Today’s episode features an interview between Matt Trifiro and Gavin Whitechurch, Co-Founder of Edge Computing World and COO & Co-Founder of Topio Networks. In this interview, Gavin uses his overarching perspective on the Edge landscape to give insights about where the industry is headed and how the market for Edge solutions is evolving. The Edge Computing World Conference is October 12-15th, 2020. Fully virtual. Register at www.edgecomputingworld.com and use the promo code OVERTHEEDGE for 30% off the Edge Executive Conference
Today’s episode features an interview between Matt Trifiro and Gavin Whitechurch, Co-Founder of Edge Computing World and COO & Co-Founder of Topio Networks
Gavin is a technology analyst, media executive & entrepreneur who started Topio Networks and the Edge Computing World Conference to serve as industry catalysts, helping to nurture the industry and accelerate the markets for Edge Computing, IoT, mobility, and more
In this interview, Gavin uses his overarching perspective on the Edge landscape to give insights about where the industry is headed and how the market for Edge solutions is evolving.
Key Quotes
"I see this increasing maturity in the market and increasing understanding of what edge computing offers. Particularly in the last year, there's much greater awareness in the technology market of why edge computing is important and what uniquely it offers to developers and to technology companies." -Gavin
"I think we’re going to see much more of a distributed compute model–the market will move to a more distributed compute architecture, and it'll get more and more distributed over the next two decades. I would say it's probably actually going to take two decades for that whole thing to play out. I think where we are now is like the early stages of mobile." -Gavin
"IoT is much further up its maturity curve. It was one of those things that perhaps suffered from its own hype…but we're now getting to the large-scale deployments. We've run surveys that show that 2021 will probably be a massive year of adoption for widespread IoT." -Gavin
"I think there is a huge appetite for what edge computing can do…I think we have a more realistic view of things as a technology industry now, and I think that some of the things that are happening around us are actually going to ensure that there is an earlier deployment of those systems." -Gavin
"We’ve spoken to a lot of companies that have said that automation is being accelerated. There's a reprioritization in boardrooms and a realization that…Covid is in many ways accelerating digital transformation and automation." -Gavin
"I think this pandemic may significantly accelerate the deployment of edge computing because of that shift in capital expense, spending by the companies who will benefit from that automation" -Matt
"I can't think of an industry that's this big that has had so much cohesion and acceleration around open source code. There’s this collective mechanism that didn't exist when the cloud was first being formed. There has been so much clear agreement and cohesion on the core supporting technologies that need to be developed and adopted in order for us all to have a platform." -Matt
Sponsors
Over the Edge is brought to you by the generous sponsorship of Catchpoint, NetFoundry, Ori Industries, Packet, Seagate, Vapor IO, and Zenlayer.
The featured sponsor of this episode of Over the Edge is Catchpoint. Catchpoint gives critical knowledge to help optimize the digital experience of your customers and employees. Learn more at catchpoint.com and sign up for a free trial.
Links
CLICK HERE to Register for the Edge Computing World Conference, October 12-15th, 2020. Fully virtual. Use the promo code OVERTHEEDGE for 30% off the Edge Executive Conference
[00:00:00] Matt: Hi, this is Matt Trifiro of edge infrastructure company, vapor IO, and co chair of the Linux foundation's state of the edge project. Today, I'm here with Gavin Whitechurch. Gavin is the co founder of edge computing world and the COO and cofounder of Topio networks. We're going to talk to Gavin about his career as a technology analyst, his role in the edge industry and his views on everything IOT edge and beyond.
[00:00:22] Hey Gavin, how are you doing today? Yeah, super. I appreciate, I appreciate you coming on. So, you know, the way I like to start these interviews is to tackle some of your background. and one of my favorite questions is how did you get into technology?
[00:00:39]Gavin: well, I'm not a technologist by background. I'm actually, I'm a graduate psychologist. Right. and actually, I knew I didn't want to be an applied psychologist when I, when I left see, but I didn't know quite what I wanted to do. So I kind of fell into, into technology. I got involved in an admin job, but.
[00:00:55]the institution of electric engineers, that's like the British equivalent of the trevally and [00:01:00] found myself surrounded by, the new wave of, of technology and mobile technology and deregulation and lots of explosion of stuff going on. So it was really fascinating time and I just loved all the, what was going on or all the change, or things happening every year.
[00:01:18] And, you know, the communication is she's just exploding. So it was very fun.
[00:01:22] Matt: And I'm guessing from the accent that you're not originally from America, even though that's where you are right now.
[00:01:27] Gavin: Yeah, no born and bred in the UK. Most of my life and my career in the UK have just washed up here about seven years ago, I came out here to start a business, but my then employer informer, which is actually, you want to know the brand probably informal, but it's the world's largest business to business information provider.
[00:01:45] Matt: Yeah, actually, I'm aware of informa you compete with them. Now
[00:01:49] Gavin: Yeah, in a way, in a way.
[00:01:51] Matt: let's talk, let's talk about that. Let's talk about Topo networks and edge computing world. What's the, what's the origin story.
[00:01:58]Gavin: so the, the origin is, [00:02:00] it just really made my, what I've done with informa, for people who don't understand how businesses are work is, you know, we've been at the, I've been at the forefront of opening up new technology sectors for a long while. So like a reference for earlier, all the phases of mobile development, you know, broadband development.
[00:02:18]I was involved in the short range of artists that Laura do, and nobody knew what Bluetooth was, you know, that kind of stuff. And, so I've always been, helping foster communities and foster the emergence of new technologies. and, you, you know, I love that area and then sort of getting involved with, Philippe Cases who is my Philippe had a really interesting approach to.
[00:02:40] Fostering entrepreneurs and wanting to educate entrepreneurs around markets for free, which is, and he had some AI based tools for doing that and, and a really interesting sort of technology approach , so it's, and together have a Felipe's interest in educating entrepreneurs, from his VC background, my interest in, developing [00:03:00] communities and how to, help new technology markets emerge.
[00:03:04] Matt: Yeah. And edge computing is certainly a new technology market and edge computing world. For those in the audience that aren't aware of, it is what I would consider the premier, trade show, on edge computing. is it, this is your second year that you're doing edge computing world, is that correct?
[00:03:20] Gavin: Yeah, that's right. That's right.
[00:03:22] Matt: So tell, tell us about the origins bed computing world, and, how you approach that show.
[00:03:27]Gavin: before I came to edge community world, I was kind of immersed in the IOT space. And, if you're immersed the most in IOT, you have a particular lens on edge computing. I guess you see it as one, one perspective of edge computing. But when I stepped back from that, I really started to understand how.
[00:03:44] Broad, the applications of edge computing on, and as soon as a how strong the implications are as well and, and how disrupted the technology is going to be in terms of, market structure and, you know, the players in the market and, and the whole infrastructure. so it seemed like a really interesting space [00:04:00] to focus on.
[00:04:00]and it's related to lots of strong technology market sectors, including obviously H car computing. So car community is a major component of it. but what we felt, you know, the state of the market when we came to the space, was that there was clearly a big opportunity, but it wasn't very well understood.
[00:04:18]even by the people involved in the, in the marketplace, you know, everyone.
[00:04:22] Matt: With the exception that this created the edge purveyors.
[00:04:24] Gavin: Yeah, I would say their providers and, you know, there's some advanced thinkers in the space. Yeah. But I mean, this is where, you know, you and I sort of talking about, because we both saw the opportunity there, but there is definitely a phase of education that markets have to go to. And even people within the market can see what they're doing.
[00:04:42] What's right in front of them, that they cannot understand the airport context. and edge computing was being discussed in a bunch of different silos. you know, so you have the mobile edge computing guys and you have the hyperscale guys need to have that far edge guys, you know, the device edge guys and the, and the edge checkbox guys, you know, [00:05:00] all of these, all of these different spaces and really being pulled together.
[00:05:04] And when you start to knit together the whole picture, then you actually see how massive the opportunity is. And that's really what we felt we could. Offer uniquely to the market is in terms of the event. Anyways, is bringing together a space for those, or are those different sections of the market to share their knowledge and ideas and how to play the market?
[00:05:27] Matt: Yeah. And, you know, last year I was at the show, it was a terrific show. I did some great networking, some great talks. but I imagine, being confronted with COVID-19 and social distancing and whatnot has had quite an effect on the event. Interesting. Can you tell us how you're approaching edge computing world this year?
[00:05:44] Gavin: Yeah, sure. I mean, it's, I mean, it's interesting times, right? And we're all learning lots of things about how we do business and the new COBIT environment for events. It really changes things on the head a little bit. but, there's some great opportunities that [00:06:00] arise from doing an event virtually rather than doing physically, physical events.
[00:06:03] Aren't going to be with us for. Someone I suspect. and we can maybe talk a bit about that later, but, in terms of edge computer world, you know, it's going to be a four day long event. We're taking the opportunity to which when you, when you run a virtual event, you can take the opportunity to explode the different elements that run at a slightly longer time scale.
[00:06:23] Cause you're not constrained by trying to get the value out of one single venue, which you paid for. And one set of catering that you paid for. the other thing that you know, is really interesting about virtual events is you're removing barriers of travel time and costs, right? So actually the market can become much, much larger.
[00:06:41] And so that like serving that mission, you know, that we spoke about earlier, the, the mission of actually just educating the total market. you know, that really gives us an opportunity and we've got a free, completely free element of the event. We call the edge developers conference, but it's actually, it's probably broader than just the developers piece.
[00:06:57] It's really educating people about what edge [00:07:00] computing is and how to get involved in it and who they can work with to accelerate that they're a train to the space. And that's where we're working with people like alerts foundation, OpenStack, and, it keeps foundation and others.
[00:07:12]Matt: so I think most people understand, how a trade show typically works. You have people that pay to attend. Some people that don't pay to attend. You said you had a free developer day, sponsors and exhibitors, that pay you, but you have this whole other side to your business, which is under the Topo networks brand.
[00:07:28] Can you tell us what, who the customer for that is and what services that provides?
[00:07:35] Gavin: Yeah. So, I mean, we're an information company and also a technology company, right? So we've got, AI at our heart. We're using AI for, to power, disruptive, started delivering business information. So we're actually using it, generates a high quality business information volume along with human curation.
[00:07:55]sort of established names. I might want to charge you a lot of money for it. You can actually go on to Tofino [00:08:00] SOCOM, just sign up and you can get access to a huge corporate information and assets on the marketplace. We organize it in terms of the landscapes, which is where the word. It comes from this Greek for landscape.
[00:08:13] Right. And we talk about landscapes as views of markets. and so in the edge computing space, we're tracking 130 companies daily, in edge computing, ingesting into the platform and an organizing or really information around that. And you can, you can see, you know, Financing deals leadership. I compare one market to a tough market to the next.
[00:08:34] You can really see what's going on within that market. And that really helps entrepreneurs to Oriente. In terms of paid services. Well, we're using that same AI engine to educate and provide a very, very focused and very, a very rich information, for which we provide advisory services. Right. So we can help companies to understand what exactly is the [00:09:00] competitive landscape around them in a very, very rich and detailed way.
[00:09:05] When they're looking at the micro segments that they're entering around the fourth industrial revolution and the fourth industrial revolution is. Rich with opportunity, but also a very complex, right? So you're talking about lots of different vertical markets, lots of different use cases, lots of different technologies, or really things make the market very complex and we can help our companies understand their orientation within that.
[00:09:27] And then beyond that, you know, we're, we're doing thought leadership regeneration with the sort of, sort of things that, you know, companies need to get their traction in the marketplace. Overall. It's kind of a, it's a business acceleration or.
[00:09:41] Matt: yep. That's great. That's great. And you know, one of the topics that you and I have discussed at length is open source. and one of the things that's really impressed me about the, the thought that you and Phillipa put into this business is you've taken. An open source [00:10:00] approach to information.
[00:10:01] And to some extent, we've also done that at the state of the edge. And so I'm, I'm interested to have you describe how you view your contribution and relationship to open source and how you're using that both to grow your business, but also to grow the ecosystem.
[00:10:18] Gavin: Hmm. Hmm. Yeah. I mean, it's, I kind of have described this as open source inspired when I think about our, our business model. and so there was definitely a, a desire to educate the market and accelerate the market by giving everyone. A certain amount of information, right? So a rising tide floats all boats and that's all things that we learned from the success of it can source that you gave me have a base level of caliber and understanding that then everything moves faster.
[00:10:46]and so our contribution to that is, is just to ride this, this business information piece, certain level of education, you know, which. It's actually pretty rich. You can get quite a lot of information there. and [00:11:00] then on, as a, you know, a red hat, might've done it in its early days. You lay in on the advisory services on top of the, the basic access to information.
[00:11:10] Matt: Yeah, it was almost like a, like, like it is analogous to an open core model in a sense.
[00:11:18] Providing for free. And you're also layering your paid services on top of it.
[00:11:23] Gavin: Yeah. Yeah. People just want to use the open source services, the open, open access business information, as you described that robot can do that. As you know, there's no charge, no monitorization involved in that. And, you know, that the inspiration comes through and when Felipe, my cofounder was a, yeah, he was a, he's a VC for 25 years, often, very early stage VC.
[00:11:46] She was working on very early stage. Companies was working with just a couple of guys in a garage. And he, his observation was that they always knew. A huge amount about their technology and what they were doing in their, in their garage. [00:12:00] But beyond the walls of the garage, they had very little information about what was going on in the wider marketplace.
[00:12:05] Then that's kind of the gap that we're filling there for people we're helping people to understand the market context around them.
[00:12:12] Matt: Yeah. And as I mentioned at the top of the show, I'm the co chair of the state of the edge project. And, hopefully by the time this publishes, this will be public news. And so we won't cut this section out. but, Topia networks is a media partner of the Linux foundation, LF edge, which stage he as a part of, and you're doing a lot of things with stay the edge.
[00:12:29] And I wanted to point out that, an example, so. Linux foundation under my project, it maintains a landscape and you also maintain a landscape. So on the surface, those would be, those would seem competitive. It's like they're both trying to solve the same problem, which is a visual representation of the companies in the ecosystem.
[00:12:48] And rather than seeing that as a competitive threat, you saw it as an opportunity and, approached us and are aligning your taxonomy with the Linux [00:13:00] foundation's taxonomy and Providing some, a Topia is information to the, to the Linux foundations audience, but in a very sort of, authentic and collaborative way. And I think that's pretty unusual. I, I don't know of any or open source organization or open source project.
[00:13:14] That's that's doing that.
[00:13:16] Gavin: Yeah, no, it's a, the intention is to, as you say, as provider, Linux foundation dashboard, or, you'd be like a white label, dashboard on, onto the Tokyo platform where, within that. Garden, foundation members can access deep information, about what's going on in the landscape, in the collection of companies that are involved in, FH, for instance, in this case, and then, you know, there's deeper information available beyond that, but certainly, you know, there'll be lots of news about, or those companies or the source for the same, AI in general human curation piece news analysis, deep company information about what's going on within that space.
[00:13:55]Matt: Yeah, that's nice. you know, being, being someone who's very close to a large amount of [00:14:00] information that you're sifting through and curating and becoming aware of what are, what are some of the changes that you've seen over the last couple of years that, that you've been, you know, focused on edge computing?
[00:14:12]Gavin: they need space, right? And, I mean, you've been involved much longer than I met, so you can probably see the Genesis going back a long way. But, you know, I, I see this increasing maturity in the market and increasing understanding of, what edge computing offers. So I think, you know, particularly in the last year, there's much greater awareness in the challenging market.
[00:14:32] Why edge computing is important and what uniquely at all of us to develop a center technology companies, I think for end user companies, we're just at the start of their learning curve. I think, I think the earliest adopters are, bringing edge computing to play, but, others are doing edge computing without really focusing on that space quite so much.
[00:14:52] So we're in an educational phase that they're not so aware of. How they're using they [00:15:00] using it
[00:15:03] Matt: Yeah, what I was gonna say. What are the things that, that struck me about your approach to edge computing world, which I liked quite a bit, especially once I understood it. And that is you like to, Very heavily weight, the presentations with end users. And I think that makes a lot of sense because we've all been to these trade show events that are all vendors speaking to vendors and, they're kind of insufferable.
[00:15:28] So w w what are some of the exciting end users that you're going to be showcasing and October.
[00:15:37] Gavin: Thanks. I mean, yeah. End users drive everything in it at the market rise. Everyone wants to understand what the end users are doing. And we've got, a, he drained all of, keynotes and track presentations that focus around end users. we're hearing from, senior executives from Boeing, from Toyota, from GE healthcare for the us air force and, and from Rakuten mobile, which is, I'm [00:16:00] sure as, you know, I've a very interesting approach to, to edge computing and virtualization in the mobile space.
[00:16:06] So, you know, such an Jada is the chief digital officer of, of Boeing. offenders is the chief digital Hoff. So of GE and Kenichi is actually the general manager of connected cars, for Toyota in Japan. And he also chairs the automotive edge computing consortium, which is, the body of his focusing just on the space.
[00:16:26] And then, you know, we have a huge range of, companies involved like, mass gap. Kroger, obviously the carriers like Verizon Cox, Rakuten, car manufacturers, like Mercedes Benz BMW, a huge range of, all the gas and. He's range of technology companies. we also, I mean, we've also got some great luminaries from inside the technology space and one we're particularly proud of is lip futon.
[00:16:53] Actually, who's who I would say is. The foremost investor in edge computing as, as an individual, he's the [00:17:00] founder and managing partner of WVI capital then, the chairman of woman inter international and he's personally invested. and through those vehicles, probably in some of the largest such computing, success stories, in the last few years,
[00:17:15] Matt: Yeah. And so, so let's talk about, about, and, and use cases, you know, Back when, you know, I, I entered this industry. the use case that I really talked about was autonomous cars. And I think that's because it was approachable, it was a hot thing. Waymo was new, it was sort of this magical idea that you could get into an Uber without a human driving.
[00:17:36] You and. And all of that. and I think autonomous cars has definitely taken a back seat. Everybody's recognized it's gonna take a long time before that's put out. And there's a lot of other applications that maybe are a bit more prosaic, but actually have a really clear ROI. Can you, help connect the dots for some people?
[00:17:53] What are some of the, the like specific use cases that you're seeing that are, are now capturing people's [00:18:00] imagination that are more on the, well, this is practical. We're going to roll this out
[00:18:03] side of the business.
[00:18:04] Gavin: Yeah, well practical and maybe more prosaic ones or, you know, perhaps doing it now, you know, some of the video conferencing things you're seeing and certainly, gaming applications have been a big adopter of edge computing and, and, you know, our, the video delivery applications are certainly where things have got started a little bit.
[00:18:22]then when you go forward from there, you know, maybe not autonomous cars, but autonomy. more generally stretching into things like drones. So, drones and robots used in a manufacturing environment. I mean, I think we're going to see, and particularly in a warehousing environment, environment.
[00:18:37] So let's just talking again about COVID as an opportunity. know, we're seeing a huge growth in, in, in interest, in, in that kind of era and, you know, retail, when you look at it as a sector, you might say is clearly, it's very challenged by like, By Coburn was challenged already, but in terms of, taking opportunities or that, the, there is a huge move, [00:19:00] obviously towards home delivery automation, harlot, and those sorts of things are, are actually big edge computer use cases.
[00:19:07] So Kroger, for instance, we have talking in the, in the show. and they're one of the things they're doing is working with, Colorado, British company. I happen to know, used to get my, groceries delivered from Acardo every week in London, and that they have an automated warehousing solution with a roboticized pick and so on, whether they're rolling out some specialized warehouses to do that.
[00:19:31] So
[00:19:34] Matt: What role do you see the cloud providers playing in edge computing,
[00:19:42] Gavin: Well, they're going to have to, they will be playing a central role, right. And will be held them, Google playing, perhaps the dominant role. I don't know. We'll we'll see. I mean, that's probably the million dollar question, right.
[00:19:51] Matt: Yeah, I was hoping you had the answer.
[00:19:54] Gavin: if only, you know, only, it's essential question of debate,
[00:19:58] Matt: Well, what's, what's the debate. Maybe, maybe you [00:20:00] could frame the debate for the audience.
[00:20:01] Gavin: yeah. So, I mean, hyperscale cloud providers have, a lot of strength in the market because they have, certainly great relationships with the marketplace already. Great relationships with developers provide a lot of great developer tools and support those developers. And then they have great.
[00:20:18] Assets in terms of centralized data centers and increasingly they have, more edgy and edgier offers, right? So they're, they're spreading out from those centralized data centers. And you'll see with ads, things like how posts, so like, wavelength and et cetera, the different offers. I think the, when you look at this from a telco perspective, as another big player, for instance, the telcos, the telcos.
[00:20:42]really see the opportunities there, but they also see a danger of themselves getting disintermediated as they did with say. TV, like at one stage, the telcos thought they were going to look at Verizon in this country. They thought they were going to own the TV distribution networks. Right. And, and eventually, eventually they [00:21:00] just got disintermediated and experts came up at the top when I was in, came over the top of that one.
[00:21:04] So it's like, well, what exactly is the relationship that those players should have as keepers? And then I think there's a. I'm from the rest of the market ecosystem. Great admiration and great respect for the hyperscale players. And maybe that's template with a little bit of, you know, how much room is there for us, us to play here.
[00:21:24] So, it's being able to find the unique space. Isn't it for within the, within the market and the market is. It's kind of in, in big bang mode right at the moment. So there's plenty of space to move out too. But, over time, we're going to see those. We're going to see consolidation and we're going to see market opportunities being filled, that space being filled by bigger players and small players.
[00:21:45] So that's, we still need to see how that plays out.
[00:21:49] Matt: Yeah, I think one of the most interesting things that's happening in the market and it's, it's, definitely going to have an impact, probably positive on, the telcos and the cloud providers. but it is [00:22:00] requiring a little bit of a, of a paradigm shift. And that is the distinction between cloud and on-prem is.
[00:22:06] Going away in many senses, it's certainly evolving. Right? And you've got products like outpost, which is cloud on prem. And then you've got, you know, some of the use cases that we're seeing at vapor IO, which we're calling near prem. And that is why build a data center in your factory when somebody else has a data center that is a, you know, a 10 kilometer fiber run from you that.
[00:22:26] You can, you know, you can lease space in. And so this distinction and this energy around that last mile network and the ebbs and flows of the data and the servers is, is really interesting. How would you have any, any thoughts on, on, on the trend lines there? And do you have any predictions?
[00:22:50] Gavin: Well, yeah, I mean, I would say. Definitely the, the hybrid, if you, [00:23:00] if you think of edge as part of hybrid cloud, which you can't think of it as part of a hybrid cloud, then, you know, that hybrid cloud model will extend almost to the very far edge. Right. But there's always going to be some, some places where that hybrid cloud model can't reach.
[00:23:17] Right. so that's talking to the, to the fire device. but in terms of. In terms of predicting how that plays out. I mean, I think hardware cloud who would dominate in some way, all we're going to see this, you know, the way I like to think of it is we're going to see a notice switching to the age in order to swing centrally as the things characterize much.
[00:23:41]but much more of a distributed compute model, right? Where the are the computers just, It's in a variety of places, depending on how close you needed, needed to be for various reasons. And you can place it in the primary complacent in the device, or you can just, you know, it can be at various places across the, [00:24:00] the network right into the centralized data center.
[00:24:03] But the way the market will move is to a much more distributed compute. Oh, I take it and it'll get more and more distributed over the next. Two decades. I would say it's probably actually going to take two decades for that whole thing to play out. I think where we are, where we are now is like the early stages of, mobile, you know, when we were talking about, yeah.
[00:24:29] Is it, should this stuff be digitized or something, you know,
[00:24:32] Matt: Yeah, 20, 20 years ago. I mean, the internet was barely, I guess it was the first crash of the internet. Right. So 20 years ago, but compared to the internet today, it's a totally different animal.
[00:24:45] Gavin: Yeah. Yeah. And, and it will become a totally different, much more personalized, much more immediate. Variety of different interfaces, right? So much richer interfaces and all those things are going to need localized compute, [00:25:00] and there'll be this whole, what needs to be worked through over, over the period is how words where you need to place those workloads, how close they need to be to the user.
[00:25:08] And therefore, what infrastructure can you create to put
[00:25:14] Matt: Yeah. Now you mentioned, you mentioned that your background started with, with IOT in many, well, prior to edge, you were, you were involved with IOT and that, to some extent there, you can kind of think of them together. so I, I mentioned if you, if you have any thoughts on how those two worlds are evolving together
[00:25:35] and what that means.
[00:25:39] Gavin: Yeah. I mean, that's an interesting observation. I actually, I feel I view it. The edge is much broader than, than IOT actually. cause edging encompasses. I mean, when you look at IOT workloads, you're, you're looking at, digitalization, of the fourth, the fourth industrial revolution stuff. but primarily input in terms of, making [00:26:00] devices.
[00:26:00] Well connected. Whereas, edge computing cuts across other sectors, obviously like gaming, like, like media. So it's, it's a broader, much broader frame, edge computing. And I think when you're thinking about it, Edge competing. You're probably more focused around infrastructure and this change towards the distributed compute architecture that we've talked about.
[00:26:24] So, IOT, I think because it's much further up its maturity curve actually. so. you know, I was involved in it from 2014 also, and it was one of those things that perhaps, suffered from its own, hype success. Right. So, people started to understand what it was and got excited about it and then suddenly expect it to be finished and done.
[00:26:52] Yeah. Yeah. So we're now getting towards the large scale deployments, right? And of how we've run surveys that show that, you know, 20, 21 will probably be a massive, [00:27:00] certainly pre COVID was shown to be a massive year of adoption for wide spread Iot. edge computing is much more of a deep infrastructure play and there's, that's quite capital intensive.
[00:27:12] So I mean, hats off to Vapor IO what they're doing when it's us. That's a big, play. Right. Yeah. Yeah. So all that stuff takes a while to play out, to finance, to, to, to manage. And then, you know, once you feel the data centers and more distributed data, essentially, so you've got all the networking priests you have to do around that.
[00:27:31] So, what's your take on, what's your take on the timeline? I said like 10, 20 years. Are you
[00:27:38] thinking, does that disappoint your investors? Have I say that? Do
[00:27:41] you
[00:27:41] Matt: Well, no, no, no. I mean, I, I think I'm, there's plenty of money to me in the early days. Right. and you know, we certainly see most of the companies deploying equipment in our facilities are what I would call infrastructure companies. So they're not end users, but they have end users. [00:28:00] you know, you've got to have.
[00:28:01] Cloud computers in edge locations in order for cloud developers to build edge applications that run on those cloud computers. So there is a little bit of a, of a forward deploy to solve the chicken and egg problem. And we're definitely in that stage. And then I think the question is how fast is that deployed going to happen?
[00:28:17]I mean, we're building out 36 cities in two years, so I think it's going to happen really quickly, but yeah. I also think there's a lot of truth in what you're saying. I think if 20 years from now we look back, we'll see an arc that began, you know, around this time and clearly extended until 20 years.
[00:28:36] You know, it's one of the one thing I wanted to come back to with IOT was listen to show no, that I'm fond of saying that the, you know, we call this the, the third act of the internet, which is how we sort of frame the evolution of the internet in the state of the edge report last year. And the big change.
[00:28:53] Between the second act. And the third act is that we're moving from an internet, was [00:29:00] primarily people talking to computers. So that's me using a Google doc or using Salesforce or playing on Facebook or messing around on LinkedIn or playing a video game or, or whatever. And we're now moving into a world where the internet will, the traffic on the internet will primarily be machines talking to machines and the demands that machines have in terms of the amount of data that they can produce, how fast.
[00:29:27] They the, how fast you want to try to extract data from that in order to deliver value and how that's a competitive advantage. Meaning if I have more accuracy on where my assets are, or, or I've managed to reduce the cost of, you know, some sort of robotic, this or that, that those, those, those are driving fundamental changes.
[00:29:46] In the structure of, of the internet. And so when I think of IOT, I see it as the demand driver, not because of the internet of things, because all of these neat, you know, Apple watches and thermostats and stuff, [00:30:00] but because we're going to have billions of these devices, many of them are going to be like four K cameras and they're going to be generating an extremely large amount of data.
[00:30:08] And you just can't afford to ship that data around. And again, it's got, it's got a, a, half-life a value. Right. The longer it sits on analyzed the less value it is. So, so I see that being the primary driver of, of edge computing, the demand for edge computing and the interesting thing. And I'm wondering, you know, we sort of come back to of it.
[00:30:30] So I was asked just prior to this call, actually, I was asked if. I thought I seen any impact on our business from COVID-19 and from a build data centers, get customers do business. There's been very little impact. I mean, there's a, there's some other people's facilities that we have to get into to do interconnection and stuff that maybe what used to take two days now takes 10 days because they can't have as many people in a facility, but largely my business hasn't been unaffected as it hasn't been affected because we're doing [00:31:00] construction and trenching fiber and lighting networks.
[00:31:03] But what I have seen. And I'm interested if you've also seen this is, you know, you think about all these companies that you mentioned, you mentioned, you know, there's, there's, there's logistics, there's factories, there's farms, there's mining, every single one of those companies has an automation strategy.
[00:31:20] And, many of them that aren't early adopters. I have an automation strategy that like, you know, it's going to take 10 or 15 years to implement, or maybe 20 years, maybe that's your 20 year arc. But I, but I think COVID is forced people to do is to accelerate that spent, I think there've been a lot of board meetings where they said we need to reprioritize and accelerate this automation.
[00:31:41] And so I think this pandemic may significantly accelerate the deployment of edge computing because of that shift in capital expense, spending by the companies who will benefit from that automation. And I'm wondering if you you've seen [00:32:00] anything like that as well.
[00:32:01] Gavin: Yeah, absolutely. I think you're spot on with her. so, yeah, we spoken to a lot of companies that have said the same thing, that our automation is, is being accelerated. and, you know, certainly. there's a reprioritization boardrooms and a, and a realization that digitalization is even if it was, you know, it was, I don't think it was ever considered a luxury, but it was not considered like number one priority.
[00:32:26] Right. And now you've got to be much more robust as a business and we can see the impacts that pandemics such as this and cut opposite where there's, won't be the last one. Right.
[00:32:39] Matt: Yeah, well, maybe every time we want to have a,
[00:32:41] quantum leap in technology, we need to have a pandemic or something.
[00:32:46] Gavin: Yeah. but, but yeah, yeah, you're absolutely right. COBIT is in many ways accelerating that digital transformation and the automation piece.
[00:32:55] Matt: But let's talk about mining. Cause I don't actually know a lot about that. What, what are [00:33:00] some of the use cases in, in mining for edge computing?
[00:33:03]Gavin: well, there's quite a bit of autonomous control, safety control, those kinds of things. a specialized logistics control. if you look at some of the big mines in Africa, places like Australia, right? They've, they've got actually those huge autonomous machines moving around and your you're doing predictive maintenance on those you're in control on those.
[00:33:23]and then sort of quality control as well. So understanding what's coming out of the ground and, and, processing, and focusing on, on getting to the
[00:33:34]Matt: Yeah.
[00:33:38] imagine the same with oil and gas must be a very similar
[00:33:41] Gavin: Yeah. I mean, safety is always a primary driver, right? So typically an oil and gas as a, you know, people are understanding, you know, making sure that people are in the right place and, and just the extra layers of control. And then beyond that, you've got drilling accuracy and predictive maintenance, predictive [00:34:00] maintenance is always, has been with IOT and with edge computing is kind of one of the things I guess, deployed first.
[00:34:06] Safety.
[00:34:09]Matt: When you, when you look at this, this imaginary 20 year arc of edge computing, and let's, let's throw IOT in there as well as 20 year arc of edge computing and IOT transforming our world. Is there, is there a use case, or a moment in time that you personally are excited to see realized? I mean, I, I, I think when I first got into.
[00:34:31]this world of, software or running on devices, which was, you know, in the, in the, I mean, in the early eighties, actually, you know, I, I envisioned I wanted the star Trek tricorder, like that's what I wanted. And I almost have one, I've got a galaxy note 20, and it's almost, it just, it doesn't, you know, take all the vitals that I would want it doesn't do my, my EKG yet.
[00:34:50] But, is there some imagined, you know, science fiction, future that.
[00:34:56] That you personally excited about?
[00:34:58] Gavin: Yeah. Although, I mean, the classic one is more like [00:35:00] the iron man stuff. Right. Isn't it. So, you know, but really not in augmented reality that you don't really find intrusive, but actually is helpful to you and just augments your, your
[00:35:11] Matt: So what, what would that look like? What would that look like? Cause there's a lot of people sort of, you know, talk about things going through the trough of disillusionment. I think AR VR is sort of in that space now.
[00:35:21] Gavin: Yeah, absolutely.
[00:35:22] Matt: experienced it it's magical, but it's, it has yet
[00:35:24] to really catch on what, what are you, what are you seeing
[00:35:27] Gavin: And it's something that really needs such computing. Right. So, I mean, I just find if I go to Safeways and not being able to find where the peanut butter is or something, I find that drives me crazy. Right. So, and it's in some while, but you know, one of $50 I have to wander around to try and find it so that can.
[00:35:41] Matt: Safely at all.
[00:35:43] Gavin: Yeah. I don't know what. Yeah. or if I let's say
[00:35:53] off, right. Yeah. but so, you know, just that kind of stuff that's going on, help inform you, [00:36:00] help me help get you around you in your real life and enrich your real life. But without it being like super clunky and annoying and you know, battery's dying and you're all the time and all that kind of stuff, we'd actually, you know, the battery life is something that's also going to come from.
[00:36:13] Yeah, help be extended by competing, right? Because if you got the, you don't need to, to drive the rodeo so much with so much distance, then it is going to help, helping you battery life
[00:36:25] strong. so a whole range of things around that, around that kind of stuff.
[00:36:31] Matt: Yeah, there was an interesting discussion I had, w which I don't know if anybody's building such a thing, but you think about like, you know, the, the popularity of Chromebooks now with, with students, especially the very inexpensive way to have what. Is a much better desktop computing experience than like the original Macintosh.
[00:36:47] And it's all done through a browser and it's, it's just absolutely magical, right? Like it's all delivered from servers with the exception of the browser browser is really the only application that runs on your Chromebook. I mean, I'm simplifying it a little bit, but really that's, that's the [00:37:00] application that runs, you're not running a word processor on your Chromebook.
[00:37:03] You're using a word processor through a browser. And, there is. You know, a possibility of building a phone, that's nothing but a touch screen. It doesn't have any intelligence inside. And that all of the intelligence is delivered like Fortnite is. It's just pixels streaming to me and my input on the phone back.
[00:37:26]and I, you know, again, I don't know if that's really a practical application. I don't know if it's going to cost reduce enough that the battery, the battery impact of the radio is pretty significant. So it may not actually balance out. You may use more battery by pushing all those bits over the radio.
[00:37:42] Then you would actually drawing them on the display, but it. With this sort of ubiquitous, the computing that we see coming, there are a lot of ways to completely reimagine how we interact with our devices. Right? I mean, why, why, why, why do I carry around a thing that looks [00:38:00] like a phone that, you know, this is actually pretty heavy.
[00:38:03] Yeah. Obviously the people on the podcast can't see what I'm doing, but I'm lifting my phone up and down. you know what, I want that to be something I could fold up and put in my pocket, you know, that was, the, the thickness of a couple business cards. I mean, that would be pretty awesome. And the possibility exists that we could offload a lot of the, what has to go into device today
[00:38:21] to a,
[00:38:26] Gavin: Yeah. Although you always want to have some kind of edge computing, pretty close to you. So it doesn't, it doesn't do a personal computing, your, your edge computing become personalized, around your body in some way. So there's not going to be, there's not going to be a mobile phone, which is what most people carry now.
[00:38:42] Is he going to be something else, some kind of something that looks like a credit card holder, and then you run all your compute for whatever dies, whatever functions you need around you.
[00:38:51] Matt: That's right. That's right. And I think that's one of the most interesting questions is, you know, and you sort of alluded to this, which is, which is, we know we want to run workloads at the edge. [00:39:00] We have a choice now where we want to run them. You know, if I'm an enterprise, I can run my workloads on premises or I can run my workloads in an edge cloud.
[00:39:07] And there are trade offs to that. if I, Want to own a device. It has a lot of processing power, you know, an iPhone 11. I can run a lot of the workloads on my iPhone, but I'm going to pay a price for it. I mean, one of them being the dollars I have to shell out to Apple, but I'm also the, you know, potentially the battery life.
[00:39:25] Yeah. And a bunch of other things, the thickness, the form factor, things like that. And so it's gonna be a really interesting. You know, people oversimplify this pendulum between centralized and distributed, you know, client and server. Right? And I think it's gonna be really interesting when really the client and server are almost next to each other and your, your choice is going to, there's going to be other factors that come into the, come into the equation.
[00:39:49] And in fact, with containers, it may be possible to run the same workload in both locations. And you just get to choose based on what's optimal. At that point, if I'm in battery saving mode, [00:40:00] run it. You know, in this location, if I'm not in battery saving mode, running this other location. Cause I want performance.
[00:40:06] Gavin: Yeah, no, absolutely. It's like, a three dimensional, but Benjamin Loki, you know, you've seen those in the science museum was sitting around a bunch of different magnets
[00:40:14] that are
[00:40:17] probably too visual.
[00:40:21] Matt: I keep coming back to this 20 there's 20 years Mark, because, you know, I tend to think in these, these three to five year increments, and I get the sense that, that, you know, while you're really bullish on edge computing, you might also think there's some irrational exuberance around that.
[00:40:38] I'm wondering if you could, you could comment.
[00:40:44] Gavin: That's interesting. I wouldn't say it's irrational, exuberance. I mean, there, there is exuberance. well, there's exuberance in certain sectors, right? So there's, we probably reached the stage where there's exuberance in the, in the tech market. But, as I alluded to earlier, I mean, when you [00:41:00] get beyond.
[00:41:01] People beyond the, the fairly limited sphere of the chat market. I think people are still learning about edge computing. So it's, I don't think it's got to the place of IOT or Bluetooth in the early years when everybody kind of had half an idea of what it was, what was going to do and, and got super disappointed when it didn't do that.
[00:41:20] And then within 18 months, so. I think there, there is a huge, huge appetite for what edge computing can do. I hope there's not going to be a, I think we have a more realistic view of things that as a market, as a technology industry now, and I hope there's not going to be that kind of trough that you've seen with other technologies.
[00:41:44] And I think actually, Some of the things that are happening around us as we've alluded to in this podcast around covert and so on, we're actually going to ensure that there is, an earlier deployment of those systems anyway. Right. So, [00:42:00] I don't think there's, I don't see it as a, as a peak and trough kind of thing.
[00:42:04]I see it as, I mean, it's, there's going to be waves, but I don't think it's going to be, Super segmented in terms of the ups and downs.
[00:42:14] Matt: Yeah, I think, I think I agree with you. you, know, you look at, you look at the, the, the other, you know, the other life cycles and, you know, everybody draws this curve. I think Gardner made it famous with their, their, you know, their, their peak and trough of disillusionment.
[00:42:29] But the, the, I think you're right. I think that that trough, is it might be a little dip, but it's certainly not going to be a trough. And, but I think the reasons for that are. I think you're right. It's a lot of the learnings that those of us who've been through three or four of these cycles. I can't think of an industry that's this big that has had so much cohesion and acceleration around open source code.
[00:42:54] And you think of the role that open source plays in a market. It is the foundation upon which [00:43:00] everybody gets to build their products and differentiate around. And it's that, that. That really ugly grunt work that no one company wants to spend the money to take on. and doesn't have the time to take it on.
[00:43:14] So there's this collective mechanism that, you know, didn't exist really when the cloud was first being formed. I mean, you know, open source, open source was, was Richard Stallman in the eighties. And it was like, you give your stuff away is meant to be free. And it's only, you know, in the last decade that it's matured to this very different thing, which yeah, it is free, but that's not the point.
[00:43:38] The point is, is that a bunch of industry players can get together and agree that, look, this is the part of the business that we don't want to compete on. No, we don't. I use the 35 millimeter film cause like I grew up using, using film and like the film and the camera manufacturers all agreed that the Sprockets were going to be, you know, if it was to be 35 millimeters and the Sprockets were going to be a certain distance, nobody says, well, I'm going to [00:44:00] build a certain kind of camera with it's only going to take my phone.
[00:44:02] Well, actually they did. I mean, Kodak made that, that camera, that, that wasn't successful that had the little rotating, things, but, but by camera manufacturers agreeing on how. Ha, you know, what the, what the interface was between the film and the camera camera manufacturers were free to go off and innovate on lenses and shutters and features and functions.
[00:44:23] Yeah. And film manufacturers were free to go innovate on, you know, emotional and processes and, you know, different chemical configurations and manufacturing techniques. And that made a very robust industry just with that very, very simple open source. Like. Interface. And I think we're going to see the same thing, but I was just saying, I, I can't think of an industry where there's been so much clear agreement and cohesion on water core.
[00:44:47] What are the core supporting technologies that need to be developed and adopted? In order for us all to have a platform. You know, you look at the telco industry. I mean, again, 10 years ago, [00:45:00] telcos had to buy black box appliances.
[00:45:04] And, you know, from, from the gnocchis nurse in the world, now they're doing Iran.
[00:45:08] Gavin: Yeah. Yeah. It's a steady March of open source, which is increasingly become, it's becoming the new standards. Right. So, so it's interesting to think about the role of status versus versus open source, but I mean, certainly open source is taking an increasing proportion of, of that work and accelerating our work and, and yeah, I mean, open round is becoming like a, an open source.
[00:45:33] Open source is going to drive froggy rodeo, perhaps. So I think that's
[00:45:40] pretty interesting.
[00:45:42] Matt: Yeah, certainly that's really, as you think of that, you know, why is this, why is there not going to be a trough? So there's this. You know, really interesting precipitation in the open source industry that happened very fast. There is a lot of, you know, organizing around information education and [00:46:00] the work that I'm doing, the state of the edge, the work that you're doing at Tokyo, you have the, you know, the, the pandemic, you have, you know, the, almost two decades of, IOT.
[00:46:10] You know, build up. So now we have lots of devices and we have lots of networks. and then you've got the, I guess the maturation of, of AI, which frankly, the only way to process all this data intelligently and fast is to have a lot of AI. And so you think of like all those converging forces, you know, makes for a, a really rich primordial soup.
[00:46:34] From which to grow this amazing thing that we see edge computing. So it's gonna be, it's gonna be an interesting few years. What, what do you, what do you see? What are you most interested in
[00:46:46] paying attention to over the next 18 months? A much shorter horizon.
[00:46:49]Gavin: definitely paying attention to use the deployments, right? So I mean the retail space, this is going to be really interesting over the next 18 months. We've got a summit and the conferences [00:47:00] focusing on retail and looking at some of those stories because of the, all of the things we've discussed in the last 20 minutes or so, or the, or the pressures, on the automation that they're checking on.
[00:47:11]But also other sectors automotive. So, connected cars are going to be big if not autonomous cars, and looking at how location plays into cars, that's important in terms of edge computing, lots of stuff going on, industrial space, lots of stuff going on in the healthcare space. So, things increasingly being untethered, right.
[00:47:32] Matt: Let's talk about healthcare. What do you, what are you seeing interesting happening in the healthcare space?
[00:47:36]Gavin: Oh, one on one side you got, making sure, I mean, privacy is a driver of edge computing rights, so, keeping records private. So that's, that's important around hospitals, but increasingly, you know, just to the COVID point where we're seeing things done in an untethered way. So, you know, monitoring patients from home, that kind of stuff.
[00:47:52]and just making sure that, the weekend, analyze, the data that we have around certain,
[00:48:08] [00:48:00] Matt: Yeah. I mean, it, it seems plausible that that, you know, especially for things like viruses or now in California with the fires air quality, we've got sensors that probably can detect or soon will be able to detect those, those things in the air and with edge computing, they could analyze and process that and alert people, very quickly.
[00:48:27] So
[00:48:28] Gavin: Yeah.
[00:48:29] Matt: yeah, I can imagine that that being an important part and part of what's,
[00:48:32] what's gonna, what we're gonna see in the future.
[00:48:34] Gavin: Yeah. And we talked a little bit about drones earlier, right? So, you know, I hear about BG and sending needing weeks to send out guys to guys and girls to go down all the power lines apart outs what's happening. So, you know, if they have, they touched trees and stuff, well,
[00:48:48] why can't you just automate a drone to do that?
[00:48:50] Surely, you know,
[00:48:50] Matt: Yeah. I mean, we're working on an autonomous, we're working on an autonomous drone project now for, for rail inspection and tower inspection. And, you know, you think about infrastructure inspection, you [00:49:00] know, you know, I don't know how, how often they do this, but I imagine the, the. Under structure, the gold gate bridge is probably inspected once or twice a year.
[00:49:08] With, with autonomous. You could do it twice a day. If you wanted to. I mean a drone mission is a fraction of the cost of sending a bunch of humans out to inspect the bridge and it can do it in high resolution. It can build a three D model with, with LIDAR, you know, it can use infrared depending, you know, it's really kind of an interesting, it's really going to.
[00:49:27] Change a lot of, of how well and just how people are employed, like what they actually do. A lot of the really crappy jobs, potentially are automated, you know, robotic farms, robotic, assembly plants, things like that. robotic infrastructure inspection. We've got a massive retraining task to take on.
[00:49:48] but the overall benefit to society just seems incredibly, incredibly powerful. do you have anybody speaking at edge computing world about drones or, or, edge computing in medicine?
[00:49:59] Gavin: We've got GE [00:50:00] healthcare there's cheated office. So GE healthcare, I'm a is talking about, edge computing in medicine. we've also got a professor from the university. You can talk to user who's in, into the pathogen informatics space. who's covering, X computing as it relates to, A diagnosis.
[00:50:15]and then, you know, drones, drones, very interesting space. So we're, we're, acquiring speakers at the moment on that space.
[00:50:23] Matt: Terrific. So,
[00:50:24]Gavin: October 15th. register, edge computing, world.com. there's some free opportunities. It's completely free to use this. to get to the, the, the tracks on, on the vertical markets.
[00:50:34] Matt: Tell us about the developer day. What do you do on the developer day? That, that sounded interesting.
[00:50:40] Gavin: It's actually two days. So, so 12th and 13th. there's a variety of technical presentations. there's contributions from many of our partners, like are those foundation from the eclipse foundation, from the OpenStack foundation, help me go to understand the tools that are available to them to develop the edge.
[00:50:57]we've also got some great keynotes there. So we got, [00:51:00] Bhutan who's, actually CEO of cadence design systems, but actually we're also one of the leading investors in edge computing. we've got heart. Start off the year, competition it startup of the year competition
[00:51:20] Matt: Yeah. I'm particularly excited about that because the state of the edge is a cosponsor of that award. And this is our second year doing it and we have 10 amazing finalists. So I'm excited to see who the, who the judges pick. So, Gavin, I really appreciate you coming onto the podcast and spending some time.
[00:51:39] edge computing telling us about edge computing world
[00:51:46]Gavin: just Gavin white church, Kevin dot white church. I took it. It was.com or obviously you can reach out. You'll find me on LinkedIn, But, yeah, thanks for the opportunity. That has been great to really interesting chat, really a very fascinating to talks [00:52:00] about what the future of edge computing holds, whether that's a three year or a five year or 20 year horizon.
[00:52:07] Right. And, we'd love to meet everybody at edge computing world. So please come along.
[00:52:12] Matt: Yeah, we'll come back and do another version of this podcast in 20 years.