From Jawbone to Pebble and Ouya, much has been written about the recent hardware renaissance. While investors and the press show renewed interest in hardware projects these days, taking a product from prototype to mass production is still an immense challenge. Innovation matters, but sometimes it’s the numerous logistical hurdles, from sourcing components at scale to quality control, and even shipping, that can make or break a product’s future.

Platforms are about to accelerate this hardware revolution in a big way – offering modular options at every step of the hardware process, from design to manufacturing. There’s a multi-billion dollar opportunity at play for a platform to sit on top of the design, prototyping, and distribution process. In many ways, these new platforms will do for hardware what Amazon Web Services (AWS) did for software and web development: take care of much of the logistical backend and free up those…