June 09, 2022 · Capital Electra X · Electrical CAD

Leaping Growth In Electra Cloud - The Only Full-Fledged Cloud-Native Electrical CAD (ECAD) In The World

We are now part of Siemens’ family. Electra Cloud is now Capital Electra X and Electra E9 is now Capital Electra 2210.

June has been especially exciting for us since we introduced Electra Cloud to engineers all over the world in 2020. We are absolutely thrilled to announce that Electra Cloud has reached an amazing new milestone: its second birthday!

It's been a wild ride, and we'd love to celebrate this birthday by looking back on Electra Cloud's journey to the present day.

A Rocky Start

Prior to Electra Cloud, you might not have been aware that previous versions of Electra was built on Microsoft Visio. In 2017, we had the ludicrous notion of retiring Electra from Microsoft Visio and migrating to a new platform that maximises Electra's performance.

This was inspired by the fact that Electra’s compatibility with Visio has been an arduous and time consuming journey, especially when new updates were issued for Visio, compounded by the constant and unexplained crashes that hindered not only our user’s experience, but also Electra’s growth. A decision was made that we need to build our own platform that best supports Electra.

If we were to build anything, then we might as well build it really well. We were extremely ambitious, and wanted our software to work on all platforms and devices, with modern user interfaces for enhanced ease of use, to be accessible anywhere, at any time, and offer unprecedented collaborative features that support our user’s increasing needs for distributed design and collaboration.

The software not only has to work well both online and offline, but also has to surpass the performance of traditional installed CAD software, and yet include powerful formulas and plugins to meet the exacting requirements and demands of a full fledged, cloud native Electrical CAD well into the future.

It definitely wasn’t smooth sailing, and we went through countless revisions, wrote and refactored codes, rejected, redesigned and began new versions over and over again, always placing the highest priority on high quality, stability (it never crashes) and scalability, so the platform can support millions of users, with millions of symbols and drawings. Not forgetting, all these while still bootstrapping with no external funding.

In January 2020, we finally did it, the world’s first Electrical CAD software that runs entirely on a browser. It was our team’s fervent belief and hard work that made it possible. We were excited to introduce Electra Cloud to the world, but who could have predicted that a pandemic would occur at the same time?

It was a major blow for us, but we quickly hunkered down, tightened our belts, and never ceased working. As the world retreated into lockdown mode, the need for cloud based Electrical CAD software with collaborative features that could be accessed anywhere, quickly began to be apparent.

Hello World, Hello Partners

Although sales were slow at first, once our customers got to try out Electra Cloud through our free trials, sales began to pick up significantly to the point that more than 80% of our revenue is now coming from Electra Cloud.

The pandemic has surely expedited the acceptance of cloud-native software tools significantly, but more importantly, we strongly believe that Electra Cloud offers more value, brings more productivity, collaborative features and improves on our user’s bottom line, especially in these tough economic environments.

The fact that Electra Cloud is accessible everywhere, simply makes it a no brainer, and the first choice for electrical engineers all over the world.

Then, Onshape called. Onshape is the only browser-based, cloud-native 3D CAD and product development platform in the world, which was recently acquired by PTC. From the onset, the message from Onshape is clear, the collaboration is only possible because both Onshape and Electra Cloud are cloud-native CAD applications.

Both Onshape and Electra Cloud have an open API, so integration is very smooth and completed in about 3 weeks, to the surprise of both parties. After tying up the business side, we are extremely happy to partner with Onshape to advance cloud-native CAD applications and bring even more values to our customers. Learn more about our partnership with Onshape.

We've also had the great opportunity to collaborate and integrate with OpenBOM. Electra Cloud’s users can now easily export BOM reports into OpenBOM and allow team members to access these data in a centralised location. Learn more about our integration here.

Growing, Thriving, And Expanding

In just over a year, we are thrilled to see our progress thrive. To name a few, we have exceeded our sales record twice in the same year within a six-month period, increased our team size by 30%, amassed a library of over 9000 symbols, and more.

Our commitment to our customers remains high, with customer satisfaction well above 90%, with prompt customer service and continued dedication to customer feedback. Many of our features and tools are the results of constructive feedback from customers, so please keep that coming.

As is our tradition, we celebrate every little accomplishment, and this calls for a birthday sale party! On the celebration of Electra Cloud's second birthday, we want to not only share joy with new users but also to thank our ever-supportive current licensed users! Check out our birthday sale page here for more information.

The Future of Electra Cloud

As the only full-fledged, cloud-native Electrical CAD software, we are aiming for disruptive innovation and will continue to bring value and transformative innovation to the CAD world.

As we scale, we look forward to building an ecosystem that enables global engineers to create engineering diagrams in a holistic manner, to be able to obtain information and datasheets from manufacturers, easily search for symbols and circuits, perform simulations, analysis, design checks, and many other processes that are critical to an engineering team, all on one platform that is easily accessible and easily shared among many stakeholders.

To get there, we require not only time, effort and patience, but also your trust and support. This birthday, join us in celebrating and pushing Electra Cloud to be even easier, faster, together. See you at the top!

About Electra Cloud 2nd Birthday Sale

It starts at 5:00 a.m. EDT on June 16, 2022, and goes on until June 17, 2022. Both new and recurring users can enjoy great deals during the 24-hour birthday sale. Find out more about the sale here.

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