Podcasts about azure iot

coffee smart behind the scenes connected powered internet of things brewers keurig azure iot

Play Episode Listen Later Nov 10, 2021 29:09

Connected coffee brewers are a thing and Keurig's new solution goes way beyond the mobile app companion, leveraging Azure IoT Central to monitor and manage brewers like it's never been done before.Read the blog post to learn more at https://aka.ms/iotshow/IoTCentralAndKeurig

WSL: Mount USB devices | Tabs vs Spaces

Play Episode Listen Later Nov 4, 2021 10:08

WSL now supports connecting USB devices on Windows 11 thanks to contributions to a 3rd party open-source project.Learn more about what scenarios this enables, how to set things up, see some demos, and hear from Nelson, the intern that made it happen!This episode will cover:[00:00] Ben McMorran, Software Engineer for WSL, introduces us to recent contributions to a 3rd party open-source project that enables USB devices to be connected to WSL[00:25] Why would I want to use USB devices with WSL? [01:02] Demo: Set up WSL 2 on Windows 11 to support attaching USB devices and using the usbid wsl command[05:54] How does this work? Meet our intern, Nelson! [09:37] Where can I learn more? Learn more:Get Windows 11: https://www.microsoft.com/software-download/windows11Get started with attaching USB devices to WSL in the USBIPD-WIN repo on GitHub: https://aka.ms/wsl-usbipWSL documentation: Mount a Linux disk in WSL 2 Azure IoT documentation: IoT Device DevelopmentWSL product repo on GitHub: https://github.com/Microsoft/wslWindows Command Line BlogMore Tabs vs Spaces episodes

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Your toolbox for Azure IoT Edge development

development toolbox azure iot

Play Episode Listen Later Oct 13, 2021 27:15

Learn what's new with Azure IoT Edge developer tools. If you are building edge devices powered by Azure IoT Edge, you will learn about the latest addition to your toolbox that will make your day-to-day simpler and more productive.Learn more at https://aka.ms/IoTShow/GettingStartedWithIoTEdgeDev

123 – Push Through Boundaries – As a Growth Mindset and Empathy Unlock Potential – Part Two with Merrie Williamson

Ultimate Guide to Partnering™

Play Episode Listen Later Oct 6, 2021 26:21

Many Technology Organizations struggle to navigate Microsoft's complexity to achieve their most significant results. It is why I first started this podcast to help organizations navigate to achieve their highest performance results with Microsoft. I also believe that we in the tech sector have an opportunity and perhaps an obligation to lead during this time like no other. I discuss both areas in this far-reaching conversation, Merrie Williamson, Microsoft CVP of Azure Infrastructure, Azure IOT, and Digital & Application Innovation. Merrie is a future-pacing leader who describes for our listeners how she and her organization push through boundaries as a growth mindset and empathy unlock potential. Merrie Williamson is the Corporate Vice President of Azure Infrastructure, Azure IoT, and the newly launched Digital and Application Innovation solution area in the Microsoft Customer and Partner Solutions business group. She is responsible for Microsoft's global commercial sales, strategy, and execution for the core multi-billion dollar Azure business. As Microsoft and their customers continue to transform with digital solutions, the requirements for ever more agile sales models with deeper investments in technical breath and customer compassion are required. Merrie joined Microsoft in 2019 as an executive leader with deep roots in building cloud technologies and driving global cultural transformation. It was critical to finally have Merrie visit this platform to share her organization's important work and her rich experiences with our listeners. This interview was just so rich and far-reaching, we split it into two segments for your listening. I hope you enjoy this discussion as much as I enjoyed welcoming Merrie Williamson as a guest on Ultimate Guide to Partnering®. What you'll learn in this episode: Her view on the Microsoft organization and mission.What it was like to join Microsoft just before the start of the pandemic.Her team's work to align engineering, marketing, and sales for Microsoft's most complex offers.Her view on Microsoft, Satya, Growth Mindset and how Empathy Unlock's Potential.How this leader learned to blend in, while pushing through boundaries to achieve incredible business success. Listen to other recent episodes featuring Microsoft Leaders. 115 – CREATING VALUE TO INNOVATIVE ROUTES-TO-MARKET WITH PRECISE INDUSTRY AND CUSTOMER SOLUTIONS – US Scale Solution Partners with Oguo Atuanya.65 – AN AUTHENTIC CONVERSATION, FROM CO-SELLING TO THE IMPACT OF SOCIAL INJUSTICE – Enterprise Partner Sales with Lani Phillips.94 – WHERE CAN I HELP? A SERVANT LEADER'S MINDSET FOR PARTNER GROWTH – Global Independant Software Vendors (ISV) with Carlos DeTorres. Links & Resources Connect with Merrie Williamson https://www.linkedin.com/in/merriewilliamson/ Rate & Review – please, this helps more listeners find us!Learn more how Ultimate Partnerships helps technology organizations optimize partner results.Ultimate Guide to Partnering Linked In – Stay tuned as I'll share details around our new offering for you.Subscribe to Ultimate Guide to Partnering on Apple, Spotify, Google, Audible, SoundCloud, Stitcher, Player FM, almost anywhere you get your podcasts!About Vince Menzione.Follow or reach Vince – Linked In, Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram.Ultimate Guide to Partnering Facebook.Drop me a line – vincem@ultimate-partnerships.com. This episode of the podcast is sponsored by Ultimate Partnerships. Ultimate Partnerships helps you get the most results from your partnerships. Get Partnerships Right – Optimize for Success – Deliver Results – Ultimate Partnerships.

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Azure IoT middleware for FreeRTOS | Internet of Things Show

Play Episode Listen Later Oct 6, 2021 15:29

Today, customers who are leveraging FreeRTOS on their devices and wish to connect to Azure IoT services need to resort to home-grown solutions or venture to adapt existing SDKs to work with FreeRTOS. With the Azure IoT middleware for FreeRTOS they'll get a proper SDK that exposes the APIs these developers expect to see when getting their devices connected to Azure. In contrast with home-grown solutions, the Azure IoT middleware for FreeRTOS is maintained and supported by Microsoft, and it is an open-source project that allows customers to adapt it to a number of different hardware combinations to support their business and technical requirements.Learn more reading the blog post at https://aka.ms/AzureIoTMiddlewareForFreeRTOS/Blog

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Azure IoT middleware for FreeRTOS

Play Episode Listen Later Oct 6, 2021 15:29

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Episode 396 - How Vattenfall uses Azure

The Azure Podcast

Play Episode Listen Later Oct 4, 2021

The team meets Vattenfall's Marcus Melin and Mikael Söderström to learn how they are leveraging Azure to help enable the use of renewable energy 24x7 by their customers Also, be sure to go back and listen to the Sustainability solutions in Azure episode where the team first heard about Vattenfall from Conor Kelly. Media file: https://azpodcast.blob.core.windows.net/episodes/Episode396.mp3 YouTube: https://youtu.be/SgULg_YJT4k Resources: https://vattenfall.se/24-7 Other updates: Govern your data wherever it resides with Azure Purview https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/govern-your-data-wherever-it-resides-with-azure-purview/ Azure Cost Management and Billing updates – September 2021 https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/azure-cost-management-and-billing-updates-september-2021/ Building a digital guide dog for railway passengers with impaired vision https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/ai-customer-engineering-team/building-a-digital-guide-dog-for-railway-passengers-with/ba-p/2749612 Azure IoT middleware for FreeRTOS in general availability | Azure updates | Microsoft Azure General availability: Azure Sphere OS version 21.09 | Azure updates | Microsoft Azure

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How to connect .NET nanoFramework to the Cloud

Play Episode Listen Later Oct 1, 2021 19:48

Like to use .NET for your coding and want to code for microcontroller powered devices to connect them to Azure IoT? The new .NET nanoFramework SDK now supports Device Provisioning Service for SAS, Certificate, individual and group device! Learm more at https://aka.ms/IoTShow/nanoFrameworkAzureIoT

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Episode 99: Azure IoT

The .NET MAUI Podcast

Play Episode Listen Later Sep 24, 2021 38:59

We have a special show today where we're going to learn all about Azure IoT and a Xamarin app that helps you explore it. Stefan Wick, Rido Minguez Pablos, and Ben Buttigieg join us to tell us about the app and Azure IoT. Show Notes Azure IoT (https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/iot-fundamentals/iot-introduction?WT.mc_id=dotnet-43778-masoucou) Azure IoT Central (https://docs.microsoft.com/azure/iot-central/?WT.mc_id=dotnet-43778-masoucou) Azure IoT Hub (https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/iot-hub/about-iot-hub/?WT.mc_id=dotnet-43778-masoucou) Follow Us: * James: Twitter (https://twitter.com/jamesmontemagno), Blog (https://montemagno.com), GitHub (http://github.com/jamesmontemagno), Merge Conflict Podcast (http://mergeconflict.fm) * Matt: Twitter (https://twitter.com/codemillmatt), Blog (https://codemilltech.com), GitHub (https://github.com/codemillmatt)

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How LoRa Enables Life Post-Pandemic | Semtech's Alistair Fulton

IoT For All Podcast

Play Episode Listen Later Sep 21, 2021 39:31

In this episode of the IoT For All Podcast, Semtech Vice President and General Manager of Wireless and Sensing Products Group Alistair Fulton joins us to talk about LoRa. Alistair shares the history of LoRa, how it was developed to support automation in the utilities industry, and how both the technology and needs have evolved over the years, with LoRa becoming a key connectivity technology for a myriad of use cases and applications across a number of industries. He also speaks to the history of the LoRa Alliance, how the group was created and how it benefits the IoT space at large. Alistair shares some insight as to where he sees IoT going, speaking to some of the use cases that have become more prominent during the pandemic, including hospital and disaster relief initiatives, and what obstacles still exist in those spaces. He also shares how LoRa might play a role in future sustainability initiatives and what might cause companies to turn to IoT to support greener initiatives. Alistair Fulton is the Vice President and General Manager of Semtech's Wireless and Sensing Products Group. He joined Semtech in 2018 with over 25 years of experience in the Internet of Things (IoT), connected devices, machine to machine (M2M)/embedded, and analytics spaces. Before joining Semtech, Mr. Fulton led the development of Hitachi's Lumada Industrial IoT Platform, the leading "visionary" IIoT platform in Gartner's 2018 magic quadrant. Prior to Hitachi, he led Microsoft's early IoT initiatives, including the development and incubation of Microsoft's v1.0 IoT platform (the precursor to the v3.0 Azure IoT platform).Interested in connecting with Alistair? Reach out to him on Linkedin!About Semtech: Semtech's LoRa devices and the open LoRaWAN® standard offers an efficient, flexible and economical solution to real-world problems in rural and indoor use cases, where cellular and Wi-Fi/BLE based networks are ineffective. Learn why LoRaWAN is becoming a leading standard of low power wide area networks (LPWAN)Key Questions and Topics from this Episode:(00:54) Intro to Alistair Fulton(01:39) Intro to Semtech(03:29) Use Cases for LoRa and Semtech's Offerings(11:45) How has the pandemic changed the smart hospital landscape? Where is it going?(14:55) When referring to LoRa versus LoRaWAN, what's the difference there?(20:15) How can companies use IoT to promote sustainability?(23:29) How can IoT technologies help us prepare and recover from natural disasters?(26:33) How can LoRa work alongside satellites to provide connectivity?(29:07) What does the future of LoRa look like?

Building multi-tenant solutions with Azure IoT Central

organizations iot tenant azure iot

Play Episode Listen Later Sep 9, 2021 23:03

Join us to learn more about an upcoming feature in Azure IoT Central that will enable you to build your IoT solution once and onboard multiple tenants into it - we're calling this feature Organizations. During this session we'll provide an overview of the feature, its use cases and roadmap, and we'll wrap it up with a live demo. Learn more at https://aka.ms/iotshow/iotc-organizations

Building multi-tenant solutions with Azure IoT Central | Internet of Things Show

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Play Episode Listen Later Sep 9, 2021 23:03

Being an active member of the Azure community – John Lunn, aka Jonnychipz

Mission Control Center

Play Episode Listen Later Aug 6, 2021 17:30

John Lunn, also known as Jonnychipz, is a Welsh Azure MVP and MCT working as a technical architect at BT Enterprise. An organiser of the Welsh Azure User Group and an avid vlogger, John discusses the benefits of being an active member of the Azure community and how he learned Azure IoT. -- Mission Control Center is your one-stop shop for career advice and tech trends analysis. Weekly tips and news digests, career guides and even short sci-fi stories. Everything you need, in one place. Every Thursday, in your inbox and ears. This podcast is brought to you by Mindquest, Europe's new IT recruiting agency. Mindquest accompanies you throughout your entire professional journey with high-quality offers that meet all your needs and aspirations.

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Benjamin Cabé - On the Edge

AigoraCast

Play Episode Listen Later Aug 2, 2021 33:43

Benjamin is a technology enthusiast with a passion for empowering developers to build innovative solutions. A long-time open source advocate, he co-founded the Eclipse IoT Working Group in 2011 and grew, from scratch, a vibrant open-source community of hundreds of developers and dozens of deeply engaged companies. He is currently working at Microsoft as a Principal Program Manager for Azure IoT, where he is leading developer engagement initiatives with some of the top communities and companies in the embedded, AI, and open hardware space. LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/benjamincabe/ GitHub link: https://github.com/kartben/artificial-nose IoT for beginners curriculum: https://github.com/microsoft/IoT-For-Beginners Twitter: https://twitter.com/kartben Blog : https://blog.benjamin-cabe.com/ To learn more about Aigora, please visit www.aigora.com

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IoT Simulation, Azure IoT and Real World Learnings

Cloud with Chris

Play Episode Listen Later Jul 16, 2021 51:22

In this episode, Chris is joined by Peter Gallagher, Freelance Programmer for PJG Creations, Microsoft Azure MVP, Pluralsight Author... IoT Expert, proud dad, gadget addict and Meetup organiser. Peter talks about the various IoT simulators available, Azure IoT and his experiences IoT across his career. If you're a maker or interested in IoT, then this is one not to be missed!

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Azure IoT Edge monitoring and troubleshooting

monitoring troubleshooting venkat principal program manager azure iot

Play Episode Listen Later Jun 10, 2021 27:51

In this episode, Venkat Yalla, Principal Program Manager in the Azure IoT Ege tells us about the new, first-class IoT Edge remote monitoring solution built around IoT Edge's built-in diagnostics and Azure Monitor in the cloud. Venkat explores powerful patterns to monitor your IoT Edge fleet that will enable you to detect and mitigate production issues rapidly and at-scale.Learn more reading Venkat's blog post at https://aka.ms/iotshow/edgemon

Azure IoT Edge monitoring and troubleshooting | Internet of Things Show

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Play Episode Listen Later Jun 10, 2021 27:51

Time to prepare for TLS Root CA migration on Azure IoT

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Play Episode Listen Later Jun 3, 2021 16:19

As we are preparing for the upcoming expiration of the Baltimore Root CA for Azure services, Ramit Malhotra joins Olivier to go through the extent of the changes as well as what developers will have to do to ensure their devices connected to Azure IoT don't get impacted by the migration. You can learn more reading Ramit's blog post at https://aka.ms/iot-ca-updates

Time to prepare for TLS Root CA migration on Azure IoT | Internet of Things Show

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Play Episode Listen Later Jun 3, 2021 16:19

Career and Azure IoT with Jurgen Kevelaers

Developer Weekly

Play Episode Listen Later Jun 2, 2021 29:33

Are you stressed? Burnt out? Or on your way to burnout? Or do you just want to become healthier?My new course will teach you what stress is. How to recognize a burnout. And how to prevent it and recover from it, by working on the pillars of health (sleep, food, exercise, clean living, active relaxation) and by changing your life (work, relationships, environment). Even if you are not burnt out or stressed, you can use these tactics to become healthier and live a longer and happier life.Check it out at https://www.azurebarry.com/burnout/ About Jurgen:Jurgen Kevelaers is an independent software architect and developer working on scalable solutions that run in the cloud. His main focus is the Microsoft Azure and .NET ecosystem. Jurgen was involved in projects in small and large companies, in various sectors, such as education, health, maritime, meteorology, energy and security. Through his years of experience, he has developed a pragmatic approach and a thorough understanding of designing and implementing maintainable applications.Resources:Jurgen's BlogFollow Jurgen on Twitter Connect with Jurgen on LinkedInCheck out Jurgen's Pluralsight courses

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Applied Nested Edge in an industrial environment | Internet of Things Show

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Play Episode Listen Later Apr 28, 2021 20:14

Learn how to apply a hierarchy of nested Edge devices at scale to an ISA-95 industrial network using best practices and Azure IoT services. Watch a short demo using a physical 3-tier gateway setup showcasing how to address, control and manage the different layers of the Nested Edge environment through the cloud, how to deploy a configuration to deployed devices and what happens if a device loses network connection.Learn more reading the blog post at https://aka.ms/iotshow/NestedEdgeInIIoT

Applied Nested Edge in an industrial environment

environment industrial applied nested azure iot

Play Episode Listen Later Apr 28, 2021 20:14

AWS vs Azure IoT [For Industry]

Intellic Podcast

Play Episode Listen Later Mar 12, 2021 22:59

In this video, Walker Reynolds shares insights into the similarities and differences between Amazon Web Services AWS and Microsoft Azure IoT Cloud Offering. Read to start the Assessment Process? Complete this form

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Going Carbon Neutral Using Azure IoT with Remco Ploeg of Altius

Play Episode Listen Later Nov 30, 2020 27:30

In this episode of The IoT Unicorn Podcast, Remco Ploeg of Altius discusses the challenges and opportunities of creating carbon neutral homes powered by Azure. Download Transcript Here Episode: 00:00 Pete: Welcome to the IoT unicorn podcast. This is Pete Bernard from Microsoft. And this podcast is for anyone interested in the long-term technology trends in the IoT space and the journey from here to there. So let's get started. Thank you, Remco, I appreciate your time. Thanks for joining us here. So you're actually based in the Netherlands, and I'm here in Bellevue, Washington, and through the magic of... I'm actually using the Squadcast platform right now to connect and record this, but... Welcome to the IoT Unicorn. 00:16 Remco: Thank you, Pete, for having me. 00:18 Pete: Great, so you're based in the Netherlands, and I've been there a bunch of times. I used to go there actually, when I would go to Barcelona for NWC, there was always like a flight at the crack of dawn from Barcelona, and I would transfer in the Netherlands to get back to Seattle. And then one year, I kinda got smart and I said, you know, I'm gonna go to Amsterdam the night before, get a good night's sleep, and then I'll take the 10 AM Direct to Seattle. So I've spent a bunch of those kind of layover nights in Amsterdam, so it's an awesome, awesome place, but... Are you from there originally? 00:52 Remco: Yes, I'm from Rotterdam, so that's the other big city in the Netherlands so that's south of Amsterdam. 00:58 Pete: I see. 01:00 Remco: And I was a lot I think also on the same plane as yourself, so I had to do a lot... To Seattle with the direct flight in the morning. So... And also coming back with the flight early in the morning in Amsterdam again. 01:12 Pete: Yeah, yeah. 01:14 Remco: So I'm based at the moment in Utrecht, in the middle of the country. 01:18 Pete: Okay. So you've been at Altius for about a year or two, a couple of years? 01:25 Remco: Yeah, a little bit, a little bit more than a year. And the beginning of this year, there was an acquisition of Altius by Avanade... 01:34 Pete: Yes. 01:34 Remco: So, I'm joining formally Avanade from the first of January, the coming year 2021. But already, I think for 6 months, I'm working side by side with my Avanade colleagues. 01:45 Pete: And so I know you've been... I know another thing, I did a little research is you were... Altius was named Microsoft's AI Partner of the Year, so that's a big deal. So tell me more about that. What is Altius in AI? What is the... Do you consider Altius an AI company or more of an IoT company that's using AI or how would you describe it? 02:08 Remco: Yeah, so if you look at Altius, we are at the moment, with 400 people in the UK, Netherlands, and India. We've got a full focus on data and AI, so that's also our focus. So IoT is more or less, no side-job but we saw that... 02:21 Pete: A means to an end. 02:23 Remco: A means to an end, exactly. And then started when I joined Altius so that's one and a half years ago with also combining AI with IoT, 'cause I think that that's a great combination that we have there. 02:36 Pete: Yeah, for sure. A lot of times that we've had folks from Qualcomm and other... More telecom-related, I think we had BT on here recently, and it was like the 5G plus AI plus IoT or pick your network that certainly becomes kind of a game-changer for what you can do with a little bit of data, over a large number of sensors or a lot of data... [02:58] ____. 02:58 Remco: I think, already at the moment, even without 5G, 5G is of course already rolling out, we can already do a lot with IoT. 03:11 Pete: Yeah, so actually interesting on that topic. You talk about IoT, so how much do you think with AI and IoT are you seeing on the Cloud versus the Edge, and how much experience are you getting now, are you seeing in a more of an emergence of Edge AI in addition to the cloud AI or what are you seeing there? 03:31 Remco: Yeah, that's a good question. I don't know, 10 years ago, we were moving everything to the clouds, but now we see some of our clouds going back again, so I do a lot of projects around connected buildings. I think that's a great example with Edge computing, is the amount of sensors, especially in new buildings and smart buildings, it's so enormous that moving every data point to the cloud, it's sometimes technical, not possible, and the second, it's too expensive. 04:00 Pete: Right. 04:01 Remco: So we see there are movement back putting Edge devices in the building itself again, and also doing AI on the Edge device itself because of course what you don't want to do in a building is controlling lights in the cloud, for example, you want to control locally, if the internet connection is out there you want to still put on your lights on. And since a couple of years, we are also doing AI on the Edge and AI on the cloud, of course already a little bit longer, and we are controlling, for example, Edge Tech Systems with AI depending on the expected usage of the building and certain conditions. We put certain settings into the building when running those... Yeah, AI is now on Edge device that help us and our clients a lot to control those devices. 04:54 Pete: Yeah, also I had understood talking to some other customers too about Edge AI, especially in AI Vision, it's something where you want to actually process locally, just from a privacy perspective too. I mean there's a transport, obviously, you can't keep streams of data going up into Azure and doing live video analytics, I guess you could and some people do, but for a lot of maybe smaller implementations or other implementations, you wanna kinda do things locally, act locally and then keep the data on-prem basically, right? 05:24 Remco: Yeah, exactly. So we felt also again the smart, to smart build solutions, things like security with cameras, where we can analyze the data off the camera, to see, okay, is somebody trying to breach into the building or do something else. And we all use Edge AI for it. 05:42 Pete: Right, yeah, yeah, that's fantastic. Tell me a little bit, I heard about some of the carbon-neutral housing efforts that you were doing, so tell me more about that. That sounds intriguing. 05:54 Remco: Yeah. So for one of our clients in the Netherlands, it's a company called TBI, and it's a local company with around six or seven [06:02] ____, and one of their main goals is to be the most sustainable builder in the Netherlands, and for that they are building carbon-neutral houses. So that means that the houses are totally carbon-neutral from a building perspective, but also from a usage perspective. So the people that are going to live in that home, on normal conditions, don't need to pay any energy bill every year, so they are really zero... We call it zero-net houses in the Netherlands but carbon-neutral is a better naming for that. 06:35 Pete: So, they're generating power on-site as well, so they're generating their own power... 06:39 Remco: Exactly. 06:39 Pete: And then also all the building is smart enough and efficient enough where it's only consuming the power that's generated on-site. Is that basically? 06:47 Remco: Exactly, so they put solar panels on it to be extracted data from the solar panels. We've got all kind of meters in the home, smart meters, smart edge meters, all kind of temperature, humidity, CO2 sensors in the home. We extract all the data into the clouds, to do the analytics and to prove that the house is also carbon neutral. 07:07 Pete: And so do those exist? [chuckle] It seems like... That's a tough one, isn't it? I guess it depends on the size of your house and what you're doing in your house, but is that feasible? 07:17 Remco: Yeah. So in the Netherlands, we don't have big houses like in the US. 07:20 Pete: Right, right. No McMansions. 07:23 Remco: So it's more, yeah, so it's more [07:26] ____ houses. And yeah, we have around, also normal houses, and I think 120, 130 meters, square meters, so that's not huge. 07:36 Pete: No, no. The square footage of the house also limits maybe the amount of energy you can create, right? You've got limited space for solar panels. 07:41 Remco: Exactly, exactly. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And one of the other things that is of course very important is, of course, the energy with the solar panels. Second of all, of course, if in the winter, for example, if the homeowner put the window open, the whole day, that house will never be carbon neutral because heating will... 08:05 Pete: Yeah. 08:05 Remco: Go the whole day and all night. 08:07 Pete: Can't solve for bad behaviour. 08:08 Pete: And that's why we need to... [laughter] 08:10 Remco: Exactly, yeah. So we also try to help the homeowner to get insight in that usage and that energy. 08:18 Pete: I see. 08:18 Remco: To reduce energy. 08:20 Pete: Is the power generated primarily through solar or is there any kind of wind or other geothermal or... 08:25 Remco: No, at the moment, in the houses, it's really solar panels and of course the extra energy that they bring into the home is from green energy. So in the Netherlands, most of the homes use green energy. 08:37 Pete: Ah, see, I see. 08:39 Remco: Or other solar panels... 08:39 Pete: So they're getting a power feed from the grid, from the government grid, that's green energy, that's probably wind-powered, right? And then they're augmenting that with local solar, and then the energy they're consuming... 08:50 Remco: Exactly. 08:50 Pete: Is kind of net neutral, I guess. 08:53 Remco: Net neutral, yeah. Exactly. 08:55 Pete: Fantastic. 08:56 Remco: Yeah. Because in the winter, of course, you don't have enough sun. We don't have enough sun in the Netherlands. 09:00 Pete: Right. Same here, I mean you know... 09:01 Remco: At the end of winter [09:02] ____. 09:02 Pete: Yeah, Northwest, we don't have... There's no sun here. [laughter] 09:06 Remco: No. A lot of rain. 09:08 Pete: Interesting, wow. So has that solution been deployed then? I mean, your solution with... 09:13 Remco: Yeah. We have now around, I think 700 houses deployed. 09:18 Pete: Wow, fantastic. 09:19 Remco: And depending of the speed, of course, of building extra houses will be added every month. Something like that. 09:25 Pete: So basically what you're doing is you're instrumenting. 'Cause I know in the US and maybe in the Netherlands too, there are ways to instrument your patch panel, your incoming electrical panel, to look at loads on a per circuit basis. And then what you're doing is then you're doing that kind of analysis, you're doing the HVAC kind of heating cooling analysis. Are you doing anything about the appliances themselves in the house? Are there appliances that are kind of determining being smart about their energy usage or is that all just happening sort of asynchronously from the rest of the system? 09:58 Remco: Yeah, so we put some, let's call them Smart Energy power adaptors in the home... To see, okay, the refrigerator, how much energy is that costing, etcetera, etcetera. So we're also getting that data. In the future, there are plans to also put in a small panel in the home to give direct feedback to the... To the homeowner itself. So at the moment, it's more or less... It's more information behind for the homeowners, so they can watch later on how the house is performing. TBI can see it directly, but the homeowner sees it later. So they want to bring that information already directly in the home, so the homeowner can react on it directly. 10:44 Pete: Right, right. So you're measuring current draw from different outlets, for lack of a better term, right? It's... Giving them a heads-up and... 10:52 Remco: Yeah. 10:53 Pete: But in the future, then hopefully these things that are plugged into the wall will get smarter and smarter about... Everyone needs to sort of get a message to sort of go into a low power mode because somebody's running the dryer maybe... I don't know. Like is there intra-appliance communication going on here, or is it just sort of every appliance for themselves? 11:14 Remco: Yeah, we see that already with load balancing. So in the Netherlands, we've got a big amount of electric cars that we are charging at home. And so we've got a lot of solutions also in this case with load balancing. So depending on the usage of the home, the car will load more or less energy. So I expect much more solutions also in the more smaller devices that can do more or less the load balancing and talking to each other what's happening. 11:47 Pete: Yeah, exactly. I think that's kind of key. We actually just installed a level two charger here in the US, 'cause we have a Chevy Bolt, our newest car. It's great, and you know the 110-volt charge here, that doesn't really... That only works for emergencies. It takes like an hour to get five miles of charge, so the level two we had installed and run off a 40-amp breaker in the panel and... Yeah, I could see that the inter sort of communication between devices, that will be sort of maybe the next step. 12:16 Remco: Yeah, we see that already here sometimes with more [12:19] ____ systems that try to connect all the kind of devices to each other. But that's still, in my opinion, more for tech guys like us, because it doesn't work always, and... You need some pack of expertise. 12:33 Pete: And a bunch of logos on the box, it's supposed to work with the other thing, it never does. So, yeah, been there. [laughter] 12:38 Remco: Exactly, yeah. It never does. 12:39 Pete: So what are you using Azure for in this case? I'm curious. What are your... There's obvious things, I can name them, but I'm just curious. How are you leveraging Azure in this particular solution? 12:50 Remco: Yeah. So in the start, we've built our own device, our hardware partner did that in the home. And the device is managed by the Azure IT app, where we get the data from the device into that. But we can also control the device now. So it's... 13:05 Pete: And is that sort of a monitoring device that's kind of like a power monitoring? 13:09 Remco: No, it's more, let's call it a gateway. I think that's the best naming convention for this device. So it's really the center of the device in the home. It'll extract the data from the solar panels, from the heating, from... 13:22 Pete: Okay. Right, right, right. 13:23 Remco: Etcetera, etcetera. And the data is directly feed into the systems. Of course, we've got also some devices that we cannot connect in the home itself, and we extract the data from APIs of those suppliers. 13:36 Pete: Right, right. 13:37 Remco: Those are more or less the two options for data ingestion into the platform. 13:40 Pete: Okay. 13:43 Remco: We're using Azure Digital Twins version two to make a replication of the home itself, so we get data from Outerdesk. Outerdesk is a piece of software where they design the homes with, the data from the Outerdesk we import into Outerdesk... Into the... Sorry, Azure Digital Twins. And we combine that data with the sensor data in the home. And that combination reflects into a digital twin of every home of TBI. 14:10 Pete: Wow. That's cool. 14:10 Remco: And next the data flow into the digital twin, we analyze the data with applications like Timeshare with Insights, where we can do simple Timeshare risk analytics. And of course, this data is all time-based data, solar data, panel data, with consumption and data, and energy data, etcetera, etcetera, so that they can do the fast analytics by themselves. And the other one is we use Azure Stream Analytics, where we can analyze the data for anomaly detection. So we know, for example, one of the biggest dealings with TBIS, it's a really simple one but it's water pressure. So in older homes in the Netherlands, we've got gas boilers, or sometimes electric boilers, and they need a certain water pressure in them. If you don't have enough water pressure, you cannot shower, and you don't have heat. And it's an easy solution because you just put extra water into the boiler system and it works. 15:15 Pete: Right. 15:16 Remco: But yeah, if you are in the morning, and you want to go to the shower and it doesn't work, most people will call, in distress, TBI... And say, "Okay, my boiler doesn't work." So then the mechanic will go to the house and fix the problem, and it gets quite expensive. 15:30 Pete: Right, they're very expensive. So you have... So there's sensors for water pressure in the pipes? Is that... 15:36 Remco: Yeah, no, it's a sensor for water pressure in the boiler. 15:41 Pete: Down in the boiler. Okay. 15:44 Remco: So it's indirect in the pipe of course. And that data we get in, and we see a certain pattern that it's declining every time, and then, of course, we can... Or call the homeowner at first, so they're now calling the homeowner, and ask them "Can you fill it by yourself?" And if not, they will come to you and fill it for you of course. But yeah, it's more... Let's say proactive maintenance. Instead of predictive maintenance, it's more proactive. 16:07 Pete: Right. 16:09 Remco: So that's one of the options they are doing. We're using Azure Machine Learning, also how to calculate optimized boiler temperature, to reduce energy in your boiler systems you can set a certain boiler temperature. And of course, how high the boiler temperature, or how more energy you will consume and you need to find per home the optimized boiler temperature, so we use machine learning for that, Azure Machine Learning. And of course, we use Power BI to present all the data to the stakeholders of TBI. 16:44 Pete: Wow, that's cool. So you're getting your money's worth then, on Azure. [chuckle] 16:48 Remco: Yeah, sorry, yeah. 16:50 Pete: That's cool. Are you doing any Edge AI, speaking of Edge AI, on the gateway itself, or is it really more of a data collector sender? 16:58 Remco: Yeah, so at the moment, it's really in Data Collector and of course we can send commons back. Based on this platform, we are also building out now also for the same customer a connected buildings platform, so same architecture but different use case, and therefore we use Edge devices of course. 17:16 Pete: Yeah, I can imagine. Actually, I had someone from RXR realty on the show about a month ago, I don't know if you've heard that one, but that was interesting 'cause they're focused more on the commercial... They're one of the largest real estate companies in New York City. And so they focus on commercial real estate, and in fact, they're using Azure for a lot of work, safe at work scenarios around social distancing, and mask-wearing, and occupancy, and other things. So I can imagine once you move into a commercial space, there's obviously the energy usage and the efficiency, which you guys are focusing on here for the personal home, but then there's all these other scenarios, and when you get into smart buildings, obviously that's kind of a whole lot more complex. 18:01 Remco: Yep. Yeah, and the other issue where, of course, we checked if we could do something with Edge devices, especially from a machinery perspective in the future that can be in a good solution, but if you look at the moment for the pricing model, between Edge device and then [18:18] ____ device, it's more or less almost 50% cheaper to put you and then, yeah, [18:23] ____ more stupid device in the home. 18:24 Pete: Yeah, no, that's true. That's true. 18:27 Remco: Yeah, and it's getting better also. On the simple devices, you can also already do some simple machine learning or smart analytics stuff, as a Microsoft... They put also a lot of energy, and with Edge [18:43] ____, for example, that can do really simple machine learning on a really simple device... You have a lot of CPU power. 18:52 Pete: So if your had your wish list of, "I really wish this technology existed to help me with these solutions, and it doesn't exist yet," is there anything that's kind of top of mind for you that you could snap your fingers and say, "Kinda wish we had that." 19:05 Remco: That is a really good question. Yeah, so for this use case is more or less for the device in the home. So as TBI, to get a bit of hardware power, maybe build some... Piece of hardware. And it's of course school, and I like that, but if you... As a construction company, do you want also to be in a hardware builder of those devices in the home? So I'm looking forward also, if you look at Microsoft, and what they are doing with things like Surface Laptops, etcetera, will they come ever with a cheap, really good more and less Edge or [19:47] ____ Autos device, Microsoft branded working really good... That's one of the things that... 19:53 Pete: I see. So sort of a Microsoft Edge AI sort of platform or something that... 20:01 Remco: And of course, yeah, there are some... Yeah, so there are, of course, already some development kits for that... With the fusion Kit and, etcetera, but that is more or less for the, yeah... For playing around with AI... It's really cool device. But from a production perspective, you need of course something else. 20:18 Pete: Interesting. Yeah, no, that would be good. That would be good. I think there's a lot of... Just a lot of work ahead of us in terms of... When you talked about Edge AI and just a lot of the things that Altius is doing is certainly on the cutting edge. You said you have about 700 homes, so obviously lots more to go with that. Do you know of any other overseas... I'm wondering if there's any equivalent sort of efforts going on in the US. I know that there's a lot around efficiency, but not necessarily around marrying efficiency with the kind of intelligence... I don't know if there's anything else. 20:52 Remco: No, we see in Europe a good interest now in this solution. We also try to more resell this solution. They say it's Avanade's. And of course, you can use the same concept in a building. I think in the US also, to save energy in a big building, you can save a lot of money. 21:14 Pete: Sure, sure. 21:15 Remco: I think these guys can also help with that. 21:20 Pete: Yeah, yeah, for sure. Fantastic. How's the pandemic been affecting your business over the past... I guess... Year, almost, God forbid. 21:30 Remco: Yeah. I have to say, in the Netherlands, it's quite good. So they are still building houses. There's a big need for houses in the Netherlands, especially cheaper houses. So we see a lot of attention, and I think if you look at the pandemic and data and AI, I think companies need more and more data and AI also during pandemic and also afterwards. From that perspective, I see a good future around this topic. If you look at IoT, a lot of companies are now investing... Okay, how can I do the same without the people, and IoT, of course, can help with that, with more automatic... Think about connect the factories. 22:16 Pete: I think actually it's interesting... 22:18 Remco: [22:19] ____ etcetera, etcetera. 22:19 Pete: One of the things I've heard in a constant theme is the pandemic, obviously, it's been pretty horrific, but the... We are getting a lot more data-savvy as a population, we're learning to understand data, and the importance of data and data can mean life and death in many cases, so just the sort of data savviness of the population, it's a positive thing and like you said, I think people are trying to just now use technology to be safer, to be more efficient, remote and automated. That's kind of fast-forwarded a lot of investment in technology over the past nine months or so. And I guess part of it is doing more with less, in many cases. We're trying to be more efficient and more effective. I think once we can get the pandemic under control, we get the... Climate change comes back into the front page, as you would say, and so the work that you guys are doing in terms of really being smart with energy, energy is such a finite resource and... Although I guess it's infinite, if you consider like the sun and the solar system, but anyway... 23:28 Remco: And the wind. 23:29 Pete: And the wind. I guess it's infinite. No. But that's kind of the next thing is we need to get smart and take some of the technology investments we've made and really apply them into our everyday life and... Yeah, yeah, 20, 30 years from now, this will just be commonplace, not having this kind of smarts in your home, in your building and not having a renewable energy, not being carbon-neutral itself will probably seem very odd a decade from now. 23:58 Remco: If you look at the IoT... IoT is already... They're frightened about... 20 or 25 years... 24:03 Pete: Yes, yes. We had that discussion the other day. I've been involved in it for that long. We used to call it embedded systems, and now it's called IoT. Now, but actually now they're gonna change it, it's gonna be called Edge, so Edge computing is now the cool... Even cooler than IoT. [chuckle] Get ready for another name change, but... Yeah, no, it's fascinating. Well, it's great, I really appreciate you taking the time and explaining what you guys are doing. Any kind of closing thoughts or other things you wanna communicate out to the audience around where this stuff is heading. 24:40 Remco: Yeah, I think what you just mentioned, if you look at sustainability of the epidemic, I think that should be one of the main topics for us in the world, and I think IoT can really help with that, creating that achievement with sustainability. And of course, in your home, it's all small what you're doing, but if everybody's doing it, it's really big for the world. 25:03 Pete: Right, right. 25:05 Remco: So we should use these kind of technologies in our homes, and our buildings. That will really help a lot saving energy and reducing a lot of, yeah, bad air, in the air, in the world. 25:18 Remco: Yeah, you know, I hear you. I think there's a phrase, I think it's like, "I can't solve the problems of the world by myself but I can solve the problems that are here locally, on the ground that I stand". And I guess if everyone is doing that and you kind of using technology in the right way to be sustainable, then it does add up. That's gonna be an important one. Perfect. Great, well, Remco, I really appreciate the time. It's been nice meeting you and I appreciate all the support of the Microsoft community, and hopefully our paths will physically cross at some point, maybe some future Mobile World Congress, I don't know, Barcelona or Netherlands or something in the future. 25:58 Remco: Or maybe on the airport of Amsterdam, man. 26:00 Pete: Yeah, I'm sure. I'm sure we've actually probably passed each other in the airport at some point. 26:03 Remco: Exactly, yeah. 26:04 Pete: Cool, alright. Appreciate... 26:05 Remco: Nice to meet you, Pete. 26:06 Pete: Thanks, Remco. Take care. 26:07 Remco: Thank you. 26:07 Pete: Bye-bye.

Stop Poaching with IoT Technology and Project 15 with Sarah Maston, Senior Solution Architect, Microsoft

Play Episode Listen Later Oct 19, 2020 36:29

In this episode of The IoT Unicorn Podcast, Sarah Maston, Senior Solution Architect at Microsoft, discusses the development of the animal conservation initiative, Project 15. Download Transcript Here 00:00 Pete Bernard: Welcome to the IoT Unicorn podcast. This is Pete Bernard from Microsoft, and this podcast is for anyone interested in the long-term technology trends in the IoT space and the journey from here to there. So let's get started. [music] 00:21 PB: On this episode of the IoT unicorn, we talk to a very interesting person doing very interesting things, and that's Sarah Maston of Microsoft. We talk about Boston University where we both went to school, a little bit about nutrition and nutrition technology, but we spend quite a bit of time talking about Project 15, which is an open platform effort that her and her colleagues have been championing. It's an anti-poaching platform that's been adopted by a number of NGOs around the world, and we talk about that and the technology behind it. So please join us. [music] 00:58 PB: Sarah, thanks for joining us. We've had a lot of different guests on the show from silicon partners to telecom, internal Microsoft, I think you kind of fall into the category of very interesting Microsoft people that are doing very interesting things, so I'm gonna tee that up. Maybe you can give us a little bit of an intro yourself and sort of some background. 01:18 Sarah Maston: Sure, it's funny, when I look at my cats, I don't know that I'm that, they think I'm that interesting, but thank you. [chuckle] I'm really happy to be here. Where did I come from? So I actually have a really long history in the database space. I started out making data warehouses before that was a thing, that kinda grew, and so I started out as a medical programmer, actually, at a company called Meditech in Massachusetts. 01:56 PB: I see. Oh, where in Massachusetts, by the way? 02:00 SM: Ah, they were in Natick, but I lived in Arlington, I went to BU. 02:04 PB: So interesting, interesting... Oh, you went to BU? Oh, I went to BU also. 02:08 SM: I did, once upon a time. Oh, yay! 02:10 PB: I was a BA/MA BU grad, isn't that weird? 02:12 SM: Go Terriers! 02:12 PB: No, I was gonna say... Yeah, go Terriers. I was gonna say I had, my first job out of college was in West Natick. 02:19 SM: Oh, interesting. 02:19 PB: There was a little shop called The Bit Bucket computer store, and my professor from BU, my assembly language professor actually ran the company, The Bit Bucket, and we built computers, branded computers, and I was his first engineering hire, and it was in West Natick. I didn't stay there that long, 'cause it was kind of like a weird job, but yeah, The Bit Bucket, I remember West Natick... Yeah, Natick's a nice area. That's cool. 02:49 SM: So I was gonna say did they have a lot of Twinkies, 'cause I believe that the Twinkie fact... I don't know. I think it's in Natick... 02:57 PB: Oh, the Twinkie was there? 02:58 SM: I'm unclear. 03:00 PB: I think that was it, I know there's Necco Wafers too was out there. 03:01 SM: Oh, delicious, delicious. 03:01 PB: I'm not sure where that is, yeah. 03:03 SM: Yeah, no, I actually have a degree in psychology and women's studies from BU. 03:08 PB: Fantastic. 03:09 SM: So, a little bit... 03:10 PB: Fantastic, okay. Go Terriers, yeah. Okay. 03:13 SM: Okay. 03:14 PB: There you go. 03:15 SM: Back to this. 03:15 PB: We should have cleared that up in the pre, in the preamble before we started recording, but that's okay, now we know, so that's good. 03:21 SM: Thank you. Yeah, so I did a lot of data warehouses, and I put myself actually in Harvard's night school to kind of get out of data and start learning more Java-ey, getting into more programming stuff, because I had a really weird side hobby then as well, where I had been really sick in my late 20s, and I started studying nutrition, and I ended up creating what was a graph database of food, and I wanted to go and put myself in Harvard 'cause it was easier to learn how to code it than to sort of explain it. And so that journey led me to... I actually invented that over at IBM a couple of years ago and working at IBM, I met a colleague there that had come to Microsoft and so how did you come to Microsoft? Well, I had a friend, and then I met the IoT group and they... It was funny because I hadn't, I was kind of the first person in the group that hadn't built a computer to be. 04:44 PB: Right, right. 04:45 SM: Wasn't a hardware person, and but when they brought me in to start talking about that bigger data conversation, so that's how I got here. 04:57 PB: Interesting. Yeah, cool, so obviously you've been here, I think a couple of years or two years or... 05:01 SM: I have. 05:02 PB: Just about that. That's exciting. Yeah, so that's an interesting path, I think a lot of people get to Microsoft through professional connections, personal connections, there's all sorts of different ways and so you were involved in nutrition and... 05:16 SM: I was. 05:16 PB: And kind of analyzing that. Is that still a big kind of passion of yours, personal nutrition and things? 05:22 SM: I, well yes, personal. Once I designed the graph with the team there, which was the connection of food to disease through phyto-chemicals and the reactions in your bios, kind of like a Facebook of food. I had spent so much... Honestly, I had spent so much time on that in my life that the IoT space and starting to learn more formally about that was so exciting, and a lot of my data colleagues in my circle, same thing, because sometimes you can be doing the same thing and database, database... What's new? And so this was actually really fun, and it was in the beginning of when I got here, my job was a lot of enablement. We were gonna teach people how to use Azure and how to use Azure IoT and etcetera. And that's my fault that I'm having a notification 'cause clearly I... 06:25 PB: That's okay. 06:26 SM: I could have turned that off. [chuckle] 06:30 SM: But what's interesting is that I... This, it's kind of a strange story in the sense that I... It's not that strange, but I was outside and of my apartment and I saw a lot of smoke and I freaked out, and I ran into my building to save my cats and long story, very short, lots of stress, but the next day, I ended up designing a safety platform that could use IoT to speak differently in a crisis, and so that's really something that whenever I talk about my journey to Microsoft and learning something new is that it was so great to have the space to be like, "Hey, I have an idea." But anyway, that's another story. [chuckle] 07:26 PB: Fascinating. Yeah, I do actually, I use the... I'm kind of a Fitbit fan, and I use the food logging on Fitbit, and it gives me a macro-nutrient breakdown and stuff, and so I've been kind of on my own health journey in the past year or so and feeling good, feeling fit. And part of it is kind of analyzing what I ingest, and I feel like we're just sort of at the beginning of a lot of that science like I would love for the data I'm putting into the Fitbit system, which I guess is now Google, just to get even more analysis of that over time. So it's fascinating kind of measuring what you put into your body and how your body is working, and we had a Dr. David Rhew from Microsoft's chief medical officer on a few weeks ago, and talking about COVID of course, but also just more of the intersection of health and technology and very early stages of really taking advantage of that kind of combination, so... 08:24 SM: No, that's true. It's my work, it was... My work pretty much focused on just taking stuff we do with process, architecture and analysis, and then data, of course, but if I think back when my hair was much browner, I just thought what's breaking when it came to metabolic syndrome, and it was... Well, what happens when I do this and then how does your... And what does your intestinal villi do? And so basically connecting those dots to go through the process architecture of digestion and then to make sort of the data model of that. And to say, "Oh, when you eat oatmeal, the pectin and beta-glucan, pectin from apples and pears comes in, it absorbs bile salts." Basically, all those different processes and then how those can combine and really... Back in the day, I created what's called a food program, and that's also known as a diet, but a food program that would layer what foods to eat, how to change your internals to do what it needed to do. And I guess my own doctor took notice because I lowered my cholesterol 90 points in under three months, so... 09:48 PB: Wow. 09:49 SM: Then I made a system that did it, and so that was really... And I met a lot of really cool people in that journey. Then unfortunately, I got sick from stress, but when I came out of that, here I was, and then I invented some new stuff. 10:12 PB: Good, so let's talk about some new stuff. You've been sort of very, very busy, not only being a new... Fairly new Microsoft employee, but also building up something that is referred to as Project 15 for probably some of our listeners are probably familiar, but why don't you give us a little bit of a recap of the origin story around Project 15 and where that's at? 10:40 SM: Sure, I'd love to. I do a little project in the... Although it's a little bigger now, in my spare nights and in weekend hours with a few friends of mine here at Microsoft and... Alright, so the origin story, once upon a time, it really speaks back to that incident with the cat, and essentially, I made a safety system that could use IoT devices to speak to a community within an emergency. So if you thought about some of the stuff that was going on, you have to go to Twitter to find hashtag, you have to go... You don't really know what's going on. There are so many systems getting good data to first responders, but for us, we don't really know what's going on. So that project became known as Project Edison. And so it went for about a year, we built that with a partner, Insight, and we went on the IoT in Action global event tour and talked about it, and I talked about safety in every context you could imagine. 11:55 SM: I talked about safe retail, I talked about safe cities, I talked about safe schools, safe workplaces, safe buildings. And then, actually, I met a guy who does anti-poaching and his name was Eric and... Eric Dinerstein, and I realized in one of these very stereotypical, I was at the cafe with my colleague Daisuke, and I started drawing, and I said, "Anti-poaching, it's the same use case as a Project Edison safety case," and he looked at me and I said, "Well, it's a population that can't defend itself, and it's someone that you wanna stop or making it less impactful, using devices, and then people you need to talk to to get help. So maybe we can get other people that were like us to have this aha moment that scientists are remaking these wheels that we've already made in the commercial space." And so, that's how Project 15 started, which was like, what do we have in our world that we just don't know the use cases of the scientific world. And the second person I met was another professor, Wasser, Dr. Sam Wasser, and he was at U-Dub, and he also was involved with trying to prevent animal... The tracking of tusks and things, illegal trafficking, and I learned about a pangolin from one of his research fellows, which is a tiny, cute, little, scaly animal, and... 13:42 PB: Okay. 13:43 SM: I had never heard of a pangolin, so cute. And they're slow. And the problem is, is that their defense mechanism is that if you scare them, they turn into a ball. 13:55 PB: Okay. 13:56 SM: And if you are... 13:57 PB: Sounds fair. 13:58 SM: Right, I do the same thing. 14:00 PB: Yeah, I can relate to that. 14:01 SM: I'm just gonna be a little ball over here, but and that works for lions and tigers who are like, "Oh, that's a sharp little ball," but it doesn't work for, poachers will just make a noise, it curls up into a ball, they pick it up, they put it in a bag so. 14:21 PB: I see. 14:22 SM: That's our most poached animal on the planet, actually. 14:25 PB: Oh no. 14:26 SM: Anyway, but I thought, "Well, what's the difference between shoplifting a sweater at a store and shoplifting an animal?" And so that was really where this started was, can we just think about this? 14:44 PB: Right, right. Fantastic. And I think, and I did see you had a segment on a recent video, it was like a United Nations gathering of interested parties around the equator initiative, and I guess I was labeled on YouTube. But can you talk a little bit about that. I mean you're getting some pretty good NGO type of engagement off of project 15. 15:13 SM: Yes. So that was super exciting. I would be... I'll just, full disclosure, I was very nervous, but... And I was a little frustrated with the pandemic because I think I could have gone to the United Nations in another reality. 15:32 PB: Yeah I know. 15:33 SM: But virtually, was very fun and so what happened was, is so we put up a video because we had support from my CVP and my management tree, and pretty much everyone in the group that I was in was very supportive of Project 15 right in the beginning. And so we put up a little web page, and I used to call it the bat phone, because we wondered if anyone would call from the scientific realm, and we actually started meeting NGOs. We had... People used our web page to get in touch with us and two of the people, one of them is... That we started working with, is Red Panda Network, which is a fascinating, wonderful organization. Another one is called the Zambezi project, and the third was a woman who runs the small grants program at... The United Nations Development Program has different sections and small grants is a department that funds scientific projects and that are all very, very much sustainability focused. 16:55 SM: I could give a whole talk about... They're so fascinating. And I met her because she actually knew... Her husband was friends with Daisuke so it was like one of these things where somebody hears about what's... And, "Hey, that's really interesting. Let's see if that would work." And then six months later, I'm speaking at their conference. But what happened was, is that we kind of paired up together to see if we could bring our commercial processes that we do normally with my day job, IoT engagements, we're gonna do an architectural design session, we're gonna get to know those processes. And then she gave us... We piloted with three grantees and started to try to figure out, we have different worlds, but we do the same things, it's just different words to describe them. 18:01 SM: And so we had a few epiphanies during this process, and so the thing is, is that she... Her group funds thousands of NGO companies and projects, scientists that range from urban sustainability, so like smart city type stuff, all the way to biodiversity, which is where we kinda focused, and so how do you scale? And so we've been working with her and her group on scaling up and digitally transforming this area through not only Azure IoT, but how does that work with the research part, there's a lot of machine learning, there's a lot of CAMS, so connecting that into something like Teams, so it's bigger than Azure IoT specifically, as all IoT solutions are, and so... 19:05 PB: Exactly. 19:06 SM: So that... Yeah, so that I got invited to speak about our work. 19:09 PB: Yeah it's interesting. Who do we have on recently... Oh, we were talking to Cory Clarke from RXR, and he was talking about the smart building solutions that they're rolling out for office space and office space post-COVID, and how do you use AI and sensors to detect occupancy and distance from each other and a lot of the core tech around using AI, vision and other things and processing that data, it's all very similar. The core tech is similar, but now we have all these other ways of applying it, whether it's in healthcare or bio-diversity or whatever. And so that's an exciting thing about Microsoft, is a lot of the platform tech that we're doing here gets used in all these different directions. And so you've found a particular slice where obviously there's a super high need and folks should look up and learn more about the poaching problems that are happening in the world, but it's pretty significant. 20:11 PB: And to take some of the tech that has been used for more of the, I don't know, traditional digital transformation that we talk about, but actually using that tech in a really smart way out in the field and the real world to help a problem. That must be pretty satisfying for you as a Microsoft employee. And I guess one of my questions is, that must take up a pretty good chunk of your time, as it should. And so you're doing that and you're also working at Microsoft. And so how do you end up balancing all these things? Is this a... Is that... Give us a little more insight. How do you do that? [laughter] 20:49 SM: Well, I have a very supportive wife who feeds me and makes sure that I eat and... 20:56 PB: Yeah. 20:58 SM: So good question. So when we started to scale, and I clearly... Daisuke and I cannot meet with every NGO to do an... Etcetera. So COVID, in the beginning of this, we did have a very big partnering model. And so we have all these great IoT partners, they've got platforms and just connect these projects to them like we would a startup, a retail startup or something. Unfortunately, the pandemic happened, and of course, as we know, it's all hands on deck to start landing our... Like you just mentioned, the return to work and employees safe. So Daisuke and I had another coffee talk, though virtual, and I said, "You know what? Why don't we use the company Hackathon and make an 80% solution for these folks?" 22:10 SM: That's an easier way. And so we actually got reached out to by a couple of colleagues, one of them was Pamela Cortez and Anders in my group. And they both said, "We'd love to join this because we know what you're doing and we need to figure out how to do the least amount of stuff to have a big impact. And to do that, we need to rely on existing enablement motions and partnerships within other groups. And if we could just build that, then we can roll that out, and off it goes just like anything else." 22:58 PB: Yeah. Well, Microsoft has a great partner network too. So that's the good thing, when we have developers, we have channel partners, we have solution providers, this huge force multiplying engine. It's one of the cool things also about Microsoft is just to get that great idea out there, partners picking it up and amplifying it and landing it locally. So it was good that you took advantage of it. I do wanna make sure people know the... So the aka.ms/project15, is that the go-to place to get the latest? 23:31 SM: That is the place. And then if it can... Down at the bottom there, we have a new link on that page that brings you to the open platform, if you wanna check that out. 23:41 PB: Wow, fantastic. So yeah, let me ask you too, another question. You mentioned COVID-19 and obviously we're all working through that in so many ways. And how has that affected some of your efforts around Project 15 in terms of... Has it been some acceleration in the adoption of technology? Has it slowed down some of these NGOs? Has it... 24:09 SM: This is a multi-faceted answer, so let me think about my words. Okay. So what happened, because now, in the past year, in my private time, and I'm just learning and meeting new people and learning about this space, 'cause I didn't know anything. So if you're somebody who's like me who always wanted to help but didn't think you could, so you just watched, that is not true. All of our skills are welcome and wanted, and a lot of these organizations are non-profits. 24:47 PB: Sure. 24:47 SM: And there's a lot of tech developer groups that you can code for good and get involved on the device level and the software side. So I just wanna put that out there. But what happened was, is that the places where these things are happening, you'll read news articles that poaching accelerated or the lack of tourism has caused some problems. So this space seems to be having the same problems that every other part of the world is having when it comes to learning to adapt to a pandemic world. We weren't exactly affected in terms of getting on the phone at 7 o'clock at night, Pacific Time, to meet with Sonam, who runs the Red Panda network, who's in Nepal, because we were always virtual. And actually, I would... The lack of social life [chuckle] being quarantined probably helped myself, and Daisuke, and Pamela, and Anders when we were cranking out the code and the plan for scale. And so the answer is no. 26:08 SM: One thing that's been... Is a little bit challenging is that I was used to meeting up with our partner architect friends, and we would draw on pieces of paper and we'd talk about smart factories, and then we'd talk about this. And so those kind of conversations got harder, but I did get involved with a Hackathon that came out of Hack-Star and where they were hacking on the OpenCollar project to build the smartest elephant. That's the goal, is to build the smartest elephant collar for Smart Parks. So I just wanted to mention that, is the partner ecosystem is out there, they're doing stuff in this area as well as all the areas. But so it didn't... I don't think it stopped. It's just, at least not... 27:03 PB: Yeah, changed it a little bit. 27:03 SM: For us sitting at the desk, yeah. 27:06 PB: Yeah. Yeah. I hear you. I've definitely missed some of the more serendipitous conversations I've had. Sometimes you... That's where you have the serendipitous meetings and conversations that connect things, and it's been a little more planful maybe in terms of conversations and time. But I know also that there's been a lot of tech acceleration by a lot of companies too, and the whole notion of remote and leveraging the cloud a lot more. So hopefully that does work in your favor. I was gonna mention the... We haven't talked about the tech behind Project 15 too much. You mentioned AI is obviously like big data sets. I'd be remiss if I didn't mention I think this sounds like a really exciting potential for 5G/LPWA tech in some form. I know that the... I don't think they've rolled out 5G yet in Nepal, but the idea of some sort of low frequency or low spectrum cellular connections that can blanket those areas is exciting. So that's a follow-on for me. I will actually take that as an action to circle back and see what we can do to help there. 28:20 SM: That's actually one of the... So when it comes to the spectrum of silicon to cloud, I fall squarely into process architecture and designing how you're gonna get this to there, and what are we gonna do and strategy on that. I also fall squarely on data because of my background. When it comes to connectivity, Pamela and Daisuke on the Project 15 meta team, they're really interested in that. But something I noticed is that my assumption that some place like the Himalayas wouldn't have any connectivity or something, that was just my own... I don't know if that's a pre-conception or just like a, "That's the woods and the mountains." However, when we looked into it, and we've been working with some groups in the Caribbean as well that go out into the ocean, it's all got coverage. It may be 2G. There's always a satellite, which then you're gonna bring in some edge, let's compute as much as possible over here at the camera or the gateway. But that was really surprising. So I'm really, I'm interested in... We'll loop back on your response because... 29:45 PB: Yeah, yeah. We'll have to loop back. There's some really interesting things happening, especially if you wanna have... You're designing for very low-bandwidth networks, like low-cost low-bandwidth networks. You actually need to do more processing on the edge, and then it's more of a metadata that's going to the cloud as opposed to the actual streams of video or camera images. So some really fascinating things going on there that I think would be really exciting, not only to land in low-bandwidth networks, but also that also enables some very low power endpoints. So imagine you wanna stick some sensors onto a tree out there somewhere, if you want it solar-powered, you need to keep that power profile really low. So projects like these, not only are they inherently just good, but they are also pushing the tech maybe more-so than the more business-oriented deployments that we have that maybe are a little "easier." These are hard deployments because of some of the different environmental factors. So it's always exciting to see the tech being pushed in that direction. 30:51 SM: I was gonna say, just to jump in. You actually raise... This is a really big deal. There's what we're doing with Project 15, but there's the bigger Microsoft sustainability mission. And so this year if you go out to the Microsoft sustainability web page, we just made a recent announcement about water. There was a really interesting announcement about the circular economy and waste. And so when you start to think about devices... So let's say you come from the more device side of the spectrum of our solutioning. I met a scientist who said something really that stuck with me. "We're trying to save the oceans from plastic using plastic." And so when you start to think about how we make devices. How do we make better batteries? How do we use solar? Like you said... 31:54 PB: Yeah, solar. 31:54 SM: That's when we just kind of was like... We also as a technical community should be thinking about that because it really wasn't purview a year ago. But oh, okay, that makes a lot of sense, I never really thought about that. 32:10 PB: Yeah. No. That's fascinating. I was gonna ask you about that before we... I don't know where we're at on time here, I have to check my clock. But I know we're not traveling any more, but I still stay in touch with BU through their various alumni programs and things. Do you stay in touch with any BU alums or any Boston related things these days? Or... 32:32 SM: Well, I do. I do. 32:33 PB: 'Cause we're pretty far from Boston. People don't know, we're actually in Redmond Washington. It's like the polar opposite of Boston. 32:40 SM: Three thousand miles away. I do, I have friends that I went there with, and I get the magazine. And I get... 32:49 PB: Oh yeah, the magazine. 32:50 SM: I was very proud of, what was it? One of the alums, she was in the Orange is the New Black and I was like, "Whoa, BU!" And of course on LinkedIn I see different things. Actually, speaking of COVID, I saw a really cool video that I thought was very edgy and he did a video about everybody wearing their masks and I was like, "Yes!" But yeah, no, I keep an eye on what's going on there. 33:24 PB: Good. 33:25 SM: So yeah. 33:27 PB: Yeah, no, it's fascinating to see all this stuff, how it's evolving and how we're all sort of connected, right? So now you and I are connected through Boston University, and we didn't even know that so that's fantastic. 33:36 SM: Who knew? T. Anthony's pizza. 33:36 PB: Who knew? T. Anthony's, yeah, I love that place, yeah. Although I don't eat cheese anymore but I still love pizza so... [chuckle] Cool. So any final thoughts Sarah? We... You kind of said that the URL people should go to. What's the call to action here? Where do you want people to go do now they've been sort of educated here? 34:00 SM: We love... When you think about it, if you go out and you get to the Project 15 open platform, for those of us who are very familiar, when you see the architecture you'll say, "Oh, this looks like everything else that is the components of an IoT solution." That is true. I've actually been using it with, met some startups and I said, "Well hey," doing my usual day job, which is, "How do I learn Azure IoT?" And, "Oh, go here, go here. Ask me questions if you have them." So people who are on the coding side of our world, feel free to bug bash that, and any feedback is absolutely welcome. It's really a passion project when you get down to it, which we hope is really useful, and if you do have people who are technical on the scientific side and it's interesting to them and we are building it through Pamela's work with community so that people will be able to get enabled on it. This speaks to the, "How do you do all of this?" Well, I have smart friends. And so yeah, so that really it's out there for you to use. Any feedback is welcome. And yeah, we hope it helps. 35:26 PB: Yeah, I encourage people to go to that website and learn more about it. And Sarah, I really appreciate the time today. I know you're really busy, so carving out a little time here, much appreciated. So hopefully we can actually meet each other in person at some point in the near future. So that'd be great. 35:47 SM: Soon. Soon. 35:48 PB: Soon. 35:48 SM: Wear your masks everybody. 35:51 PB: Exactly. 35:51 SM: Alright. Yeah, no, thank you so much. This has been fun. 35:53 PB: Sure. Okay, cool. Alright, thanks Sarah. 35:57 SM: Thank you. 35:57 PB: Bye bye. 36:00 SM: Bye. 36:00 PB: This is Pete Bernard. You've been listening to the IoT Unicorn Podcast, and thanks for joining us. Stay tuned for the next episode, and feel free to give us some feedback at TheIoTUnicorn@Microsoft.com. Thank you. [music]

Lessons Learned on a Submarine, and the Heroic Internet, with Rob Tiffany from Ericsson

Play Episode Listen Later Sep 7, 2020 28:53

In this episode of The IoT Unicorn Podcast, Rob Tiffany, VP and Head of IoT Strategy at Ericsson explores the development of 5G and LPWA technology for IoT solutions, what it looks like for Telco's to be successful in the IoT space, and how the Internet is playing the hero during the uncertainty of the Covid-19 pandemic. Download the Transcript Here 00:00 Pete Bernard: Great, so Rob, thanks for joining us today on the Unicorn, and really appreciate you taking the time. I was going to start by asking you a couple things about what your role is currently at Ericsson, kinda how you got there. I know that you and I did work together at Microsoft years ago back in the Windows Mobile days. 00:24 Rob Tiffany: Woo hoo. 00:25 PB: Good times, good times. 00:25 RT: Those were good times. Yep, absolutely. [chuckle] 00:28 PB: Yes. I thin, I think you were... Let's see, when did you stop working for Windows Mobile, like 2008 or something? Or is that... 00:38 RT: Yeah. And certainly by 2010 or around that timeframe I took an architect role in another group and probably started spending more time on Azure. I was at Microsoft for 12 years and so the first half was Mobile, Windows Mobile, CEE, Windows Phone. Second half was Azure, Azure IoT. And you know what? We had some good times in the Windows Mobile days when it was just us and BlackBerry slugging it out. We were making... When things like Exchange ActiveSync was a big deal to people. 01:21 PB: That's right, that was a big deal. 01:24 RT: Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And then no doubt, when we rebooted and did Windows Phone 7 and 7.5 and all that, I used to do so many EBCs for mobility and you noticed a difference and you had to get really thick skin. [chuckle] 01:42 PB: Yes, yes, yes, I know. Well, I peeled off after six... I think, so I went on to Zune incubation, I did Kin and I did all kinds of weird phone things and went off into the wilderness for a while on that while everyone else finished up with Windows Phone, but... 02:00 RT: Oh my gosh. 02:01 PB: And I also noticed on your LinkedIn profile. So you went to SUNY Albany. Are you from that area originally or... 02:07 RT: You know what? I finished college on board a submarine, so when I was in the Navy driving subs I had what, maybe 30 or so hours to go to graduate, and so I've actually never set foot on the SUNY Albany campus... 02:26 PB: Oh, wild. 02:27 RT: But the military has programs with lots of different universities around the country and to show how old I really am, I was able to take college courses underway on the submarine using Pioneer LaserDiscs. 02:42 PB: Wow. 02:43 RT: For college instruction, if anybody remembers what that was. [laughter] 02:47 PB: Yeah, that is old school, that's old school. 02:50 RT: That is fully old school. 02:52 PB: I actually just dropped my daughter off at Bard, which is a little south of Albany, so I was just there like a week ago, so that's why I asked. 02:58 RT: Oh, okay. 02:58 PB: I saw that on your profile and I was like, "Oh, yeah." It's a cool area, the Adirondacks, the whole upstate New York thing is cool. 03:04 RT: I know. Absolutely. Yeah, I just dropped my daughter off at Arizona State last week. 03:09 PB: Yeah. 03:10 RT: It was a little warm down there. 03:11 PB: Yeah, I could imagine, I could imagine. 03:14 RT: To say the least. But you know what? I think everything started back then with submarines and teaching myself how to code and do databases, and when you think about IoT, you're just remoting information that you had on these local sensors and we were surrounded by sensors on the submarine. There's the obvious things like sonar and things like that and this higher frequency one to see what your depth is below the keel, but inside you had CO2 radiation, all kinds of gas sensors and things like that to make sure we were still alive, which was kind of a thing. [chuckle] 04:02 PB: Yeah, it's kind of important. 04:04 RT: Yeah, yeah, absolutely. 04:06 PB: That's interesting. So you did the Microsoft thing and so you joined Ericsson a couple years ago, I think? 04:13 RT: Yeah, yeah, yeah. I did the Microsoft thing. I was recruited out of the Azure back when we were doing incubating Azure IT. There was that time... And actually Microsoft IoT stuff started in the embedded team with Intelligence System Service, but then I went to Hitachi actually to build an industrial IoT platform called Lumada, which was really interesting. But yes, I joined Ericsson a couple years ago. Up until recently, I split my time between Seattle and Stockholm. Normally I'd be in Kista, the Ericsson headquarters with the rest of my team. So yes, certainly disconnected these days. 05:00 PB: Yeah, interesting. 05:00 RT: And what Ericsson is doing in IoT is very different than my background both at Microsoft and Hitachi for sure, which was more data-focused, outcomes, analytics. Ericsson manages among... We have an IoT team. We have three products. Our big one is this IoT Accelerator, which is basically a global connection management platform. If you know what Jasper is, it's kinda like that in some ways. It spans about 35 or so mobile operators around the world and lots of enterprises. But the key thing, you know how we're always talking about that initial bootstrapping of devices to get them connected, right? 05:46 PB: Yep. 05:47 RT: In the event that you're using cellular for IoT, one of your options would be this IoT Accelerator thing we have at Ericsson, and so the narrative would be if a machine is being manufactured in Shenzhen and at manufacturer time, they're putting in the microcontroller and the software and the security keys and all that stuff, and there's also a cellular module, and if they're using our technology then when a customer buys that product and they turn it on the first time somewhere else in the world, maybe France, then it wakes up and connects to a local mobile operator to start sync telemetry. 06:24 PB: I see, so it's like a bootstrap profile kind of thing that phones home and then you guys connect it up to the right telco network. 06:35 RT: Yeah, and then it roams as well. But it's different than anybody who, if you... At least when IoT was getting hyped I was doing IoT-M to M in the '90s, but when it really started getting hyped after 2010, 2012, whatever, you started seeing these global SIMs and things like that that are just roaming all the time. 06:58 PB: Yes. 07:00 RT: But what the average person doesn't realize is mobile operators don't always want you roaming and just camped out on their network if you're from somewhere else. 07:08 PB: Yeah, yeah. [laughter] 07:10 RT: And so our technology, aside from the technology and we're operating our own network, so even though Ericsson creates the technologies that mobile operators use, we actually manage our own network that spans the globe, that interfaces with all these other mobile operators, and then there's lots of contracts and everything. But the take away to make sure that it's all okay with them, that these devices... And we are also in the connected car space and we've been doing that for a long time. And so you can imagine a car manufactured in Japan and sold in Europe. 07:46 PB: Sure. 07:47 RT: And the whole infotainment, and then as we move forward, more and more IOT telemetry coming off, those cards may wanna roam from country to country, so we do a lot of stuff with those guys too. 08:00 PB: I noticed that recently I got an email this morning from account team in Finland talking about a telco, there seems to be this confluence of telco and IoT. And I've seen, and I think you might have had some commentary on that too or pointed some articles about 5G plus AI plus IoT, or there's something about... We're seeing some telcos have really... Forward leaning telcos, really investing and thinking about IoT as the next big wave for them. Ericsson is part of that story too. Is there some unnatural attraction between IoT and telco or what's going on there? Are you seeing the same thing? 08:40 RT: Yeah, I am. But of course, if you'll remember, we saw this before. When the IoT craze started taking off, you might remember a lot of the telcos built their own IoT platforms and waited for people to come... 08:54 PB: That's right. 08:54 RT: And people didn't always show up, and so it seems like most of the mobile operators actually took a stab at it back then. Of course, if we go back further in time, most mobile operators thought that it was their right to be the cloud as well and they gave a shot at that, but it didn't work out either. But you're right, there's a renewed effort. I think a lot of it's just numbers and money. We've saturated smartphones and people, and so we need... Lots of mobile operators for better or worse, think of the world in SIMs. [chuckle] Connected SIM endpoints, that's how they see the world. And so it's like, "Okay, we've maxed out all the SIMs on people. [laughter] Where are we gonna get some more SIMs?" And so they're thinking, "Oh, it's IoT." And so that's where a lot of it's coming. We've certainly seen some of them turning on, some of them like NB-IoT and CAT-M1, LTE-M networks to try to take a stab at that. And so that's kind of cruising along. 10:09 PB: I noticed that... And I love to buy all the gadgets and stuff and I'm also very invested in the whole LPWA space, I'm a big believer in that. And I'm curious and I see some things happening there, but it just seems like such a no-brainer for some of these WiFi connected things. Like I just installed a garage door opener in my house, I have a separate garage and it's WiFi connected for some reason, but I have to stand on a step ladder and scan a QR code and hold it next to it. I'm like, "Why doesn't it just turn on and connect through a little power cellular?" Just such a no-brainer, but it hasn't quite yet turned on. 10:49 RT: Yeah. No, you're right. Are you connected much with the SemTech guys doing LoRa? 10:56 PB: SemTech, not that much. No, no. 10:58 RT: Okay, okay. It's funny, so much of this is the people you work with over the years. When I went to Hitachi to build this industrial thing, I had a couple of compadres from Microsoft come along as well, but needless to say a couple of those guys are actually working for SemTech now and pushing hard on the whole LoRaWan thing. 11:23 PB: I see. 11:24 RT: And it looks like they're getting traction actually. 11:27 PB: Is LoRaWan, is that unlicensed or is that licensed? I think that's unlicensed. 11:31 RT: It's unlicensed, yeah. 11:32 PB: There's always those two camps, there's the licensed, which you got all your telcos with their spectrum and their 3GPP stuff, and then the unlicensed, which is probably a lot faster on the innovation side, but... 11:45 RT: Yes, they can get to market faster. You may remember, gosh, how many years ago was it when we were at Mobile World Congress and Sigfox launched out of nowhere. And they raised a bunch of money and they... But they weren't gonna do what the LoRaWan and guys did, they tried to be their own mobile operator as well. And so yeah, it's been interesting watching that. And you're right, they can get to market faster. They were using Sub-1 GHz and some rules, EU rules about how often you could send a signal and how big it could be, and they're like, "Hey, I think we can thread the needle here." 12:21 PB: Yes. [laughter] 12:23 PB: Yeah, no, I'm looking forward to the LPWA stuff becoming more mainstream and just more turn key, if you will 'cause it just seems like it's such a low hanging fruit. There's the obvious metering and telemetry and that's parking meters and gas meters but even a lot of this current WiFi connected gear that people buy, it's just painful to get it all... I just installed a juice box level two charger for my house. 12:55 RT: Okay. 12:56 PB: And again, I had to download the app and the app... I had to connect the juice box to my phone and my phone to my WiFi and the blah, blah, blah. And I'm like, "What is happening?" It's just... 13:06 RT: Absolutely. You know what? It's so important, or at least from my perspective, to put yourself in the shoes of a developer and what they have to go through to get something connected, and I always think of the hassle factor. If I talk to people in the telco world and say, "Why is it cellular IoT is so far behind WiFi or other ways to connect?" And a big reason is actually what you just described. It's just such a hassle and it's expensive. A developer's like, "Oh, I gotta get some kind of SIM-based module thing and I gotta... Do I need to call a mobile operator and get a plan?" And you know what? The mobile operators, they still need to work on getting their prices down lower or at an appropriate amount for a IoT endpoint, because in many cases the prices are still too high. 14:01 PB: Yeah. Well, like my garage door opener, how much data is that sending? It's like either the garage door is open or closed. It's like one bit, plus 500K of overhead. A one or a zero, open or closed. 14:15 RT: Exactly. One or a zero, yeah. And so I think for telcos to be successful, while they would probably love to charge smartphone prices for plans for things, the reality is is no one's gonna use it unless they can still have an ROI. If I'm doing agriculture and I'm trying to put a weather station in a orchard and my plan with a mobile operators costing me $30 a month, I'm never gonna make any money on that deal. It's not worth doing. 14:48 PB: Yeah, I think you're right, there's the simplicity factor, the economics obviously drive the big deployments. But yeah, hopefully we'll start to see that take hold a little bit. I wanted to actually ask you a question about... I saw a post of yours the other day talking about 5G, and I'm sure you and I both get emails and questions about 5G on a daily basis or hourly basis, but you said that it's not just another G, which I thought was a good way of describing the other aspects of 5G. When people think of 5G, I just got this Samsung Ultra, Note Ultra 20 thing beautiful... It's a beautiful thing. 15:26 RT: How do you like it? 15:27 PB: Oh, it's fantastic. It's just like, it's hard to describe how awesome it is, but... And it's got 5G in it, and so fantastic, classic use case. And I work with Qualcomm all the time and Cristiano Amon and all these folks and they're all like, "5G all the way." But it's almost like the rest of 5G doesn't quite get the airtime about the high density and low latency. How do you see that impacting the IoT space? 15:56 RT: Yeah. Well, if the IoT space had actually been successful, 'cause we've massively underperformed across the board, it doesn't matter what company you are or what technology you built, everyone's massively underperformed, and so... But let's just assume for a second that we've been successful and we weren't in the trough of disillusionment right now, we would've found that we would've hit bottlenecks with lots of concurrently connected devices, if we were using cellular just over normal 4G networks and things like that. But we didn't hit those bottlenecks because IoT deployments haven't been that big yet. And so, the great thing about 5G is just with that same hardware, that same gear, all of the sudden you're getting more capacity. And you're right, that's what I wrote about, no one ever talks about the capacity angle. They talk about speed and they talk about the really low latency, and all that's super important, but for IoT capacity is gonna be the most important. And so the fact that it's a hundred times more capacity for the same cell tower, the same gear, is miraculous. And then that supporting a million devices per square kilometer is... That's how we're actually gonna have connected cars working well, smart cities, all those urban, a lot of those things that require a lot of density and a lot of devices all talking together over cellular networks, that's gonna make that real and make it happen. 17:29 PB: Yeah, I hear you. And yeah, you're right, we haven't really hit the bottlenecks yet so we're not quite appreciative of it, but when you think through how many billions of devices will be connected over the next few years, you just have to go there and you have to have that infrastructure. And then the ultra-low latency stuff, I think is fascinating. From the Microsoft side, we do a lot of commercial stuff, manufacturing, healthcare, a lot of things like that, and the ultra-low latency and some of those aspects of 5G are pretty fascinating, I think, and start to get more industry 4.0 type of scenarios. 18:06 RT: Yes, absolutely. 18:09 PB: I was curious what you think about... My next question around 5G and Release 16 for 3GPP. Do we need 3GPP Release 16 to really make this 5G thing work for IoT or do we need 17? Do you have any opinion on that or is that too esoteric of a question? 18:31 RT: It's a little esoteric, and the only reason I say that is I remember talking to folks in the past who would say ridiculous things to me like, "Oh, now that we're gonna get 5G, we can finally do IoT." And I'm like, "What are you talking about? We've done IoT forever and we've done it a million different ways, and we certainly did it over GPRS and it was fine [chuckle] and so I don't need 5G to do IoT." Is it gonna make it better and is it gonna help us with this capacity? Absolutely. And you're right, these subsequent releases, getting that ultra reliable, that low latency for mission critical stuff... 'Cause as you can imagine, you're talking about Microsoft being in the industrial world, Ericsson makes private LTE and private 5G technologies. And so that's complementary to what you're doing at Microsoft, 'cause we are certainly getting pinged on a lot by a lot of giant manufacturers around the world who, as they're heading into industry 4.0, they look at some of those use cases that require mass customization, flexibility around the factory... 19:47 PB: Sure. 19:48 RT: The notion of a fixed assembly line that doesn't change is gonna go away. 19:53 PB: Right, right, that's a novelty... That's Henry Ford style stuff. Yeah, that doesn't work. 19:55 RT: Yeah, and so therefore, they won't be able to use Ethernet anymore because it's gonna move around so they need wireless, they haven't had a lot of success with WiFi and so lots of people are piloting private 5G, private LTE inside factories, distribution centers, and so that's really interesting space there. 20:19 PB: Yeah. We've seen that as well, and we also see interest from transportation hubs. 20:24 RT: Yeah. 20:27 PB: Shipping ports, airports, places that have just a lot of acreage. 20:33 RT: Absolutely. 20:34 PB: So you're talking about oil refineries, places where there's 100 acres of space and they need a homogeneous, high speed network. You're not gonna stick WiFi repeaters out on poles down the runway. 20:49 RT: Right. 20:49 PB: So yeah, so I think that's another big area. We talked about the LPWA side is cool with the parking meters and garage door openers. And then the other side, you talked about there is gonna be this big wave of transformation going on with some of these big industrial players, I think using 5G or some kind of cell technology, private cell there. 21:12 RT: Yeah. And it's amazing 'cause I've seen it in action and the coverage is insane, the distance, the speed within a large building, instead of having zillions of WiFi access points trying to create coverage, you just have a few of these radio dots that we make and it just roams and it just works seamlessly all over. That's gonna be fun to watch. 21:37 PB: That'll be fun to watch, yes. Hey, I was gonna ask you kinda change gears a little bit, so we're recording this on August 25th so we've been in this pandemic mode for quite a while. What kind of insights have you gained from this pandemic? 21:56 RT: Yes. You know what? I think I put it together 'cause I have thought about it, I've kind of taken down notes, what's worked, what's not worked. And so I would say, succinctly, digital experiences delivered over connectivity is making remote things local and so whether it's you and I chatting here, the rest of the world on Zoom like you're seeing, it's kept people together. My wife is a school teacher and so she had to start teaching remotely and her school district uses Teams 'cause I'm right by Redmond, of course. [chuckle] So an Office 365 school district. 22:49 PB: Right. 22:50 RT: Yeah, as opposed to a Google classroom school district. 22:53 PB: Sure, sure. 22:54 RT: You've seen it in the stock price with certain tech companies, it's like, "Wow, we're really using this." But it certainly plays back to IoT and the taking an experience where I would normally be local in person and making it remote and I know it sounds really simple to say that but the hero in all of this is the internet. 23:20 PB: Right. 23:21 RT: It's held together. 23:22 PB: Yes. 23:23 RT: It keeps reaffirming that it's maybe one of the greatest creations ever and it's holding together for the whole planet, which is just miraculous. 23:33 PB: Yeah. The idea of remote everything, it sounds simple, but it's so complicated and... 23:39 RT: Yeah. 23:40 PB: We talk about latency and bandwidth and other things, and just... I think it's been a lifeline for so many people, to be honest with you. 23:49 RT: It has. 23:51 PB: Just with just the video conferencing, Satya talks about the acceleration, like two years worth of acceleration in two months, basically, just 'cause people have to start collaborating with these tools like Teams and Zoom and everything else, and so we've all fast forwarded a couple of years in our adoption of some of these technologies... 24:14 RT: Absolutely. 24:14 PB: And it'll be interesting to see what sticks. As we get out of this pandemic at some point, which of these habits will stick, that we'll get more used to, and then obviously... I think maybe also for me, I also now probably have more appreciation of the in person experiences than I probably did. And I did travel recently with my daughter to get her to school and I actually enjoy traveling, I enjoy being on an airplane, and these days it's a pretty high anxiety kind of thing with lots of face shields and wipes and things, but getting back to that mode, that's something that I'll probably, for the rest of my life really appreciate being able to just freely travel. 24:58 RT: Yes, absolutely. 25:00 PB: 'Cause of this situation we're in. So it will be interesting to see. I agree with you though, I think the internet has held together and that has been the hero amongst many heroes, but... 25:10 RT: Yeah. This internet infrastructure, fiber electricity beneath the cities and the country, and then little things popping up, either cell towers or WiFi access points, that let us roam around mobility and keeping us together. Obviously, we see a lot of stuff, there's been trends and things that we've had before that's just super accelerated, like you said, like tele-medicine, remote healthcare... 25:36 PB: Yeah. 25:36 RT: Just skyrocketed. 25:39 PB: Yeah. Well, I know that there... 25:40 RT: Out of necessity. 25:41 PB: Yeah, there was... I know there was a lot of rules in place for practitioners not being able to work across state lines and a lot of those rules were suspended during the pandemic to enable people to do tele-medicine, which I thought was fantastic, they were pretty... From a layman's perspective, they seemed anachronistic that you couldn't Zoom conference with a patient in another state and actually provide support or guidance. 26:09 RT: Yeah. 26:11 PB: And so yeah, things like that, where we just moved the whole ball forward, which is a good thing. 26:17 RT: Absolutely, absolutely. No, it's all good. 26:20 PB: Good stuff. 26:21 RT: I think you learned a lot. And I do miss traveling too. I complained about it when I'm flying every few weeks to Sweden or wherever... 26:30 PB: Sure, sure. 26:31 RT: But then that abrupt end of it and just the silence and being at home... You know it's weird, when you travel a lot and you're accustomed to all these international airports and maybe the place you go to get coffee or... This broad world, for a handful of us, it's like our comfort zone and then it just ended, and I miss it. No doubt about it. 26:54 PB: Cool, so, well, Rob, thanks a lot for the time, appreciate it. And good to see you again and... 27:01 RT: Absolutely. 27:02 PB: I see you pop up on LinkedIn on almost like a daily basis, so we'll keep communicating through LinkedIn and stuff. 27:10 RT: We're teachers. 27:11 PB: Yes, exactly, exactly. 27:14 RT: Spreading the word, absolutely. 27:16 PB: Exactly. Sounds good. Alright, Rob, well, take care stay safe. 27:19 RT: You do the same, it's great talking to you. 27:21 PB: Okay, thanks. 27:22 RT: Alright, bye bye.

Powerful Lessons for Building a Scalable IoT Business with Lou Lutostanski from Avnet