Today’s episode features an interview between Matt Trifiro and Sarah Beaudoin, Head of Customer Advocacy and Early Stage Marketing at ZEDEDA. In this interview, Sarah discusses her approach to solving those problems, as well as the present and future use cases and challenges of IoT deployment at the edge.
Today’s episode features an interview between Matt Trifiro and Sarah Beaudoin, Head of Customer Advocacy and Early Stage Marketing at ZEDEDA.
As an early-stage marketer at ZEDEDA, Sarah is tackling the problems of creating awareness and adoption in a burgeoning industry.
In this interview, Sarah discusses her approach to solving those problems, as well as the present and future use cases and challenges of IoT deployment at the edge.
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[00:00:00] Matt: [00:00:00] Hi, this is Matt Trifiro, CMO of edge infrastructure company, vapor IO, and co chair of the Linux foundation's state of the edge project. And today I'm here with Sarah Beaudoin, a community advocate and early stage marketer with ZEDEDA, Hi Sarah, how are you doing
[00:00:15] Sarah: [00:00:15] Hi, I'm great, Matt, how are you doing
[00:00:17] Matt: [00:00:17] I am doing terrific. And you know, so before we talk about edge computing in general, I wanted to ask you, your origin story. So how did you get involved with technology at all?
[00:00:26] Sarah: [00:00:26] So it's a funny story because this is not how I intended to live. Like if you'd asked me when I was 16, what my career path would be, it would not be. Yeah. So, well, at that point I would have been a veterinarian, but then I ended up in college. I ended up with a job working for the central it department and that.
[00:00:46] At the, yeah. At the university that I went to. And so I worked for them the entire time I was in school. And that then was the Genesis of that. When I graduated, I found myself that I was offered a role as a unit PSAs admin, and it was a pretty awesome [00:01:00] opportunity to come in and be part of central. it was a great learning experience.
[00:01:03]I was working on a project that actually might sound.
[00:01:08] Matt: [00:01:08] Not
[00:01:08] Sarah: [00:01:08] It was Unix. It was actually free VST solarise. Yup. Yup. I did have a couple of suits of boxes, but only a handful. So it was the vast majority was previous D and almost everything we did was open source, which was also today how I found myself
[00:01:23] Matt: [00:01:23] pretty early days for open source.
[00:01:26] Sarah: [00:01:26] I think codified it as it is today, but it definitely was a really great learning to me of the value of the open source community. and, you know, if you're trying to solve problems, having that group of people that are all invested in it, that it's sort of really set that value to me
[00:01:42]Matt: [00:01:42] could you tell us a little of that story? Like what was like pick a project that you thought is exemplary and how the community changed? What might've happened?
[00:01:50] Sarah: [00:01:50] So I'll so let me tell you first what we did so in why was opensource? So the university was basically tasked by the governor. So I was at Michigan state university and we were tasked [00:02:00] by the governor for various reasons to help a lot of the rural K through 12 schools to get online. So this is pre-cloud.
[00:02:07] We won't talk about the dates pre-cloud. And so these are schools that didn't have a lot of funding, maybe had somebody doing it part time, might not have anyone doing it for them. And the university needed to help them with getting network access, you know, doing things like setting up DNS DHCP, helping them with a website, getting email for teachers, a lot of those basic things.
[00:02:29] Matt: [00:02:29] Yeah, that was very difficult. Back
[00:02:31] Sarah: [00:02:31] It was bad. It was, well, you know, you think about it today. And I was thinking about this last night, that today it would just be like, you'd go out and buy a half a dozen SAS providers. And you know, you, everything would all be in a nice gooey
[00:02:42] Matt: [00:02:42] It's a different world. I mean, in the early nineties, I registered a bunch of four letter domain names that I never monetized because I just let them explore.
[00:02:50] Sarah: [00:02:50] But when you could do that. Right. and so that was the thing was with this is that these schools, there was very little money. So we went with open source because the university needed to [00:03:00] use whatever funds they had for this project to actually make the schools be successful. So free BSD was a really great one because they had a very active community at the time.
[00:03:09]they, in terms of. You know, uptime, security, things of that sort. We would put it on those boxes and those boxes would never go down. Right. So, so previous day was a really great one for us to use as the base for that. And then we'd layer on top of that, you know, all the different services that they needed, Apache and send mail and named D for DNS and all of that, what the, and this is to me where the, it sort of relates back to edge computing and kind of where we're at today is that, so again, we're working with people in the schools that maybe their part time, it, maybe they were the.
[00:03:40] You know, the chemistry teacher who really also was into computers. And so they were asked to take on this project, you know, one of the main contacts at the school I worked with was the librarian. Yeah. And she said, basically, if they plugged in, it fits something plugged in. They gave it to her cause they didn't know what else to do with it.
[00:03:56] So it was people that. We're had jobs already at the schools had [00:04:00] expertise, had things they were responsible for doing that. Now had this extra technology burden that they had to figure out as well. So university then provided them the systems that had all the software they needed. Then we also built a gooey on top of it, so that if you're the librarian in a school who now has to manage, you know, your email server, you don't have to actually go in and edit, you know, and send mail.
[00:04:23] You could just go in and fill out the form and. You know, that would happen. So that was, that's kind of where it started for me in terms of. You know, the role that technology could play to not just get these schools more modernized, which was super important. And it's an entirely different world today.
[00:04:38] But to help the people that are charged with that, who that's not their life's dream of doing it, they have other jobs. This is something they were asked to. We're all asked to take on additional things in our, you know, day to day duties, right. Something additional that they were tasked with taking on.
[00:04:54] And our role as part of it coming in to help them, even though we were coming in from a university, but now [00:05:00] it coming in is how can we make this as straightforward for them so that they can fulfill all their business obligations in a way that's secure and scalable and all of the things that are important to us today on the edge.
[00:05:11] So to me, it was really sort of an early glimpse of that prior to cloud computing. And we actually had to roll out servers to each of these, you know, each of these schools and plug them in and. All of that, but it was kind of a cool way to just see that in process is to getting sort of my feet wet with the open source community, but doing it from the perspective of we relied on them and we chose them initially because we had no funding and we needed the community support because the university couldn't put all of the resources toward just helping these schools.
[00:05:42] Right. We had other responsibilities as well. But, so that was where it started. And then I sort of worked my way, that it, as you can imagine, it was a project that came to the university from the governor. There was lots of politics involved that got me doing more on the communication side of technology, and you know, fast forward a certain number of years.
[00:06:00] [00:05:59] And now I'm on the sort of marketing communications side of things.
[00:06:04] Matt: [00:06:04] Yeah. And so, so, it sounds like a pretty meaningful. Career pivot to move from technology. And I did something similar. I bounced around, you know, when I realized other people were better programmers than I was, even though I liked programming, I said, I gotta find another way to stay in technology, but add more value.
[00:06:21]what was it for you?
[00:06:23] Sarah: [00:06:23] I think for me in terms of even the, in terms of the pivot from doing the more tech stuff to the more communication stuff. So, so for me, I started getting an in this to me, is this the sweet spot between technology and sort of communications and marketing is where you get to be that bridge between the sort of the deep it stuff and what we're doing and how things work.
[00:06:45] But you're the bridge too, explaining it to maybe somebody that's coming at it from a different perspective, their objections were perhaps a little bit different and you're helping to create that understanding. So I ended up when I was still at the university, I ended up leading communications for [00:07:00] the CIO.
[00:07:00] And so he sent me out to speak to anybody that was basically coming to the university that wanted to understand about anything technology wise, high performance computing center, what we were doing for distance learning, you know, satellite campuses and other countries, anything that was related to technology.
[00:07:17] I was sort of the bridge between the it part of the university. And then what we were going to put out externally. And I really love that spot. I think that's very interesting to try to figure out how do we make it accessible for people to understand what we're doing and making it accessible in a way that then helps them further, whatever their business goals are.
[00:07:38] Matt: [00:07:38] That's amazing. Yeah. I, you know, I'm grinning because I that's exactly how I see a big part of my job. and. And it is a lot of fun. And, you know, I sometimes say like my job is to ask naive questions because if I can't understand it through the answers to knife questions, I'm never going to be okay.
[00:07:56] Sarah: [00:07:56] Yeah. yeah.
[00:07:57] Matt: [00:07:57] Okay. And yeah, so I think that bridge is really [00:08:00] important and, and I understand why you enjoy it. Cause you get to. Get to stay attached to the technology. You get to challenge yourself in that way. but you also have this whole other challenge, which is like, how do you break it down into understandable parts so that other people can gain competency?
[00:08:14]Sarah: [00:08:14] Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. I always tell people I was never the best CIS admin. Certainly no one today would hire me as a CIS admin. Right. It's a different time, but
[00:08:21] Matt: [00:08:21] Yeah. I've admitted a certain database, but I've not
[00:08:23] Sarah: [00:08:23] Right. Like, yeah. Yeah. That's not the, those, aren't the LinkedIn jobs you're
[00:08:26] Matt: [00:08:26] Yeah, I can maybe sequel my way out of a paper bag, but that's about it. so you also described yourself as an early stage marketer. Like how do you see, what does that mean to you and how is that different from, you know, I guess a later stage marketer.
[00:08:42] Sarah: [00:08:42] So I think point right now, and I think this is true of startups, but I also think it's true of the industry in terms of edge and where we are today, where there's a lot of unknowns, right? there's no prescription to, here's how you need to be successful at the edge. Right. Where we have a lot of.
[00:08:59] POC that are [00:09:00] running in terms of what companies are doing. Lots of things in labs, things of that
[00:09:03] Matt: [00:09:03] super amorphous.
[00:09:04] Sarah: [00:09:04] it is. And everybody's trying to, you know, has all these very specific use cases. And we don't have kind of like a, you know, a prescription yet of how it needs to work for people. But what we do know is that there are certain principles, you know, things like building it on an open architecture.
[00:09:19] So you've got the flexibility to be able to work with whatever hardware you need to work with and whatever applications and whatever cloud, you know, there's certain things we understand, but I think in the industry as a whole, people are struggling with how do I get this? Super cool thing that I'm doing in the lab that I know has business value actually into a real functioning deployment that.
[00:09:40] I can realize that business value. And I think when it comes to early stage marketing, it's what we're doing is it's a lot of education and it's education across the board in terms of what is possible. It's sharing examples of sharing, what customers are doing successful. It's sharing what people are trying to do.
[00:09:56] I think it's a lot of it is being a conduit so people [00:10:00] can understand what else is out there. You know, when I talk to the analyst community, they don't have answers yet. They have a lot of really great ideas. They have.
[00:10:09] Matt: [00:10:09] I feel like we know a lot more than the
[00:10:10] Sarah: [00:10:10] No, I think so. I think we're at that point and it's, to me that's so exciting because if you're, you know, my whole background has been in infrastructure from, you know, in addition to all the cool public school stuff I was doing when I was back at the university, I also ran backup servers at the university.
[00:10:24] And that is not exciting in any way, shape or form. Right. but
[00:10:29] Matt: [00:10:29] Did they have tapes?
[00:10:30] Sarah: [00:10:30] exactly. Again, we don't want it. We don't want to date me, but yes, the age.
[00:10:35] Matt: [00:10:35] no? No people still use tapes.
[00:10:37]Sarah: [00:10:37] we had a gentleman who had his, because they, again, very low funding in terms of the schools and stuff. His dr. Plan was the trunk of his car. And so every day the tapes were rotated out and some tapes were left at the school.
[00:10:50] Some tapes were at his home and some tapes were in the trunk of his car. So it was a different time. The cloud has definitely
[00:10:55] Matt: [00:10:55] The first connected car.
[00:10:57] Sarah: [00:10:57] That's a good point. That's a good point. But [00:11:00] if it's so, the, I was making a point with this. I know that I was,
[00:11:03] Matt: [00:11:03] Sorry, I took you off track with the joke.
[00:11:05] Sarah: [00:11:05] they'll come back to me and just a second.
[00:11:07]So we're at this we're at this time, right? Where we have to educate people. We have to share people with what it is that we know the analysts have ideas, but they don't have a clear, concise, you know, sort of path forward. At this point. They're still trying to figure it out and it's very different.
[00:11:23] This is where I was going with my back of analogy. It's very different. When you look at other parts, Of, you know, data center infrastructure or cloud infrastructure at this point that there's recommendations out there's best practices. If you need to do X, here are the best practices you should follow to get you there.
[00:11:37] Right? And so the people now that are trying to do education and covert, I think is going to accelerate this as people are looking at, you know, all sorts of new use cases to reduce the amount of employees after being in an area. And things of that sort is they don't have that blueprint. Right to help them.
[00:11:53] And so for us, from an early stage marketing perspective, it's there, it's not prescriptive. It's [00:12:00] very much helping you understand what's possible. Here's the things you need to think about. Here's the things you need to think about that are going to help you, not just today. Cause you're thinking about it for one particular use case.
[00:12:09] Cause we're so early, but here's the things that you need to think about that can help you. You know, make sure that whatever you're putting in place today is going to expand it to what you needed two years. Right? So I think from an early stage perspective, it's very much focused on education across the board and just frankly, sharing the information that we have, you sharing, what you guys are seeing across your customer base, as it was the data sharing what we're seeing, sharing it with the analyst community, sharing it with the other customers and.
[00:12:38] Really using that to help build these things, standards and guidelines, and to get to the point where there's a very clear path for people.
[00:12:45] Matt: [00:12:45] Yeah. You know, you know, it's interesting is when I, read your, the description of your role on LinkedIn. When I read early stage marketer, I thought early stage company seed stage series a stage, and. Well, that probably also [00:13:00] applies as Adita as a startup company. What you're really saying is something much larger, which is early stage industry like this blank slate.
[00:13:08] Yeah. That's really interesting. I'm very attracted to that as well. and then from a tactical marketing standpoint, I'm guessing, that it parallels, you know, my strategy. but tell me if your thoughts are this different where, you know, if you think about. you know, the, let's just say the three pillars of marketing, right?
[00:13:25] There's like content and education demand gen and brand. Right. that I do almost zero demand gen. and that's because like, people don't even have to search for the stuff they're looking for, let alone, you know, let alone do it. Is that sort of your same strategy that, you know, eventually it'll shift to that way when people know what they're going to buy, but today it's, we're not even at that
[00:13:46]Sarah: [00:13:46] I do that actually mirrors kind of what we're seeing as well in terms of the focus is on a lot of its content thought leadership, putting the learnings out there, brand comes along with that, of course. Right. Because you're, you know,
[00:13:59] Matt: [00:13:59] your [00:14:00] brand to the thought
[00:14:00] Sarah: [00:14:00] Exactly. But there is, I think there are, there's a tremendous opportunity right now for those of us that are in this space to get thought leadership content out there to really help shape and guide.
[00:14:11] And I think this is some of the great stuff that's coming out of LFM edge and the project that you're part of as well in terms of really guiding that industry conversation. I think there's a big, there's a big space for that right now. And in two years it's going to be different, right? Two years, we're going to be focused more on demand gen and some of the more traditional.
[00:14:27] Sort of marketing mechanisms, but I don't, I just don't think we're there today.
[00:14:31] Matt: [00:14:31] Yeah. Yeah. Do you think you become a traditional marketer or do you find another
[00:14:35] Sarah: [00:14:35] I, well, hopefully I retire, but I think that it's, I think for me the excitement, and I've gone through this before, where I went from the early stage to, you know, same company to growing it through the different paths to being an established company. And for me personally, what I enjoy is the early stuff.
[00:14:56] Matt: [00:14:56] Yeah, I
[00:14:56]Sarah: [00:14:56] it's just. Yeah, it's fun. And you get to
[00:15:00] [00:15:00] Matt: [00:15:00] It drives some people crazy because like, they don't know what to sink their fingernails
[00:15:04] Sarah: [00:15:04] Yeah, I think that's true, but I like there's so much excitement around it. There's so much to talk about. That's interesting. And it's when there isn't, you know, when I talk to the analysts and they're asking me more questions than I'm asking them, that's really exciting to me. That's fun.
[00:15:18] Those are, and those are right, like really engaging conversations. So I like this. This is a good time, I think in terms of, for me personally and what I enjoy doing.
[00:15:28] Matt: [00:15:28] Now for the startups in our audience that are maybe just looking at entering the edge space in the middle of a little research, like w what would you suggest they put their emphasis on, from marketing perspective? Like what would be the first two or three things that you would do if you joined a company that was just trying to enter the edge space today?
[00:15:49] Sarah: [00:15:49] I think one, I would look at partners in ecosystem because I think one thing that we're seeing across the board at the edge is that no single company is going to just own this space, right? That this is an [00:16:00] ecosystem of players that are going to work together to build solutions
[00:16:02] solutions It is it's very complicated, which gets back to the whole open foundation idea, right?
[00:16:08]that's part of why the very it's base, it needs to be able to accommodate whatever partners you need to bring in. So I think the ecosystem is a very important. I think my personal recommendation to somebody that would be looking at, you know, or a rule early stage company is look at the analyst.
[00:16:28] Activity, because I think right now we're in a pretty unique spot in terms of the amount of analyst influence that we have as vendors, just because it is so early, because we have, we in the companies are that direct line to the customers. Right. And so we can help facilitate putting our customers with the analysts, but we also can share the use cases.
[00:16:48] We can share the experiences, and you know, from experience. And I know from experience that once an industry is more sort of codified. That changes. Right? So I think right now there's a really good [00:17:00] opportunity in terms of influencing the influencers and really helping them understand what the reality is.
[00:17:06] So I'll use for an example, whenever I read anything about why edge computing latency always comes up as the number one reason that people think, you know, we need edge computing and that's great. And we are going to absolutely get there. where latency is going to be the number one issue. But the thing we say constantly is latency is not the number one issue for any of our customers.
[00:17:24] They're doing it because of bandwidth. Right. They're doing it because they have too much data to send all of it to the cloud. It's too expensive. It takes too long. They need to deal with that data at the edge. And that to me is a, that's a really, that's just a gap that.
[00:17:37] Matt: [00:17:37] through throughput is a really big component to edge
[00:17:40] Sarah: [00:17:40] Yeah. Yeah. and so, but I think that until you start talking to the customers that are actually dealing with it and realizing, Oh, wait a second, we're a little too early, perhaps for latency to be the huge issue it's going. I think it's going to be, today it's more like nuts and bolts type thing, right.
[00:17:56] The pipe just isn't big enough.
[00:17:58] Matt: [00:17:58] Yeah. I'm going to read between the lines [00:18:00] and suggest another piece of advice, that I think you're suggesting, which is your startup company, getting an edge, talk to a bunch of customers
[00:18:06] Sarah: [00:18:06] Yes.
[00:18:06] Matt: [00:18:06] that may change your thesis.
[00:18:08]Sarah: [00:18:08] yeah, no, that's totally true because you learn the more you talk to those customers, the more you learn. Right. And this isn't, some of these companies have been doing this for a long time. They're just doing it in a very, you know, in.
[00:18:19] Matt: [00:18:19] What's a long time.
[00:18:20] Sarah: [00:18:20] Well, I mean, we've got industrials out there that have been doing IOT for decades now, right.
[00:18:24] With SCADA systems that are out there and whatnot, and are just trying to figure out how to modernize and how to run some of those old applications alongside newer applications and get more value out of it. So I think there's a lot of knowledge that's out. And I think the other thing I would say, and this has been probably one of the biggest learnings from me, I've been.
[00:18:44] with ZEDEDA almost two years now. Right? And so this is kind of my foray into edge started about two years ago and I have a very IT-centric background. Right. So, so we talked about that and my foray with the school pro program was my first time really working with [00:19:00] people that were tasked with maybe getting it results that weren't it.
[00:19:04] And I think what we need to remember as vendors as well is that we might approach this. Just because of our pedigrees is a very it focused conversation, but there are OT people out in these customers that are experts that have been dealing with this stuff for a long time. And they're the ones that are going to be up in the wind turbines.
[00:19:20] And they're going to be the ones going to the oil wellheads. and we have a lot that we can learn from them and how they're doing their jobs as well. So I'd say not just, don't just come at it from an it perspective. there's this whole other, you know, other category of people out there that have so much that we can learn from as well.
[00:19:37] Matt: [00:19:37] Yeah. You know, Joe Zhu, the CEO of Zenlayer described the edge in a really interesting way, which is it's where the. Digital world meets the physical world. And I think that's, that really does describe the difference between it and OT in some ways, right. It's like, yeah, there's an actual wind turbine with moving parts, [00:20:00] you know, not this like abstract cloud, but that I provisioned these magic instances.
[00:20:04] And, you know, even in data centers, there's moving parts, but no developer actually sees them anymore.
[00:20:09] Sarah: [00:20:09] Yeah, absolutely. You don't have to climb to the top of the wind turbine, right? Like that's the, and I like the wind turbine example as well, because when we talk about. you know, with, what Zurvita does an edge orchestration and the ability to run applications alongside each other on the same piece of hardware.
[00:20:26]you know, in the old days it might be that I have a piece of hardware running one application or it's for one use case. And then I put another piece of hardware next to it for another use case or attached to a different set of sensors, running a different application. And I'm managing all these in silos.
[00:20:40] But if you think about a wind turbine, At the top of that wind turbine, there's only so much room for me to put, to actually put hardware. Right. So there's a real physical limitation in terms of how much space I have. So I have to be smart about how I'm deploying my applications, attaching my sensors, all of those things.
[00:20:58] Cause I only have so much [00:21:00] space. And then by the same token, you know, it's hard for me to get to these places as well. So, you know, how long, you know, how far do I have to drive to get to this particular wind turbine? I have to have a truck, you know, that can take me up in a bucket. And then I have to climb to the top from, at that point, once I'm on the ladder and I have to climb down into the wind turbine.
[00:21:18] There's I mean, it's not just it for the faint of heart, right? So we have to think about it in terms of it's different. it's not just the data center, but outside at the edge of your.
[00:21:29] Matt: [00:21:29] So how does the data help the person that's climbing the wind turbine.
[00:21:35] Sarah: [00:21:35] well, we don't help them with the climbing. they have to work on their own physical fitness. But, so what ZEDEDA does is we do cloud-based orchestration for the IOT edge. So basically you have some sort of device out. There could be a gateway device, could be Intel, could be armed some sort of small device that's out there that is going to be attached to your sensors.
[00:21:54]we can go down to a raspberry PI. So, so.
[00:21:57] Matt: [00:21:57] At what point is it no longer, small, do you think. [00:22:00] I mean, does it is a, I
[00:22:03] Sarah: [00:22:03] It's gotta have it's. I mean, it's gotta be able to run a hypervisor. It has to be a, it's gotta be able to have a container. Right. So there's certain requirements there in terms of that. I think you could probably experiment it with it and get. Get pretty down there, but I think for customers, right.
[00:22:17] Do you want some sort of industrial class, this machine because they need to, it needs to have some sort of future for them, right? It's not just for the one, ideally it's not just for the one use case that they're putting out there, but we're based on top of EVE, the opensource project from LFEdge, which.
[00:22:31]Matt: [00:22:31] what is for those people don't know? Can you describe what functionality
[00:22:34] Sarah: [00:22:34] Yep. So EVE is a, basically an edge computing engine that gives you the ability with high degrees of security to run VMs containers, clusters, unikernels all alongside of each other on these devices. Right? So
[00:22:48] Matt: [00:22:48] And is EVE a project that was contributed primarily by ZEDEDA
[00:22:52] Sarah: [00:22:52] Yeah. So we I'm glad you said that we at ZEDEDA contributed EVE, I think almost a year and a half ago to LF edge at the point that [00:23:00] edge was launched. So we're very much a company that believes. That the edge has to be open. I mean, I've said that half a dozen times in this conversation and we've, you know, are just within our execs, we've got members of the Linux foundation.
[00:23:14] We've got board members for Apache. we believe very strongly in the power of open source and the fact that the edge, because it is so diverse in use cases and applications and hardware and all of those things that it has to have an open foundation. So EVE really is intented to be the Android of the Edge, that's really kind of the model that we're going for, so we at ZEDEDA donated
[00:23:37] Matt: [00:23:37] Is it an operating system. You handle the workload and it can run
[00:23:47] Sarah: [00:23:47] Yeah, exactly. And in whatever the VM or container or whatever you need from that perspective. So, so even gives you the ability to run all your different workloads, completely separate from each other on your device. Is the [00:24:00] data then. Leverages ease, open API APIs. And we have an orchestration solution that we've built on top.
[00:24:06] That's hosted in the cloud. And what that does is it gives customers the ability to completely remotely do all of the management of these devices and they're out. So we're talking about bios upgrades on that device. You know, you don't have to go out and actually visit them the device to do that. updating of the applications, the maintenance that you need to do.
[00:24:24] Security patches, all of that is done. Alongside along with that and it's done remotely. And then what we do is we work with a variety of different hardware manufacturers. Like I said, the concept of an open foundation means you should be able to use any hardware, any application connected to any cloud or on premise system that you need.
[00:24:44] But we do work with a number of hardware vendors. That'll, they'll actually sell you boxes that has Yves already installed. So that when the person goes up in the wind turbine, at that point, they need to just plug it in and connect it to the network. And then it calls home, which is the D visited cloud.
[00:24:59] And the [00:25:00] it person that's sitting, you know, probably at home today can then log in to their ZEDEDA interface and do everything they need to do with that box in terms of setting up the distributed firewall, or just deploying applications, updating, operating systems, things of that sort. So it's a hundred percent based remote orchestration.
[00:25:18] Matt: [00:25:18] and, does that also mean that if I'm a manufacturer and I ship a device with, you know, I don't know, some level of compliant Yves on it, that the customer could then decide to use Zita.
[00:25:31] Sarah: [00:25:31] Yes. Yeah. Yeah. So, so in basic and arts, and we can ask this a lot because if the ape we donate it, Eve the API is our open. You could write your own controller, right? It's an open
[00:25:41] Matt: [00:25:41] only thing you need is a device with Eve running on it in a compliant way, and the data can help
[00:25:47] Sarah: [00:25:47] Yes. Yes. Yup. Yup.
[00:25:50] Matt: [00:25:50] And then how does ZEDEDA's platform compare to say, I don't know, the Azure IOT tool chain.
[00:25:57] Sarah: [00:25:57] So, you know, that's a really great question because Microsoft's [00:26:00] actually one is Adidas, big partners. So we, what Zeta allows you to do is it's not just managing the application, it's managing the device as well. So there's that component of it right from the get go, but we're also helping you get.
[00:26:14] When you talk about a lot of things like Azure or AWS, Greengrass and whatnot, the run times are available, right? For you to put down on your device and then connect to, you know, an Azure use case, the IOT hub. But what they don't help you do is actually get that runtime on that device.
[00:26:31] And it's one thing for me to sit down and say, as the it person for a company or the OT person, I need to set up my device. I need to put a base operating system on it. Now I'm going to. Install the Azure run time, the Azure IOT run time. I'm going to install the Azure IOT security module. I'm going to go through all of these steps.
[00:26:49] I've done it on this one device. Now I have to do it on a thousand devices. Right. So it gets so, and so they provide all of these.
[00:26:58] Matt: [00:26:58] And you might have to do it in near real
[00:27:00] [00:26:59] Sarah: [00:26:59] Exactly. And they provide all these tools, but what they don't what's left to the customer is that last mile of actually getting the runtime on the devices and getting it back connected to the cloud.
[00:27:10] So what we do and Azure is a good example of this is we have, Basically a concept of an app catalog, just like you'd download apps on your phone, right. where you can choose the Azure app, it allows you to go in, you're able to input information specific to your Azure IOT instance. So it connects to your account and then you can push that out onto any devices.
[00:27:31] You can do it in bulk. It downloads the run time. It sets up the associated edge device within Azure IOT hub in the cloud makes the connection. And now you're ready to go. But it also does all your ongoing updates and maintenance that, you know, the next time there's yeah. A new version of the runtime, all of that you can do remotely as well.
[00:27:50] So for the customer, it's remote.
[00:27:52] Matt: [00:27:52] Yeah. And as a ZEDEDA customer? I think it sounds like I get a couple of pieces of really important values. So one of them is I have an [00:28:00] easier way to manage all my devices. the second thing is I have a, you know, plug and play way to interface with major cloud providers. But it also, the third thing is that it gives me, it helps me avoid vendor lock in from the cloud providers
[00:28:12] Sarah: [00:28:12] Yeah, absolutely. And then what were
[00:28:13] Matt: [00:28:13] and from the device
[00:28:15] Sarah: [00:28:15] Yeah, exactly. Because what happens is, and again, when we think about the edge and how complicated it can be, it's not, you know, if I need to replace a device, for what reason, it's not like I just go to the data center and deal with it. I've might have to get on a truck.
[00:28:28] I might have to get on a boat. I might have to do something to get to those devices. Right. So this gives you more flexibility in terms of the type of devices that you're using. You can use any type of devices that are compatible with Eve. you can work with any of the cloud providers. You can, and we have customers that do this, where I might have one application sending data to Azure, another application, sending data to an on premise system and another application, sending it to AWS.
[00:28:52] Right. And then the other thing that we see what we're seeing from customers that they really liked with this model and I'll use the Azure example again, is it's [00:29:00] helping sort of draw a little line between it and the developers. So the developers are working in Azure IOT hub and building out the modules and everything they need to do the analysis on the data after the fact, but for the person who's targeted with taking care of this device, taking care of the runtime on this device.
[00:29:16] Now they're only going to visit data interface. They don't have to go to the Azure IOT hub where the devs work. So it helps within the companies. They can draw a little bit of keeping people in the areas they're most comfortable.
[00:29:27] Matt: [00:29:27] Yeah. That makes sense. is there, this is gonna be kind of an out there question, but it's, I'm super curious. Is there a future, where, the data works with. Partners that have deployed devices in the field where you are using your capability to stitch together under utilized resources to essentially allow third parties to deploy multitenant workloads out in the field.
[00:29:51] Sarah: [00:29:51] That's a good question. And I don't.
[00:29:54] Matt: [00:29:54] edge cloud
[00:29:54]Sarah: [00:29:54] no. Right. Like it's the old, we used to have this little concept at the university [00:30:00] about how you had all these computers sitting in computer labs and when they weren't being used, they could be used for other workloads.
[00:30:05] Matt: [00:30:05] Excellent. Well, you have Bitcoin miners to figure that out with the plugin Chrome
[00:30:08] Sarah: [00:30:08] Yeah. Yeah. So I don't know. I can't say that.
[00:30:11] Yes. I think that'll happen. I can eat, but having seen it, that's something people figure out how to do. I wouldn't surprise me if that was a path
[00:30:18] Matt: [00:30:18] Yeah. And I, you know, I don't yet know what the business model would be, but I can imagine a situation where a city says, look, we want to deploy a bunch of edge devices for our own use and we want to pay for them by leasing capacity out. Yeah. I mean,
[00:30:31] Sarah: [00:30:31] Yeah, it's an interesting concept. It really is. On the other hand, you know, we, and we definitely courage people that when you're selecting hardware and whatnot, think about it from a future perspective that don't just buy the hardware that can compensate, you know, is enough to run the application you want to run today or the workload you want to run, but make sure that it also can accommodate the things you want to do in the future.
[00:30:50] Because what we find is that. For, and this gets to people having extra capacity is that once customers start deploying and seeing the value, like the really realizing the value of the [00:31:00] data that they're gathering and the benefits they're getting from it pretty quickly, they start having other ideas of other apps they'd like to run other types of sensors.
[00:31:07] They'd like to put it in to collect additional information. You know, they start to see the other ways that they can and gain efficiency. So if. You're using boxes that are big enough to, you know, that have the extra capacity to be able to do that. It's really easy to just deploy another app in a container or a VM or whatever it is, and start to realize that value.
[00:31:26]Matt: [00:31:26] can you tell me about any interesting use cases that you're actually running in the field with partners that, you know, maybe give our audience a sense of like how this applies in the real
[00:31:38] Sarah: [00:31:38] So my favorite example is the wind turbines because. I'm fascinated by wind turbines and the size of them and the thought of how I, the team manages wind turbines. So we work with, a company that's one of the biggest wind farm operators in the country. And they find that. One is extremely expensive.
[00:31:58] Anytime they need to roll out a [00:32:00] truck to fix a wind turbine. Right? I mean, wind turbines are like 300 feet in the air. it's a massive undertaking. And in the middle of nowhere, absolutely. And all the mechanics for those wind turbines are up at the top. Right. They're not nicely at the bottom.
[00:32:12] They're up at the top. And so if something breaks or is banging around or something of that sort on the inside of those wind turbines, they generally don't know about it until the wind turbine breaks. And at the point, the wind turbine breaks, it is extremely expensive to go out there and fix it. So we have a customer and they're doing other use cases today, but the cup with the use case they started with was pretty simple and brilliant where they simply just wanted a microphone.
[00:32:39] To be installed inside. So for them it could cause the noises, right. They simply wanted a microphone that could be installed in inside the top of each wind turbine. So they could catch noises. That didn't sound quite right. So.
[00:32:54] Matt: [00:32:54] catching those with humans or with
[00:32:55] Sarah: [00:32:55] There are machine learning. Right. But suddenly there's like a, there's a banging, there's a claim.
[00:32:59] There's something [00:33:00] that isn't right. And so now they can be a little, what it allows them to do is one, they can fix a problem before the wind turbine, quits operating entirely, and then they lose the revenue from that not functioning. But the other piece of that is that, I totally lost my train of thought.
[00:33:13] I'm so sorry.
[00:33:14] Matt: [00:33:14] The wind turbine, the microphones.
[00:33:16] Sarah: [00:33:16] so they can catch it before it breaks, but they also now can be smarter about. When they need to do maintenance across multiple ones. So I know that this one turbine over here has a weird clanking. This wind turbine over here might be making another noise. That's not quite right.
[00:33:31] I wouldn't have known about either one of those until they broke, but now I know that there's two. So next week I can send out, you know, John and the truck and he can go fix boat them. At the same time, I saved myself. You know, they told us it cost them about a hundred thousand dollars every time they have to send.
[00:33:47] A truck out and a tech out it's extremely expensive. So now they know that there's something wrong inside two wind turbines that are still functioning, but they're not quite up to snuff. I can send one personnel if we can take care of both of them at once we save that
[00:34:00] [00:33:59] Matt: [00:33:59] half move, half the
[00:34:01] Sarah: [00:34:01] Yeah. And the wind turbine, they don't have it go fully down where they're not getting
[00:34:04] Matt: [00:34:04] Right. So there's a predictive maintenance component to this one. It also seems like it'd be relatively straightforward assuming they put, devices in the turbines that are, have sufficient excess capacity, but they could add additional sensors, temperature,
[00:34:18] Sarah: [00:34:18] And they have done that. Yeah. Yeah. That's exactly. and that's exactly what they did is that once they, once that was installed, right, then it's just adding more sensors, deploying more applications, and now they can capture more people. So they're.
[00:34:30] Matt: [00:34:30] How are these wind turbines connected back to anything?
[00:34:34] Sarah: [00:34:34] They are connected locally on the farm too. so, so for this instance, they're not using the cloud. They've got sort of local wiring that goes and connects them to, you could call it like a small, very small remote data center. That's actually located on the wind farm itself.
[00:34:49] Matt: [00:34:49] Is it like cat sex or is it fiber?
[00:34:52] Sarah: [00:34:52] don't know that it's fiber
[00:34:54] Matt: [00:34:54] Is it wireless? It's but it's wired.
[00:34:55] Sarah: [00:34:55] it's wired.
[00:34:56] Yeah. Yeah,
[00:34:56] Matt: [00:34:56] Okay. Interesting. Yeah. Yeah. It's interesting. You [00:35:00] know, you, you talked to the folks in like the private LTE, private 5g, and you know, there's a lot of proposals that could also make it easier. Cause you know, match. It's not too easy to run cable, you know, outside in the dirt
[00:35:13] Sarah: [00:35:13] Oh,
[00:35:13] Matt: [00:35:13] farms.
[00:35:14] Sarah: [00:35:14] yeah. It's a, it's an it's and that's why I think the wind farm example is so interesting because to me that is something that they're out in the weather it's. the blades on those things are gigantic. So you think about the force of those moving around, how, you know, secure, you have to make the device when you install it.
[00:35:34] Like it's, there's a lot of elements to it. And we were able to send a couple members of our team out to join some of the onsite techs to see the install process. And they had to go up in the bucket, have climb a ladder to the top and they had to climb a ladder. I mean, it was a huge process, lots of security stuff.
[00:35:53] Matt: [00:35:53] Do you have a sense of like how much money this company is projecting? It will save them over some period of time [00:36:00] just to kind of scale because I mean, a hundred thousand to 50,000 is a big number, but is it, you know, do they fix one turbine every six months or is it like one goes down a day.
[00:36:10] Sarah: [00:36:10] No, it's not it's I don't have the numbers on that. And I wish that I
[00:36:13] Matt: [00:36:13] Okay. But it's a lot of
[00:36:15] Sarah: [00:36:15] is a lot of it is a lot of money for them and it's enough for them that they started with a handful of turbines. They now are on a path to continue. And they've, they're in the process of expanding, on a regular, they have a regular schedule as they're expanding to more turbines.
[00:36:28] And as I said, they've gone back to the initial turbines. They've added more sensors, they've added more use cases, and those are being expanded as well.
[00:36:35] Matt: [00:36:35] well, and the smart turbine manufacturer will recognize that for like, You know, one, one thousands of the price of a wind turbine. They could add a project Eve box and a bunch of sensors. And then, yeah, that's
[00:36:49] Sarah: [00:36:49] Yeah, and it's a great, it's a great example too, of OT and it working together. Right. But it has the expertise on how to make these, do this installation and have it be secure and deal with all the networking and stuff. But [00:37:00] OTZ experts on how these wind turbines have to run and what they need to be doing to be efficient.
[00:37:06] Matt: [00:37:06] Now w what are some of the pitfalls that you're seeing in people doing, edge deployments? And what advice would you have, to people that are coming at this fresh?
[00:37:15] Sarah: [00:37:15] in terms of pitfalls one, and this, I guess doesn't apply to people that are coming up. I'll make us, it still applies to people that are coming out fresh. I think a lot of people that went in early with installations installed point solutions that solve for a specific use case. Right. And that's great, but then they add another use case.
[00:37:31] They ended another solution. And now I've got two places I have to go in and manage. I saw a stat from gardener a while ago that said something like 85% of installations. This was what. They had done was installed the point solutions that were incompatible with each other. So that doesn't scale, right.
[00:37:46] Just from a people perspective, that's not scalable. So I think that's one of the pitfalls is, you know, really take a good look at what you're trying to do.
[00:37:54] Matt: [00:37:54] Not building for scale through automation and connectivity and
[00:37:57] Sarah: [00:37:57] Actually write one, one, look for something that's [00:38:00] broad enough that it can accommodate multiple, you know, you're doing a solution that can accommodate across your use cases today, but also your use cases tomorrow.
[00:38:07] Right? So that you're not falling into that siloed model, making sure you're thinking about it for scale. There's a lot of projects. That are out there that are running in labs that are running in small deployments, that organizations that are stuck trying to figure out how do I get this across a thousand wind turbines?
[00:38:22] Or how do I get this across, you know, 40 factories when each of these factories are, you know, acres and acres in size. So, so really thinking about the scale part of it, that making sure that what you're doing, that's working in the lab. If it's heavily manual, that's not going to scale. Right. So, so what can you put in place to help you?
[00:38:42]You know, make that easier for you to manage. And then the other piece that I think is just a security, cause it's a new way of thinking about it. Yeah. It doesn't have a perimeter. Right. So what can you do to make sure that you're using solutions that are as secure as possible?
[00:38:57] How are you know, Making sure that the [00:39:00] device is secure. we take, we use the TPM chips on devices so that you can guarantee that the device you're talking to is the actual device. We do basic things, layer
[00:39:09] Matt: [00:39:09] What does TPM stand for? People might not know what that is. What is it? What is the TPM chip?
[00:39:14] Sarah: [00:39:14] Trusted platform module. All
[00:39:15] Matt: [00:39:15] Okay. All right. So, so, okay. so for those of our listeners that don't know what TPM is. Can you tell us a little bit about
[00:39:23] Sarah: [00:39:23] So TPM is trusted platform module, and it's something that you actually can get in the chips of a lot of devices that are coming out now. So it's an added way of being sure that the device you're working with is actually the device. You think it is.
[00:39:37] Matt: [00:39:37] That's like, you know, the iPhones that were stolen, can't be used by somebody
[00:39:40] Sarah: [00:39:40] Exactly. Exactly. and so that's registered, is it either registers that when the device calls in yep.
[00:39:46] So you know exactly what it is. And then there's other things like, you know, these devices get installed and they have, you know, the default. Administrator login and password. And a lot of times that doesn't get changed. You know, we take that off the box. There's no logging into that [00:40:00] box.
[00:40:00] If you go directly to it, you can only access it through the cloud. Right? There's no way that if somebody, even if they get physical access to that box, that they can do anything to it, they can't go to the box login and suddenly activate a port. Right? All the ports are turned on and off remotely. So even if somebody physically got access to the box and they plug something into a USB.
[00:40:18] A USB port that's on the box. It's not going to do anything because it's been deactivated, at the controller level. Right. So, so, so that's the other piece of it, is that, just thinking about security differently, because it's not the data center, right? These are very extreme locations.
[00:40:34] Matt: [00:40:34] Yeah, you don't have cages and, you know, cameras and security. Yeah. It's like, yeah. Yeah. so, you know, you mentioned that you been in this edge world for two years, approximately. And, I'm interested cause I think I came into this kind of fresh, maybe three years ago. So not that much longer than you.
[00:40:55]and a lot has changed. It was very different world two years ago. [00:41:00] What to you has been the most meaningful change that you've seen?
[00:41:04]Sarah: [00:41:04] I will tell you, the thing I've enjoyed seeing the most is I have enjoyed seeing things actually come to fruition for our customers that two years ago, we were talking a lot about what was possible and there were right. And there were a lot
[00:41:24] Matt: [00:41:24] any early stage marketer knows how to do
[00:41:26] Sarah: [00:41:26] Right. Like, we were talking a lot about what was possible.
[00:41:30] There was a vision, you know, we could do some stuff, but we weren't fully. I don't think anybody yet had a real vision of how much this is going to make. I mean, there's so many possibilities right now. So when you look at like COVID and how much that's changed things, and now that companies are looking at relying on edge computing, not just because they need to manufacture more PPE and they need, so they have to, you know, it just is something they can do to drastically increase efficiency.
[00:41:58] But how can I monitor [00:42:00] workspaces now to make sure that. People are not too close to each other, and there's not too many people in a space. And you know, if I'm a somebody who's in the culinary world, how can I use edge to create a touch free kitchen or a kitchen that is touch-free as possible.
[00:42:14] Right. So I think over the last couple of years, it went from being a lot of. Talking to really seeing things coming to fruition. And no, we're only on the cusp of that. And it's only going to increase, but to be able to see like, like with our wind farm customers, something as simple as a microphone, And what a difference that could make to their business.
[00:42:34] And then all of the use cases that I can't even think of yet. I know that in a year we could talk about and be like, wow, this is so cool. This company now is doing it to do this. Right. I think for me seeing it start to actually come to see customers using it, taking advantage of it, seeing that it's not just talk, that it's bringing a real value to these businesses, to me is super exciting.
[00:43:00] [00:42:59] Matt: [00:42:59] Yeah, well, in a related question, looking forward. So, you know, if you look at all the things that need to happen in order for this to become. Commonplace, let's say, and I'll define that vaguely, because you'll see where I'm going with this. but we kinda have a sense what that is, where it's it's, you know, it's cross that Earl from early adopters into the, the majority, were common, your typical enterprises that maybe aren't super innovative or.
[00:43:28] Recognizing that there are proven toolkits that they can do to improve their business. And there's good payback on it because you know, other people have taken the arrows in the back. what do you see from where we are today? The big dominoes that need to topple. Like if you go out and nudge a couple of the dominoes that need to topple, like which ones would you push on to make all of this accelerate?
[00:43:51] Sarah: [00:43:51] That is such a great question. I think. [00:44:00] I think I'd help people solve the scale problem, because I think it's straightforward for people to see the value in their lab. But I think the, I think what is holding people back and there's some good data I've seen on this too, in terms of the percentage of projects that never get out of the, get out of the lab, right.
[00:44:20] Is that real world? How do we make it real world for people? How do we make
[00:44:24]Matt: [00:44:24] your hypothesis is one of the big things is preventing. kind of one off projects you get out of the lab is that it's too difficult to
[00:44:31] Sarah: [00:44:31] Yeah, you can't. I think it's great for six devices. It's great for a dozen devices. How, you know, edge computing is something that's vastly distributed. How do I manage, how do I manage this great workload that I'm running? That's giving me business value across. You know, 2000 wellheads. How do I,
[00:44:53] Matt: [00:44:53] so, so outside of, the awesomeness of ZEDEDA that helps people scale, what other things need to be in place [00:45:00] to help scale.
[00:45:01] Sarah: [00:45:01] so I think that, so one, I think this gets back to the open foundation because I think you have to have the flexibility to allow you to go with any type of hardware. I think you've because of cost.
[00:45:16] Matt: [00:45:16] devices that have either built in with an open API and the standard security
[00:45:21] Sarah: [00:45:21] idea of being that is devices. If you think about it, that I've gone out and I've installed 500 devices today of a certain type. Right. And I know that. In six months, those devices might be cheaper because that tends to be how hardware it goes. Right. And, or another device comes along.
[00:45:38] That's cheaper, but because I chose device, number one, I'm now locked into that and I can't afford that anymore. Budget goes away. I don't have the flexibility to go with the cheaper option. Right. So I think also going back to that open foundation that gives people the ability to con accomplish their workloads.
[00:45:54] They need to run, but to do it in a flexible manner. So that they can make the best choices [00:46:00] for their business, according to what their budget is, according to their needs, all of that at once. I think that's a big, I think building that flexibility in is really important. You know, I can buy a really cheap Android phone or I can buy a really expensive Android phone.
[00:46:14]I get a lot of the same benefits either way. I have that choice. Right. And I think that's important.
[00:46:23]Matt: [00:46:23] you know, I've always thought about the power of open source to be, you know, the platform upon which we all build our differentiation. And it's like all the stupid stuff that we don't want to differentiate, that we can't differentiate around the commodity stuff, the heavy lifting that nobody actually gets any benefit from just doing themselves.
[00:46:37] And they certainly get time to market and cost benefits by sharing the work. But there's another benefit that you just described, and that is in terms of getting. the monetary flows in terms of getting the P the investments required because you have to buy equipment, you have to build, you know, Servers and put cable in the ground and deploy radios and deploy, [00:47:00] you know, edge devices and all these things.
[00:47:02]and so by having an open standard that we can operate around, you've got lots of device manufacturers really suddenly say, well, this is great by adopting this open standard. Let's just say, even in this case, I now can market to anybody that works with Eve, not just people that I've been able to sell myself. I'm on entire end to end system. So now suddenly I have this big market that's opened to me that wouldn't have been open to me with RTA solution that encourages more manufacturers to invest in that, which means lots of choices for customers, which makes customers feel better about making a purchase decision and allows them to customize a purchase decision.
[00:47:34] But also on the other side, it encourages lots of companies that are adding value that make the entire system more value. And so you get lots of software developers like Zededa and. Other companies that build complimentary products is even probably subsidy to competitors. but it creates this richness that a mature market, it really needs.
[00:47:51] And I'd never really thought about the economic flows outside of the, just save me money and building something that I can build my business on. But that the fact that it accelerates investment [00:48:00] is really a really
[00:48:01] Sarah: [00:48:01] I think that's true. I think that's true. And I think it also, then you have all this goodness that's created and that the manufacturers now are buying into the open source theory and the software developers are contributing to it. And that then also creates this really rich community that the customers can rely on in terms of dealing with problems and figuring out better ways of doing things.
[00:48:20] Matt: [00:48:20] That's awesome. That's awesome. So, Sarah, thank you very much for joining
[00:48:25] Sarah: [00:48:25] welcome. Thanks for having me. This was super
[00:48:27] Matt: [00:48:27] wisdom, and, how can people find you
[00:48:30] Sarah: [00:48:30] So we're as the data.com.
[00:48:32] Matt: [00:48:32] Okay. And what if they want to reach out to you personally? Is there some Twitter feed or something that they
[00:48:36] Sarah: [00:48:36] Yes. And my Twitter feed, my handle is completely nonsensical, but they can find me at Tober toad, which is T O E B E R T O E D. I believe they can search. They can search for my name on Twitter. They'll find
[00:48:51] Matt: [00:48:51] And I'm going to let them ask you the derivation of that.
[00:48:55] Sarah: [00:48:55] There's a good story, but it's for another
[00:48:57] Matt: [00:48:57] Okay. another time. Alright,
[00:48:59] Sarah: [00:48:59] Yeah, that was [00:49:00] fun. I appreciate you guys, including me