Can the latest advancements in cloud computing do for product design what they’ve done for so many other professional domains?

Computing plays a huge role in the design of all kinds of products. Everything from smartphones to futons first take visible form in a software program. Some say these types of programs are too intensive to run in the cloud. But others now counter that they can run in cloud, and indeed, the cloud can ratchet their creative and collaborative features to new levels.

“Every product today is built twice; first it’s built in the computer in three dimensions as a digital model. Then, it’s built in the real world,” said Jon Hirschtick (pictured), co-founder and chief executive officer of Onshape Inc., a product development platform that combines computer-aided design, product data management, collaboration, and analytics tools in the cloud.

A number of technologies are required to build a true-to-life model. They include 3D CAD, data management, workflow tools, and more. “It’s an incredibly hard problem,” Hirschtick said. “We work with large amounts of data, really complex mathematics, huge computing loads, huge graphic loads, interactive response times.”

Sounds like a job for dedicated, highly specialized on-premises technology. At least, that has typically been the thinking among product-design professionals. “All these things add up to people feeling, ‘Oh, well. That would never be possible in the cloud,'” Hirschtick said.

Hirschtick is putting his decades of product-design experience behind a groundbreaking new idea: Yes, you can do it in cloud. In fact, the cloud can enable all-around better product-design software than we’ve ever seen. In the future, we will look at these compute-intensive programs and ask: How could we do this without the cloud, according to Hirschtick.

Hirschtick spoke with Dave Vellante (@dvellante) and Stu Miniman (@stu), co-hosts of theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s mobile livestreaming studio, during the Actifio Data Driven event in Boston, Massachusetts. They discussed the promise of cloud in product design and design’s role in market success (see the full interview with transcript here). (* Disclosure below.)

This week, theCUBE spotlights Onshape in its Startup of the Week feature.

Not a cloud lift and shift

Hirschtick studied mechanical engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. This prepared him for his long career perfecting product-design technology. Carer highlights include founding Premise Inc. in 1987 and then Solidworks Corp. in 1993. He co-founded the Massachusetts-based Onshape in 2012 with the mission to evolve product design software beyond traditional staples like CAD.

Onshape is leveraging cloud to rethink product-design, Hirschtick pointed out. “We didn’t just take the old tools and throw them up in a cloud window. We said, ‘How could we make a better way of doing workflow and release management and collaboration than had ever been done before?'” he said. 

Everything from paradigms to user experience got a cloudified makeover. Onshape delivers a full set of tools, including CAD, formal release management with workflow, building materials, configurations, etc. It runs entirely on the Amazon Web Services Inc. cloud and is delivered through a software as a service model. There is nothing for users to install; it is designed after the likes of Salesforce.com Inc. and Zendesk Inc.

End devices are cloud’s best friend

Onshape can run on just about any device with a web browser — Windows or Mac laptop, smartphone or tablet. It is the only complete set of product-design tools that can run on all of these devices, according to Hirschtick. The devices themselves assist the cloud in making the software work for end users. This is a key thing for those that doubt cloud’s capacity for product design to realize. In fact, all cloud solutions leverage the edge to some degree. Look at Google Maps, for example; the cloud does some of the work of rendering an accurate map of the environment, as does the user’s device.

The ability to run on all of these devices helps power the superior collaboration features in Onshape. It enables teams spread across the world to collaborate on the same design without friction, Hirschtick explained.

Product-design technology is a $10 billion a year market with a $100-million market cap and millions of users, according to Hirschtick. Onshape has captured thousands of those users making products as diverse as drum sets and nuclear counter-terrorism equipment.

Is the D in ‘discontinue’ for ‘design?’

Several years ago, Harvard Business School professor Clay Christensen estimated that 95% of new products fail in the market. Many theories exist to explain the dismal success rate.

Companies have more riding on design than they may imagine, according to Hirschtick.

“I think design is becoming a greater component of GDP, if you will,” he said. Goods are more likely to rise to the top of the market based on design than they were a decade or two  ago. One need only look at Sony Corp. and its once awe-inspiring Walkman to grasp how design can sway the market. 

“Sony was the Apple of an era, and what happened? Did they drop the ball in manufacturing? Was it a cost issue? No. They lost the design leadership pole position. They lost the ability to create the world-leading products,” Hirschtick concluded. 

Watch the complete video interview below, and be sure to check out more of SiliconANGLE’s and theCUBE’s coverage of the Actifio Data Driven event. (* Disclosure: TheCUBE is a paid media partner for the Actifio Data Driven event. Neither Actifio Inc., the sponsor for theCUBE’s event coverage, nor other sponsors have editorial control over content on theCUBE or SiliconANGLE.)

Photo: SiliconANGLE