There's a lot of potential in SaaS, but for the large dataset driven, heavy calculation world of 3D design and manufacturing, it's further out than many may think. It'll happen and for financial reasons (channel removal means greater margins for the OEM) primarily, not for the benefit of the user.

At present, there is a world of hefty bloated software that's finally starting to take shape into something more elegant as vendors seem to back away from new gimcracks, bells and whistles and concentrate on improving what their systems do now. That needs to continue and spread, it's something that's been long needed and long requested.

And just for the record, the launch of SolidWorks wasn't a revolution in the technological sense. Not at all. Yes, it was one of the first major successes on the Windows platform, but that was down to good timing, marketing, a solid channel sales model built and populated by veterans of the industry that had 'been there and done it' and wanted to improve things.

The technology itself was by no means revolutionary. Yes, the company has gone on to do some very interesting and often unique or innovative things, but the early success was down to a good idea that was VERY well executed.

Oh – and Deelip – LOVING the rambling nature of this post. You should do it in green type mate

Al

I would like to mention that our patented application, SITEOPS, is a SaaS CAD product for land development, capable of stepping through millions of iterations of a site within the parameters you provide, and then coming up with the least expensive options. The heavy lifting (optimization, in our case) IS done by algorithms running on servers in a secured data facility, and our users enjoy exactly the freedom you talk about – logging on via the internet with no installations needed. It is not a competitive product for SolidWorks but it is a hosted, intelligent CAD product.

Visit our site and sit in on a webinar if you want to see some truly revolutionary generative design software, and definitely the future of CAD.

Predictably I am going to add a twist that is tied to the licensing and that twist is that any ‘work in the cloud is and enormous leap of trust’. Trust (or the lack of) forms the basis of most, if not all business transactions, at all levels. Trust is controlled and measured constantly when dealing with people and it is done many ways.

Placing design IP in the hands of another is a leap of faith and trust I believe is simply a level none of us should move toward. Even discounting the dangers it requires the other parties to FULLY ACCEPT a level of responsibility they will NOT be prepared to accept. This is not a guess it is a fact and can be seen even now in reading the licencing terms and conditions that currently exist.

As a further demonstration of why CAD developers are not to be trusted just look at the level of intrusions that currently exists with Trojan software embedded in CAD applications that are removing data from users machines without their knowledge. In my personal experience dealing with Autodesk they will not even allow me to validate data they are attempting to take off my systems and while they are refusing to allow scrutiny of their actions they want me to believe they can be trusted. How foolish do they think we designers and draughties are?

I would probably consider switching tomorrow, away from Autodesk, for personal CAD work, if I could find a software developer that could demonstrate a level of honesty and trust that matches the level of trust they seem to think we customers should place in them.

If there is a CEO of any company who can demonstrate their trustworthiness and who can answer the questions, I ask, that Autodesk won’t answer I would be happy to hear from h/er/im. But until that time it would not matter how good the ‘cloud’ might be, I’m with you Deelip, it’s nuts.

Argument improves most thing: Cristian’s spray is somewhat off beat and useless; from where I sit he is not offering argument to support his view only a ‘gut feeling’, he is placing a level of trust in the Solidworks that would be difficult for him to demonstrate or support. I would be very interested to see just what levels of trust Cristian is prepared to put in another’s hands when dealing with his IP?

I trust many I deal with – Autodesk is not one – and the reason I can trust those I do is because there exist an ability, for both parties, to validate the actions of the other. I am not one to say ‘never’, or ‘it could never be done’ but I am prepared to say this; I will go to my grave (and several generations after me will) and it is highly unlikely any person promoting the ‘cloud’ will, in my time or after, ever be able to demonstrate the level of trust necessary to make the process work for every users benefits and with complete safety.

“Just because we can does not mean we should” is very true and if trust cannot be proven then in reality we never should go down this road.

My point is, computing hardware marches on at breakneck speed – monster hard drives, huge RAM, graphics etc. Apps like SolidWorks can be built to handle and exploit that.

Yet here I am crawling at home on a 2MB broadband connection watching pages slowly appear. In the office I have a dedicated 8MB line but it is still not instantaneous.

Internet access is not 100% reliable anywhere. Licensing activation is one thing – running a CAD app over it is quite another. What is the point in having hardware that is 1000x greater than NASA used to get to the moon if we are restricted to using apps that require unreliable technology?

The day SolidWorks switches to a cloud app is the day I cease to become a SolidWorks customer.

There’s a lot of potential in SaaS, but for the large dataset driven, heavy calculation world of 3D design and manufacturing, it’s further out than many may think. It’ll happen and for financial reasons (channel removal means greater margins for the OEM) primarily, not for the benefit of the user.

At present, there is a world of hefty bloated software that’s finally starting to take shape into something more elegant as vendors seem to back away from new gimcracks, bells and whistles and concentrate on improving what their systems do now. That needs to continue and spread, it’s something that’s been long needed and long requested.

And just for the record, the launch of SolidWorks wasn’t a revolution in the technological sense. Not at all. Yes, it was one of the first major successes on the Windows platform, but that was down to good timing, marketing, a solid channel sales model built and populated by veterans of the industry that had ‘been there and done it’ and wanted to improve things.

The technology itself was by no means revolutionary. Yes, the company has gone on to do some very interesting and often unique or innovative things, but the early success was down to a good idea that was VERY well executed.

Oh – and Deelip – LOVING the rambling nature of this post. You should do it in green type mate

Al

… which somehow matches the speculation of someone like Jon Hirschtick. Read http://www.deelip.com/?p=598

I’d say I’m becoming pretty good at this speculation thing.

I do have to agree with Cristian. Deelip has written 5 posts of speculation.

But what’s implicit in his comments is something that you hit on the head: “SolidWorks has a “pretty good record of developing flops.”

This is, by the way, a characteristic common to many of the most successful software developers.

It’s not going to be easy for SolidWorks to develop a SaaS CAD application that will be good enough to really make their customer base happy. Two reasons: First is that the technical challenge is really big. Second is that SolidWorks users are, as a group, hardcore demanding.

Deelip is a software developer, and has a pretty good sense of what it takes to develop software. His guesses are educated guesses, and are often on the mark. Using the words “SaaS” and “SolidWorks” in the same sentence gives a pretty good indication of what they are talking about.

SolidWorks has a pretty good track record of developing flops. They also have developed some successes, but there are a lot of flops, including in the web-based applications area. Remember 3D Instant Website? 3D Meeting? PartStream.Net? Web Folders? SolidWorks does not have any guarantee that their ideas will fly, and especially web-based ideas.

Deelip is expressing an opinion backed up by his experience in the industry. Your qualifications to critique his analysis are unclear.

Maybe you did not read the part where I said:

“Don’t get me wrong. This is not impossible. In is definitely possible even today, but not to the extent that you have thousands of users working all at once.”

Or maybe this part:

“With the current and forseeable state of hardware and internet connectivty, the applications that I feel can be offerred under SaaS are things like lightweight business applications.”

I am talking about the present and what I believe is possible with the current hardware and internet connectivity. I have said absolutely nothing about the far future.

BTW, about me being nuts, I have absolutely no doubt about that.

T-Mobile. Sidekick. Danger. Microsoft.