Disclosure: Shawn Wasserman is a former employee of Ansys Inc. who owns minor Ansys company stock.

5/25/2022 Corrections To “The Future of Ansys Simulation Looks Cloudy”

Ansys has now confirmed with engineering.com that it is moving towards reworking the interfaces of its products to use common elements and styles—not a unified platform. Ansys has three cloud offerings: Ansys Gateway, Ansys Cloud and OnScale.

Changes in the text below have been made to reflect this updated information.

With Simulation World 2022 in the rearview mirror, it appears that Ansys is the next engineering software giant moving towards the development of overarching, cloud-based experiences. As theorized previously after the recent acquisition of OnScale, a lot of Ansys technology will be making its way to the cloud. However, with the release of Scade One it appears that not only has this been in the works for a while, but the user interface used to streamline the workflow of Ansys’ tools will be based on Ansys Discovery.

“We are, and have been for some time now, looking at Ansys and really looking at how we can go forward into the next generation of product design and reimagining that customer experience,” said Steve Pytel, VP Product Management at Ansys, in his presentation. “You’ll see as we look towards the future that we want to really take our best, most intuitive experience and make it holistic across the portfolio [of] products that Ansys has.”

As for Scade One itself, Pytel added, “We’ve taken the traditional Scade, that is used for embedded software, and we have redeployed it within this user interface, user experience [Ansys Discovery].”

The idea of this cloud-enabled, unified experience is that a single user, be it an electrical or mechanical engineer—or anyone else—will be able to move from thermal analysis, structural analysis, electronics cooling and embedded software tools without needing to learn a new user interface.

What Will the Ansys Cloud Experience Look Like?

Based on the presentations given, what the future cloud experience will look like once everything is integrated into it is murky but not opaque. In other words, there is a lot of thought-leadership talk of what it will be and what it will do, but not a lot of screen shots or demos showing what it will be.

Ansys has confirmed that its strategy would include three cloud-based access methods: Ansys Cloud, Ansys Gateway and OnScale. Currently, there are no plans to combine or unify them. Ansys Cloud is an optimal option for those that do not have a public cloud provider. All the IT and engineering simulation support is run by Ansys.

Ansys Gateway is powered by AWS and represents another way for customers to use their software licenses. Ansys technology will be packaged on the AWS infrastructure and available through the AWS Marketplace. To access this tool, customers must already have a license to Ansys and AWS technology.

In the presentation by Avi Kulkarni, Senior Partner Development Manager at AWS, he described this cloud strategy. “Anyone with access to a browser will be able to set up Ansys simulations, provide the right infrastructure resources, solve and post-process their results. Using Ansys Gateway, customers will be able to access their existing Ansys software applications and they will be able to create, customize and connect third party tools with Ansys software without having significant technical skills, with a very user-friendly interface,” he said.

Jane Trenaman, senior director Product Management focusing on Cloud and Portfolio at Ansys, said in her presentation that OnScale is a cloud-based simulation platform. It provides the backbone for the Ansys Cloud Native Strategy and will enable native experiences with Ansys and third-party solvers.

“The OnScale acquisition extends Ansys cloud technologies to include a cloud-native, web-based user interface,” said Trenaman. “This supports and accelerates Ansys’ existing platform-centric approach to creating a new class of simulation-based vertical applications.”

Ian Campbell, CEO of OnScale, added to this in his presentation. “OnScale has the best cloud simulation platform—truly leveraging cloud supercomputers to run simulations—and then Ansys has the world’s best engineering solvers. Now our mission is to combine those market-beating solvers with our cloud simulation platform and deliver better and better engineering tools to engineers,” he says.

This is similar to what PTC did with the Onshape platform when it renamed it Atlas and separated the online CAD tool as a product. The product itself was expanded—like with how OnScale (the product) will gain access to Ansys solvers—while the platform will be used to improve the rest of the portfolio.

There is also talk of simulation-based vertical solutions that combine physics and technologies of multiple products into guided workflows and tools. These will enable Ansys customers (dubbed the Developer EcoSystem) and the Ansys team to share knowledge and democratize simulation for non-experts. The Developer EcoSystem will have access to Python and API as a means to develop their own tools.

“What we are working [to] here is to create an ecosystem of consistent API calls to all our different solver technologies and then enable them in the cloud,” says Pytel. “This is going to change the way our customers interact with us because it will make you more focused and allow you to essentially solve different types of problems much more easily.”

Why It’s Good for Everyone to Help Ansys

If Ansys is looking to produce a competitive ecosystem for various verticals, then it faces a considerable uphill battle. However, that is where the Developer Ecosystem is expected to fit in. It appears Ansys hopes that by providing the development tools, customers can produce unique and tailored solutions.

“Access is what drives innovation, and ecosystems are all about access. We need people with new ideas and passions to access and use our tools in new and different ways,” says Chris Wolfe, program director of Solutions at Ansys, in her presentation. “At Ansys we are giving anyone the ability to build and use solutions, solutions they may not even fully understand, in order to gain new and innovative perspectives.”

The plan appears to be to make these user-made tools shareable in a community. This might seem like a gamble, but there is strong precedent for this sort of thing in the simulation space. For years, COMSOL has been enabling users to appify their simulations and profit from the results within, and out of, a marketplace. Altair also offers the Altair One Marketplace where user and partner tools can be shared and purchased. And it appears that Ansys has noticed these successes.

“We're really looking at building out a Python ecosystem such that existing customers become more efficient, they can automate,” says Pytel. “And in the longer term we can take our solver technologies and we can build vertical applications. Think of us as an App Store for simulation, in the longer term.”

Ansys will need a very passionate development community because the timeline outlined for the launch of all these tools is rather short. This all begs the question, why would the Ansys community want to start writing tools for the Ansys platform? The answer is multifaceted, but it boils down to ease and profit.

Chances are, if some in the community need a tool badly enough to make it themselves, others will want to use it too. Depending on how Ansys plays its cards, this could be a new revenue stream for any user through an App store or by selling said technology to Ansys outright.

As for those using the tool, they benefit from not having to reinvent the wheel. Additionally, they get a tool built by users for users; so that tool could address some pet peeves the community may have that Ansys may yet be aware of.

Then there are those that may be looking to create a specific tool for a specific audience that is not used to using simulation. For example, consider a simulation app for doctors performing heart surgery. Theoretically, by using Ansys technology as the backbone, this app’s development will be streamlined and simplified. For instance, it could be as simple as the creator simplifying the traditional Ansys workflow enough that all the doctor needs to do is upload the heart’s geometry. From there, all the life-saving simulations that inform the surgery can be done under the hood.

That’s one example, but the applications are endless. Either way, if this plays out well it can be a win/win for Ansys, its user base and anyone that may benefit from simulation technology.