deal with the “new normal” in a changed world and plan for the future. (* Disclosure below.)

Help for healthcare

The urgency created by the global virus threat motivated a number of engineering teams to collaborate on unique solutions in response.

“Engineers around the world have really come together and focused on areas where they could help, particularly in the healthcare sector, which has been under siege with patients,” Poole noted. “They were doing things like retrofitting scuba gear to be medical grade masks and delivering those to their local hospitals. It was a living example of what we call ‘Innovation for Good.’”

Onshape’s technology has freed the engineering community to focus on desperately needed solutions during the pandemic because it was built as one CAD system with all of the data hosted in the cloud. Design engineers no longer had to worry about system intricacies to produce new solutions.

“By eliminating non-value-added steps, we allow the CAD system to get out of the way and empower engineers to get their job done,” explained John McEleney, co-founder of Onshape, who is scheduled to be interviewed during the event. “Surveys have shown that mechanical engineers waste more than 50% of their time looking for the right version of their design, working around the crashes and managing the various versions of their software. We help you to recapture that time.”

By focusing on “Innovation for Good,” Onshape will have an opportunity during its event to highlight a number of forward-thinking projects, including the use of robots to identify and repair road potholes in real time and how one engineer created a prosthetic horse hoof in 24 hours.

“We enable the great work of other people,” Poole said. “You’re going to hear from technology and aerospace companies, defense companies and academia on what they’re doing to solve these challenges, what they’re doing to leverage technology to drive innovation for good. You’re going to walk away with insights on what you can do differently inside your own workforce.”

Livestream of the Innovation for Good digital event

The Innovation for Good digital event is a livestream event with additional interviews to be broadcast on theCUBE. You can also watch it on demand on theCUBE’s dedicated page and YouTube channel.

How to watch theCUBE interviews

We offer you various ways to watch the live coverage of the Innovation for Good digital event, including theCUBE’s dedicated website and YouTube channel. You can also get all the coverage from this year’s events on SiliconANGLE.

TheCUBE Insights podcast

SiliconANGLE also has podcasts available of archived interview sessions, available on iTunes, Stitcher, and Spotify, which you can enjoy while on the go.

Guests who will be interviewed on theCUBE during the Innovation for Good digital event

Guests who will be interviewed on theCUBE during the Innovation for Good digital event include Jon Hirschtick, president of SaaS at PTC; Dayna Grayson, co-founder and general partner at Construct Capital; Rafael Gómez-Sjöberg of CZ Biohub; Philip Taber, vice president of hardware engineering at Silverside Detectors; Dr. Matt Shields of Charlottesville High School; and John McEleney, corporate VP of strategy at PTC.

(* Disclosure: TheCUBE is a paid media partner for the Innovation for Good (PTC LiveWorx 365) digital event. Neither PTC Inc., the sponsor for theCUBE’s event coverage, nor other sponsors have editorial control over content on theCUBE or SiliconANGLE.)

Photo: Onshape