5G technology is revolutionizing enterprise computing by enhancing data movement and connectivity. In this episode, Bill sits down with Jim Brisimitzis, Founder and General Partner at 5G Open Innovation Lab, to explore his career from Nortel to Microsoft and the transformative potential of 5G technology. Jim discusses the evolution of private 5G networks, enterprise use cases, and the critical role of connectivity in driving innovation.
5G technology is revolutionizing enterprise computing by enhancing data movement and connectivity. In this episode, Bill sits down with Jim Brisimitzis, Founder and General Partner at 5G Open Innovation Lab, to explore his career from Nortel to Microsoft and the transformative potential of 5G technology. Jim discusses the evolution of private 5G networks, enterprise use cases, and the critical role of connectivity in driving innovation.
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“My belief is this moment of AI, the evolution of 5G, the emergence of private networks, and edge as opportunities is truly a transformation point for the industry.”
“The network is evolutionary, but the use cases on the backend of those networks that they're now enabled is revolutionary.”
“I've seen these major waves of technology evolutions that got me really excited about 5G and Edge.”
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Timestamps:
(02:00) Jim’s career journey
(05:48) What is the 5G Open Innovation Lab?
(19:41) Private 5G vs. Wi-Fi in Enterprises
(25:02) The private 5G network: Evolutionary or revolutionary?
(31:42) Automation and workforce resistance
(34:30) Addressing the silver tsunami
(37:02) The role of technology in knowledge transfer
(40:26) Jim’s key lessons learned
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Over the Edge is brought to you by Dell Technologies to unlock the potential of your infrastructure with edge solutions. From hardware and software to data and operations, across your entire multi-cloud environment, we’re here to help you simplify your edge so you can generate more value. Learn more by visiting dell.com/edge for more information or click on the link in the show notes.
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Over the Edge is hosted by Bill Pfeifer, and was created by Matt Trifiro and Ian Faison. Executive producers are Matt Trifiro, Ian Faison, Jon Libbey and Kyle Rusca. The show producer is Erin Stenhouse. The audio engineer is Brian Thomas. Additional production support from Elisabeth Plutko.
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Edge Solutions | Dell Technologies
[00:00:00] Narrator 1: Hello and welcome to Over the Edge. This episode features an interview between Bill Pfeiffer and Jim Brisimitzis, founder and general partner at 5G Open Innovation Lab. Jim has an extensive background with over 24 years of experience, having worked with tech giants such as Nortel Networks, PeopleSoft, and Microsoft.
He has been at the forefront of multiple ways of technology evolution, and today, he's He leads efforts to accelerate the adoption and impact of 5G technologies. In this conversation, he and Bill dive into the transformative potential of private 5G networks, in enterprises and the critical role of technology, in addressing the evolving challenges and opportunities.
But before we get into it, here's a brief word from our sponsor.
[00:00:53] Narrator 2: Over the Edge is brought to you by Dell Technologies to unlock the potential of your infrastructure with Edge solutions. From hardware and software to data and operations, across your entire multi cloud environment, we're here to help you simplify your Edge so that you can generate more value.
Learn more by visiting dell. com slash edge for more information or click on the link in the show notes.
[00:01:16] Narrator 1: And now please enjoy this interview between Bill Pfeiffer and Jim Brisimitzis, founder and general partner at 5G Open Innovation Lab.
[00:01:26] Bill Pfeifer: Jim, thanks so much for joining us today. I know moving data. is just a huge part of every edge compute initiative.
And that's been so much of what you've been working on. So I can't wait to have this conversation. Really glad, really glad you could make the time to talk to us today.
[00:01:43] Jim Brismitzis: Thank you for having me, Bill. I appreciate this opportunity and very much looking forward to our conversation.
[00:01:48] Bill Pfeifer: Yeah, it should be fun. So, let's start with a little bit of background.
We'll go way back. How did you get started in technology?
[00:01:57] Jim Brismitzis: Yeah, so I, uh, Toronto native, born and raised in Toronto and right straight out of university. I joined, um, one of Canada's largest at the time, largest tech company called Nortel Networks, if you remember those days. Oh yeah. The time that I joined Nortel Networks, 30 percent of the Toronto Stock Exchange valuation was based in Nortel.
So basically no matter how the TSX did, it was Nortel's day or not day. So I kind of stepped into that world and that was in the world where. 3G was prevalent and there was rumblings of 4G LTE and Nortel was making some plays, had a significant run of acquisitions and then unfortunately, you know, the rest is history.
From there I joined a, I got recruited away by a company called PeopleSoft, which at the time was one of the leading providers of HR, ERP solutions and financials. And so I kind of stayed in that enterprise track since my time at Nortel and then eventually moved into PeopleSoft and. Was part of the hostile acquisition attempt by Oracle.
Eventually, Oracle did succeed, and PeopleSoft joined Oracle as an acquisition. And then I got a recruiting call from Microsoft. So my wife and I moved to Seattle in 2005. And I've always been in enterprise technology, watching many different waves of technology change happen. So Microsoft, in my mind, had always been sort of in the cloud, but the move from Office on prem to Office 365 and Windows Server on prem to Azure, And all the services that then came with Azure is really a big testament of Microsoft's transformation.
So, I've seen these major waves of technology evolutions that got me really excited about 5G and Edge. It's, you know, it's a fundamentally a different time today for the telecommunications industry. And it's different not just from a communication standpoint, but it's different because the networks that are being designed and deployed today And the rise of interest in AI, edge computing, and the enterprise really sets up a perfect storm of opportunity, which was the reason why I decided to launch the 5G Open Innovation Lab and create a software ecosystem around it.
[00:04:01] Bill Pfeifer: Wow. There's, I just want to dig into each one of those things, right? Nor tell when it was hot. That's just the stories that have come out of. That type of thing are just incredible. And then you just watch everything melt and stuff. And then PeopleSoft, like the history of that and how it became what it is.
And, and Microsoft is just constantly reinventing. They're doing an incredible job. I mean, for, they started out with windows and that's what they did and that's all they were. And then they made office. Yay. It's a whole new world. And now they're in everything. It's crazy. We're not here to talk about them.
We're here to talk about you and the 5G Open Innovation Month. So.
[00:04:43] Jim Brismitzis: Thank you.
[00:04:44] Bill Pfeifer: Someday we'll have a conversation more about the history of things. It's really
[00:04:48] Jim Brismitzis: fascinating when you get to look back. Um, it is really, truly fascinating to see how those moves in the market fundamentally shifted, you know, the, the entire landscape of, of, of technology.
But you're right. That's, that's for another day. Let's weave some of that context into our conversation today. I think it'll be really insightful as we kind of talk about the core topic.
[00:05:08] Bill Pfeifer: It informs so much of what you do today. Or just having seen those massive shifts. And now, yeah, I mean, we're moving so much into the edge and moving data and 5G is just critical to that.
So you founded the 5G Open Innovation Lab. Can you tell us what that is and why? Why you decided to go from this history of giant companies that are changing the world to now you're going to found your own incubation company?
[00:05:37] Jim Brismitzis: Yeah, so when you're at companies the size of Microsoft, you tend to, you know, move around and try different roles.
And from my standpoint, you know, I had five different roles while at Microsoft. The very last role was relaunching its developer relation efforts. Microsoft had always been strong in developer relations. In fact, it was because of its efforts in developer relations that Windows as a franchise was so successful.
And we took all those learnings and applied it to Windows Server and the entire enterprise suite of products that we had developed from DevTools to SQL Server and others. And we took that same developer motion and applied it to Office. At the time that I joined it, it was called Developer Platform Evangelism.
For anyone who's listening from Microsoft, that's a throwback from, from history. But when they transitioned from on prem products, Windows Server and the like, To cloud, not only was the product different, but the way in which developers engaged was different. This was, here's some credits to Azure and a whole suite of different services that you can go build from and knock yourself out.
And it's not that easy, right? Because at the time AWS was, was quite dominant. They had developed their cloud platform so early on and enticed so many developers, primarily in the startup ecosystem. That to get that same startup developer or developer familiar with AWS to then go and try to replicate and build applications on Azure was bigger than just giving them credits to the Azure platform.
You really had to engage and kind of start from scratch on, on educating these developers on how to use the different services because the cloud, you know, the clouds were very different between AWS and Azure. So I, I was part of the team that. Had to reintroduce Microsoft and the Azure cloud platform to the startup ecosystem.
This is dating back to 20, 2013, 2014 at a time when Azure was You know, really starting to grow and scale its, its level of services. So that, that experience, you know, really sort of taught me, but exposed me to what it meant to be relevant to the developer ecosystem and what, what is important to, to developers, you know, and some of it is technology.
And some of it's actually just business. It's really about how easy it is to develop on your platform. What resources do I have to reach this ecosystem you call Microsoft? I mean, AWS today, and so does Google and Microsoft. So I've. Have full go to market teams. So as startups are scaling their usage of those cloud platforms, there's different tiers of go to market support that those ISVs, startups, can expect to, you know, to get support from those cloud vendors on.
The other experience that I had, some experience of Microsoft that I really enjoyed was the early days of the Microsoft Ventures world, now known as M12. And that was interesting, not just from the investment standpoint, we started the Microsoft Ventures program as a way to get closer to the startup ecosystem and as a way to, you know, get access to essentially deals, but get early access into promising technology startups.
Startups that not only would have, you know, the potential for healthy returns off the investor investment. But. Startups that were really building transformative technologies that, you know, could be value additive to the Azure platform.
[00:08:52] Bill Pfeifer: That makes sense. Yeah. Just kind of like a technology pipeline.
[00:08:56] Jim Brismitzis: Absolutely. Neat. Yeah, absolutely. And then the, the previous experience to that was I was, I was the P& L owner for all server products sold through the OEM channel. And so. While I didn't, you know, influence or control engineering in any respects, it was, you know, just the channel guy for OEM. I thought, well, maybe there was a really interesting way to pre package this hypervisor so that we can get the downstream resellers to essentially create what I called at the time, VM vending machines, which was essentially pre configured Hyper V servers with management that they could essentially just drop into a client's office, data center, data room, what have you, and essentially be ready to go with, with a virtualization.
One thing led to another, and we went from, you know, wouldn't it be cool to just, you know, create a, uh, Hyper V, VM vending machine SKU that the OEMs could easily just sell into the SMB market, into a product strategy that was more hyper converged. And one of our pilot customers at the time was the National Bank of Abu Dhabi, where we essentially architected and pitched and, and they supported and actually invested in.
Building a modularized data center. So that early effort essentially, you know, became early learnings for what is now known as the Azure Stack Edge, which is sort of a plug and play ready to go server fabric. So there again, you know, you're just tackling the ease and usability of configuration and most CIOs are really struggling with trying to make best of breed integrations happen between different vendors.
We wanted to address that. So when you pull all those three experiences together, having been at Microsoft for about 13 and a half years. Approaching my 14th year, I started to look around and see and look out for developer opportunities where there was an outsized opportunity, but relatively nascent developer engagement.
And I happened to be watching a commercial, but it was all about the promise of how great 5G was going to be. And again, from my developer relations experience, there was a lot of chatter at the time and still has been some chatter about how the telcos were largely left out. Of that opportunity space.
You know, they've spent hundreds of millions of dollars collectively, billions of dollars worldwide to build out these four GLT networks, yet all the value outside of the connectivity, all of the value is captured by the hyperscalers, the mobile app developers, the SAS players, the ISVs. So all, all of the value is sort of on top of the device and the device itself.
But none of that of real significance really transferred into the telcos because they were providing just the connectivity, the SIM cards. And
[00:11:33] Bill Pfeifer: while that was And they're kind of more and more commoditized. So their prices are getting squeezed, even while everybody depends on them giving better and better service.
[00:11:40] Jim Brismitzis: Yes, totally. So I'm like, well, well, that's really interesting. That's really interesting. I wonder if, you know, crazy idea. I wonder if there was a way for developers to get closer to the network. Could they position the network to create additional value? And early in my mind, you know, I had seen from my hyper converged days that edge computing was going to be important because, and we'll get into the crux of this today, there is exabytes worth of data out there that enterprises can use and harness as a differentiation to their operations.
It's all about every industry, every enterprise is a data enterprise. I don't, I don't care what industry you're in or what products or services you develop or sell. At the end of the day, you're a data business. That's what we've become. So I thought, well, who's got the best network in the world for attaching to devices that would be consuming and using some of this data?
As much as I love the hyperscale world, in any given country, there, you know, the incumbent telco or telcos potentially have more points of presence. Oh yeah. Then really any hyperscaler here in the United States alone. And so I thought, well, that's really interesting. I mean, the edge is sort of an incumbent opportunity for the carrier.
So that could be one, you know, developer opportunity is, is, is the edge. Why move all that data when you can provide some compute capabilities on the network to compute that data. Nearby in that source. Right. And the finer point actually comes to light here in the last year and a half. If you, you are following the rise of AI now.
Gen ai. Well, that's a lot of data that's going to be queried inference.
[00:13:19] Bill Pfeifer: Mm-Hmm.
[00:13:19] Jim Brismitzis: learned on the edge. And a lot of
[00:13:21] Bill Pfeifer: it's really big.
[00:13:22] Jim Brismitzis: A lot of It's really big. Yeah. There was, there was a report that Erickson had published, I believe it was late last year. It's their mobility report for 2023 mm-Hmm. . And they had forecasted that.
Let's say in 2023, I believe it is the timeline. The average mobile subscriber uses about 20 to 23 gigabytes of data per month. By 2030, in the next seven years, their forecast is that that could grow as high as 56 gigabytes worth of data. So almost two times as much data.
[00:13:53] Bill Pfeifer: I'd be interested in seeing the relative size of those flows though.
You know, because like an Uber connection, I'm sending my location. So that's the, that's the thing, Bill. But now it's going to be like full on video streams and things like that, which is a whole different ballgame.
[00:14:07] Jim Brismitzis: Right. So, um, so then I was thinking, and I'm no expert in this, but I was thinking to myself, there's gotta be an accelerant to that fire.
And in my, my mind, logically, there's a role for AI in that. And so I thought, well, shoot, this is a really cool opportunity. This is back in 2018. I started, I started thinking about the idea of, of building the 5G Open Innovation Lab. So, so that kind of started. So when you take a big step back, you kind of see this industry going through a transformation.
Mind you, my mindset was watching Microsoft go through its transformation. I thought, well, shoot, if Microsoft can steer a ship that's that big in transition into the cloud, right? What, what's There, there's a whole there, I'm an internal optimist, so there's a whole amount of upside in my opinion for the carriers.
What they really need is exposure, real developer exposure in real enterprise exposure. Not to say that they don't have that, but you know, from the lens of a, of a cloud mindset, that's a new world to them.
[00:15:02] Bill Pfeifer: Yeah.
[00:15:02] Jim Brismitzis: And so I thought we need to build an innovation lab and an applied innovation lab that wasn't a startup petting zoo or an accelerator or an incubator.
We deal in that C to series C range. And, and really in the spirit of exposing the telecommunications industry to the significant opportunity that's being developed out of the software ecosystem in the opportunity space for 5G, which is all enterprise, not consumer. And most, most consumers have said not interested.
So there hasn't been a significant uplift in the industry because of 5G in the mobility world. There has been significant opportunities in fixed wireless access and some other services, but in the core mobility space. ARPU has been generally really relatively flat. And the industry has been There's not really
[00:15:47] Bill Pfeifer: a killer app that differentiates it.
I have to have a 5G phone and I have to have a 5G connection all the time because I can't do a thing. On 4G it slows down a little bit, but, you know, okay.
[00:15:57] Jim Brismitzis: Exactly. Whatever. My point, exactly. So, but the enterprise has a tremendous amount of opportunity in the 5G world. So I know the enterprise quite well from my experience and I thought this would be.
This would be really, really good. And that's that world that I wanted to share with them. Going back to my statement earlier about how the carriers felt then. And I think still do feel today, largely left out of that opportunity space in the 4GLT world. Well, what did they, what were they left out of there?
They were left out of the application stack. They just didn't have a role in that. But, you know,
[00:16:28] Bill Pfeifer: you were talking about. Microsoft early on was, was providing a platform with Azure. That's what it was like first built for, right? But they did that with Windows too. You know, that's what they, that's where they came from.
And so equivalently, the carriers have been, originally they provided phone service. And 4G was phone service plus data and 5G is enterprise. Wait, that's a whole different group of customers and a different way of selling and a different way of using. And it's not consumer. It's, it's taken them a minute to adapt.
They missed the 4G thing. Because that's all of a sudden about the developer market and the apps, and it's a different group of people to sell to. And so, yeah, I can see how they would miss it, even though, you know, what we need with the edge is distributed data centers, and the carriers have that, and connectivity, and the carriers have that.
But selling to those people in a way that, that makes sense is a little bit of, well, is a big difference. I can see that
[00:17:33] Jim Brismitzis: it is, and it's not a world that they're familiar with. And I, and I don't mean that in any way to suggest anything negative or insult anyone, but it's, it's a totally different way, just as, you know, let's, let's be honest, there was, you know, Microsoft as big as it is, Amazon, as big as it is, Apple, as big as it is when you're that big, you've got some bravado, right?
You kind of think, you know, everything. And then you step into new areas and you realize maybe I didn't. Maybe there's a little bit of humbling here where I can kind of learn how the game gets played.
[00:18:01] Bill Pfeifer: There are pivots that happen.
[00:18:02] Jim Brismitzis: Look, all the carriers combined who connect 6 billion devices daily, 6 billion plus devices according to the GSMA, they generate just shy of 1.
4 trillion dollars a year of revenue. That's all of them. If you compare that to what Gartner says is spent by enterprises, that's 4. 6 to 4. 7 trillion dollars a year in IT spend, right?
[00:18:25] Bill Pfeifer: There's a lot of potential for growth, for sure, and a lot of potential to miss that market and someone else to step in and cash out, just like, just like happened with 4G.
So, back to the 5G side, as an enterprise play, There's, there is a major play for 5G, but I've been hearing that forever. When 5G was first coming up, they said, oh, it's gonna be private 5G everywhere. But why private 5G instead of public 5G? And why 5G instead of wifi? Wifi is cheap and easy and everyone understands it, and 5G is more expensive and more complex and you know, there's, there's the whole tuning thing and all that.
So why. Private 5G instead of just carpet bombing with Wi Fi access points.
[00:19:12] Jim Brismitzis: Back in 2012, so we're up installing the radios starting around noon yesterday and wrapping up around 3 a. m. this morning. And while up in every pole, there were two Wi Fi access points. The first round of Wi Fi access points were these domes.
Were installed in 2012 and we uncovered, thanks to the internet, everything stays on the internet, history is on there. We uncovered that this particular customer had spent well over 765, 000 installing these access points. We had installed the network on five pools. I believe that there was, I don't know, 10, maybe 12, 15 of these access points to provide Wi Fi coverage in a yard.
Fairly big one. That didn't work. Six years later, they ended up in 2018 installing another set of access points, Wi Fi access points, and we weren't able to uncover how much they spent there, but let's just say it was, you know, 200, 000, 300, 000. Again, multiple of these access points across multiple poles, and I can speak from experience.
To get up 125 feet to install any radio is, you know, it's an hour to two hours. Yeah, I mean, we, yep. So we, we took both of those access points down from the poles that were, we were installing the private 5G network. We're installing radios that are rather, you know, inexpensive. They're 6, 000 a piece. And yet they will provide about a two mile radius of connectivity in that area.
So there's a fit for where wifi makes a lot of sense. And then there's a fit where it doesn't make sense, fiscally, and just from a coverage standpoint, one of my other clients, they're in the manufacturing space, and they had a yard that was about 60 to 70 acres for, you know, for their sake, they went in and did the due diligence, what it would have cost to go cover that in Wi Fi.
And remember, Wi Fi has a lot of pluses. You have a huge device ecosystem that just works on Wi Fi. It's easy to manage, enterprise to know it all. It's cheap and everybody knows it. It was 3 million to cover 60 acres. They ended up going with a private, I think it was for GLT solution, and ended up spending less than 200, 000 to provide far superior coverage.
So, you know, there's the debate around is private cellular going to happen to the enterprise? In my opinion, it's not a debate, it's happening. There's been an impetus mismatch because you've got a number of players in the ecosystem who think that this is going to be a big gold rush, right? That enterprises are just going to open their theoretical wallets and start spending big on these things and That hasn't played out.
Many cases, enterprises see cellular as the step up right from wifi, but they don't, they don't see it as, you know, a big cost center as well. Right. And so there's been sort of this, you know, this mismatch. Thankfully, there's a lot of new players that are coming into the market and providing different value.
We got into the, in, we've been invited to be part of this market because we have an entire ecosystem of applications and solutions for which the enterprises are actually using the networks to get to. It's not just the networks. Now it's about how do I provide my staff, my partners, those folks in my ecosystem as an enterprise, access to new technology that allows me to be more efficient.
It allows me to do things I wasn't able to do because I didn't have connectivity. Right. And so in any given industry, you'll hear buzz terms like automation. You'll hear buzz terms like the use of AI for a lot of it's, you know, intelligent business processes and all of these other fun things. Well, You kind of need connectivity, you need applications, and you need compute.
And so we've, you know, we've gotten our hands dirty in some of these private 5G standalone deals because the networks unlock a spend ratio that's 2 to 1, 3 to 1, 4 to 1. That's really quite interesting and allows us to pull our partners and our startups with their solutions into that mix. And that, that is where enterprises are spending money, not necessarily on the networks.
[00:23:13] Bill Pfeifer: So that takes us into the Tacoma Tide Flats project, Port of Tacoma. You installed a private 5G network there?
[00:23:21] Jim Brismitzis: We did. Thanks to some grant funding from the Department of Commerce, their Evergreen Manufacturing Grant, we were able to secure some funding to build essentially two networks to support 5 clients at the Port of Tacoma.
[00:23:32] Bill Pfeifer: I was going to ask how that worked because it was multiple clients in there.
And so I wasn't sure how the funding worked. If that was you just installed it and started renting it out or if the port of Tacoma funded it or what. So good to know. Yeah. Cool that the grants are doing what they're there for, right? Driving economic and technological advance that otherwise wouldn't easily happen.
So that's, that's pretty cool. It is. So now that these five enterprises have access to a long range private 5G network, is that evolutionary for them? Or is it revolutionary? Is it just helping them step forward into, you know, this is the next logical step? Or is this changing things fundamentally? Or both?
[00:24:20] Jim Brismitzis: It's actually both. It's evolutionary in the sense of You know, there's a set of, we've seen this phase one of all the use cases. And again, our, our experience is limited, but phase one of use cases post a network being deployed is a ranging of new devices, devices that they've always had, whether it's handheld scanners, ruggedized tablets, cameras, such that are now able to run on the network.
So almost immediately the enterprises that we've worked with are looking for those devices and deploying them in their operations. Phase two is usually like. Wow, I have, I have a lot of capacity on this network that I didn't ever have before. What's out there that I could now do that I didn't have access or the ability to do in the past?
And for, for many enterprises that's led to robotics, that's led to a lot of edge capabilities. Edge in the sense of they have these massive, well, they have these networks now that they can stream a lot of data across. And in many cases, they want to keep the data sovereign to that location, whether it's for security reasons, data sovereignty reasons, whatever the reasons are, many cases, a lot of these clients that we've spoken to actually want to process a lot of that data on site because it enables them to do real time operations.
And so what we have seen is in phase two, you have this bit of a revolutionary conversation with clients who are saying, wow, I, I had this, you know, very limited if, if at all, any connectivity before. And so I had all these workarounds. Now they don't have to do the workaround. I have connectivity. There's a range of, basically you've opened up the internet to them.
So there's a range of new capabilities that they've, you know, earmarked to learn about that they're now starting to pull forward and saying, wow, this is, this is I, I now have the capabilities to do, uh, or to invest in technology that I necessarily didn't have that capability before, not because I couldn't invest in it.
I just didn't have the means to actually use the technology. It didn't have the connectivity. It didn't have the computing or the applications. And so it's a little bit of both. It's a, Hey, now we're kind of freed from the limited connectivity we had in the past to, I wouldn't say unlimited, but far better connectivity.
And so let's update and modernize there. But then, those who are, those enterprises who are really leaning in on the use of data as a differentiator for their business are now saying, what are, what are the, you know, emerging technologies or existing technologies that we should be implementing to make us a more efficient, you know, business and operation?
With the client that I was installing, my team and I were installing a network for yesterday. Simple use cases. They have, they have to collect data from containers every day to track temperature ranges. They send, they, they send two or three people out every day to basically go look at screens and, and use paper, a paper clipboard and a pencil or a pen to record the data.
And then they go back into an office somewhere and add it to a database. Right. And so what if, what if somebody came by and recorded the temperature of a container and then the refrigerant or the refrigerator blew out and they don't come back again for another 12 hours? Well, how would you know when, you know, the refrigeration went bad?
You wouldn't. Right. And so when we, we showed them this very simple sensor that literally you could literally go anywhere and buy these, this is not revolutionary technology. Their eyes blew up. They're like, holy crap. You, you mean I could put this on. And then get real time alerts on when there's anomalies in any opera.
And yeah, so my team and I were like, yeah, you could have done that actually years ago, but it wasn't because they, well, it wasn't, we, we sort of joked about it with our client, but they reminded us like, guys, remember, we didn't have connectivity,
[00:27:58] Bill Pfeifer: right?
[00:27:58] Jim Brismitzis: And so when we, we don't have the ability to connect anything, we're just like, well.
That's great, I'll just file it in the, you know, the folder in the back of my ad when the time comes and I have connectivity. So just seeing
[00:28:09] Bill Pfeifer: And it comes back to that grant conversation, right? Why would you pay for the connectivity when you don't know what you'd use it for? But then until you get the connectivity, you can't use it.
Yes. So
[00:28:18] Jim Brismitzis: basic IOT tracking, worker safety, cameras, smart cameras, not just for security, but in the, in the port of Tacoma, we have two, two of our clients that, that use camera data for tracking containers, container numbers. And other information so that the cameras are more than just security cameras.
They're actually using that live data for other parts of their business processes where they're identifying certain data that they need. For their
[00:28:44] Bill Pfeifer: operations. So tracking the containers, is that like ingress, egress or is it finding things in the yard?
[00:28:49] Jim Brismitzis: They're tracking container numbers. They, they track container numbers that go into their, what they call their toss, their terminal operating system so that they know, hey, containers arrived on site, or a container is leaving at this time.
It's if you, if you ever get a chance to, you know, spend a half day at a port, it's just a fascinating ecosystem Bill of these massive ships that are coming in. with thousands of containers that somehow these humans have figured out where to kind of unload and load and schedule and all this other fun stuff.
It's just, it's a fascinating data problem. I'm, I'm by no means a data scientist, but I was sitting there while we were installing the network. She was looking around at these massive, you know, in the massive infrastructure that, that is there to operate our, and think about it. These are, These are ports.
They're the lifeblood of our, of our economy, right? We all saw what happened when COVID played out. So
[00:29:37] Bill Pfeifer: yeah,
[00:29:37] Jim Brismitzis: the logistics, the
[00:29:38] Bill Pfeifer: security, collecting taxes. I mean, there's a whole lot of money that goes in and out of a port.
[00:29:44] Jim Brismitzis: Billions of dollars sitting on port docks. Yeah. So
[00:29:46] Bill Pfeifer: the, the logistics and the amount of data that you could track is, is impressive. But you have to be able to track it and move it and, you know, instrument everything. And
[00:29:58] Jim Brismitzis: it makes sense of it and then use it intelligently. Yes. Yeah. Yes, absolutely.
[00:30:02] Bill Pfeifer: Which is, that's the whole thing. Yeah. That's talking about bringing technology into what is today, completely a manual operation. It's people walking around with pieces of paper and clipboards and then entering that into something.
And so you get the bare minimum of data and you know, all that stuff, but it's very labor intensive and now you're making it less labor intensive, which that's great. And it gives us much more potential for stuff to do with that. But then there's always pushback on that. You're taking away jobs. Yeah. Are you seeing good reception of that?
Hey, now I don't have to walk around in the rain with my piece of paper getting wet and all that stuff. Or is there pushback on that? I mean You know, it's probably changing jobs as opposed to losing job, but some jobs will get lost and people will get upset about that. How's the reception and how do you manage that?
[00:30:54] Jim Brismitzis: You will hear some concerns around, will this change my, my job? But there's a, there's a bigger issue that I've also seen that has really nothing to do with this particular topic, but it is a real issue and it impacts many different industries. It's been referenced as the silver tsunami. Which is a reference to suggest that a good portion of our workforce here in the United States and in other countries is aging out.
And when they age out and retire, as they should, and enjoy their retirement years, they're taking all that great knowledge with them. And unfortunately, in some cases, in some industries, there isn't enough of new workforce bodies coming into that industry that understands and captures and learns from that knowledge to, you know, to transfer it.
And so on one hand, you can say, Hey, there's some concerns of automation and that impacting jobs, but the silver tsunami is a very real phenomenon that is happening in many industries today. And eventually those great workers will attrition out of the workplace because they'll retire at some point. So, if we were to look at that as a real issue, and it is a real issue today, then I would argue that there is going to be a play for technology in helping to bridge that gap in workforce knowledge that is with a concentration of folks today.
And where do we, you know, where do we move that knowledge to help those who are coming through the ranks and growing in their careers to adopt that knowledge? Now, what's also interesting is being a proud father of two girls myself, they're very technically minded. And so many of the younger generation of the workforce is also looking for jobs that have tech components to it, whether it's in software development, AI engineering, or even workers in the vocational categories who are looking more for technical hands on type of roles.
And so I would argue that there's a younger generation of workers who are coming through the workforce that are more tech minded and comfortable with technology and really want to learn some of that technology. So we have a silver tsunami phenomenon that's playing out. You have younger workforce that is coming in as a little bit more tech minded.
And I think eventually, you know, whatever will happen in the marketplace will happen, but there's a good opportunity here where technology actually play a role in creating some of that bridge.
[00:33:05] Bill Pfeifer: I guess if we time it right and we execute it right, then we can start to instrument this stuff so that as this older generation is starting to age out, they can keep their jobs longer if they want to.
But then they don't have to walk around with a clipboard in the rain. They can sit in front of a desk and track that data. You can get some knowledge transfer. And then the younger generation who doesn't want to walk around in the rain carrying a clipboard, because that's not really a job description that excites people, they can, they can capture that knowledge.
As the older workers start to leave. Sure. So that could be a really graceful handoff without massive gaps. That would be, that would be nice.
[00:33:45] Jim Brismitzis: Possibly. It's a good conversation sometimes, you know, for, for good reason, you know, a tough conversation to have as well, but it is a conversation. One of our startups that, that we were blessed to work with called Tactile based here in Seattle.
Actually built a platform called Manifest exactly for this. They recognize the Silver Tsunami as a phenomenon and they created AR based technology that enables those workers to capture their, their knowledge and be able to share that with those who are coming into the workforce or relatively new to the workforce so that you can narrow that bridge and actually create.
You know, some continuity between the generational shifts that are playing out, they're called tactile. And they started off with augmented reality, hollow lenses, magic leaps devices, and now they've moved to supporting that and devices like iPads, right? So that you can now, again, share that knowledge of how to operate machinery or to fix a problem or what have you, or even, even beam in someone virtually that is the expert and get his or her knowledge to help that frontline worker solve that problem.
The more that you can move that knowledge To the front line from those that have it, the, the, the more efficiency that you're able to now afford these enterprises, right? And one of their case studies, and I'm speaking out of terms because I know the exact details. But one of their clients was saving an excess of a hundred million dollars plus a year because of solving that knowledge gap, right?
They were able to bring expertise to those on the front line, doing whatever the rules were that they were doing. And helping to sustain operational efficiency, right, helping to resolve matters rather quickly rather than seeing downtimes that were costly.
[00:35:24] Bill Pfeifer: I guess even just deliberately making an effort to capture that knowledge while it's there.
Absolutely. You know, even just having the older workers talk through what they're doing and why and what the indicators are so that people know. To include those factor. Yes. You know, and manifest is smells wrong. I didn't know it smelled
[00:35:42] Jim Brismitzis: at all. Right. And, and manifest is, you know, if, sorry to plug them, I will.
Cause I'm just super proud of the, you know, the, the advances that they've brought to market. It is not like handing somebody a manual and saying, here's the manual to the machine, good luck. It is truly immersive. It is Joe or Sally, who's the expert using the machinery, guiding somebody through how to actually operate the machinery, resolve a problem.
So it's much more immersive learning, which means that that user likely is going to be able to adopt that learning very quickly rather than, you know, sitting down reading a manual and trying to troubleshoot something and not have the ability to, you know, to learn very quickly. It's that use of technology that, you know, some cases we kind of take for granted depending on where, you know, where you're at in your career and what exposure to technology you have.
But man, it's transformational technology for those that necessarily didn't have that access to it before. And it's a faster way to transfer that knowledge and learning as well.
[00:36:39] Bill Pfeifer: So what are the lessons learned that you picked up in doing your latest projects? You know, the port of Tacoma and some other ones that you're going to take forward and use in other places to help move them forward faster.
[00:36:54] Jim Brismitzis: So for, for us, the, you know, the, the network is, is evolutionary, but to, to use your words, Bill, the, the use cases on the back end of those networks that they're now enabled is revolutionary. So every one of the engagements we've been involved in, we've sharpened our pencils and we're really learning from those use cases.
Um, because it's those use cases that customers ultimately invest in that are the ones that we could, we see as patterns that could help other clients down the same pathway, learn from and help them drive adoption quicker, right? Which means that they're hopefully enabling better progress in their, in their overall operations in business as well.
So that's, that's what we're really, really excited about. And what we've been trying, what I've been trying to, to tell the industry, certainly the, the carriers. Is that the private networking is, is absolutely real. The form of private networking differs from client to client. Some clients are perfectly fine with, you know, a network slice and they're okay with that.
Some clients don't want actually any of their data leaving their, their site for whatever those reasons are. Data sovereignty, security, whatever those reasons are. It's not for us to know, you know, if the client, that's what the client wants. That's what they should get. So I guess my point is that there isn't a one size fits all plan that works from private, because the interpretations of private really differ.
Depending on who the client is and what their specific needs are. Do I see that many enterprises are going to start to use cellular in their operations? Absolutely. In certain industries like mining, logistics, it's a no brainer. It's actually happened. Manufacturing, it's happening. It's a no brainer. It's going to happen.
And so for the carriers, it's a great opportunity, just like it was for Microsoft taking a product, in the case of Microsoft Windows Server, it's And turning it into a service, Azure, for the carriers, it's a great opportunity for them to, as I say, own that wireless gateway into the enterprise. And if you are positioned in the, to that wireless gateway, well, guess what?
You now have a sense of what are those use cases that the enterprise is using that wireless network for. And Mr. and Mrs. Telco, if those use cases are repeatable patterns, what role do you want to play in that? Do you want to just be the network provider or do you want to be a solutions provider? The true platform, the word that you use, Bill, which, which I think they're sitting on is a platform and in that same world, they will see just as we're seeing that there's a lot of data being generated and a lot of the data is not leaving those networks, it's being processed, right?
And so is there a play for them in edge computing? And it may not be on site with the client. But they will start to see as more and more adoption of AI, Gen AI, whatever new flavors of AI come down the pike in the future, a lot of that data is not getting removed to a hyperscaler cloud. It's going to have to be processed, inferenced, made sense of nearby where users are, users could be you and I as mobile device users, users could be autonomous vehicles, autonomous drones, autonomous vehicles, generally.
And so what's, what's the gap between a user device generating data on the AI side and the hyperscaler? What's, what's the connective tissue? It's the carrier. So my, you know, my belief is this, this moment of AI, the evolution of 5G, the emergence of private networks and edge as opportunities is truly a transformation point for the industry.
And it's a, it's an opportunity for them to explore What role do they want to play in that stack? The stack is simple. It's, you know, infrastructure, platform applications, and there's value in connective tissue, no pun intended between all that. So for Carrier today, I think it's an, it's an excellent opportunity for them to kind of assess where that market spending is, and then decide where they want to play in that world.
And the lab again was, was really designed as an applied innovation platform. That brings all these together. We've gotten in the world of private networks because on the back end of those networks are use cases. And we, we feel it's really important to use those networks and the relationships that we, we have with these limited clients to deeply understand what those use cases are, that helps us transfer that learning to our partners, but also helps to create opportunity for them.
And for the alumni that we've had the privilege of, of working with on, on both sides, that are our partners and our alumni. So from that standpoint. We're really excited about where private is going. We're seeing immediately where edge computing has gone and is going in the context of the enterprise. And it just gives us a front row seat to seeing a lot of that, learning it, and then sharing those learnings with our ecosystem.
[00:41:29] Bill Pfeifer: Right. With edge computing, we're seeing, we're already seeing more of a continuum of on prem and near prem and public cloud or farther away, centralized data center or whatever. And 5G is, you know, Is the logical connection between all of those spaces before you get to hardline internet and long haul kind of stuff?
[00:41:49] Jim Brismitzis: Absolutely. So,
[00:41:50] Bill Pfeifer: Jim, this was super fun. I appreciate you making the time today. How can people find you online, keep track of you, and find out what kind of trouble you're causing in the future?
[00:42:00] Jim Brismitzis: Sure. Obviously, feel free to feel free rather to visit us online at 5goilab. com. All of our alumni partner programs, all that stuff is there.
We have some announcements that are coming out later in July around private networks, AI in the telco realm, and just about the lab in general. July 10th is our summer social, and so lots of new news coming out then. Stay tuned for some of that. And then for any enterprise that is sort of curious into where Telco is going.
This level of technology is going, we'd love to hear from you and kind of share all of our experiences, what we've learned. And for our partners, I mean, we wouldn't be here without our partners for them. It's, you know, it's, it's, it's been a good transfer of learning and really it, you know, we're being Canadian myself.
I like to, I like to call myself the friendly agitator. I mean, no harm, but I'm, I'm that guy that sits in the corner and just asks questions, right? Cause at the end of the day, Bill, as you can appreciate, innovation brings change. Change is hard. Right? If you've got that comfy sweater, you've worn that comfy sweater for years and you don't want to get out of the comfy sweater to try on another sweater, it's hard.
You know, and, and anyone who says I'm innovative, it's great. Are you, are you going to be like Thomas Edison that went through 10, 000 orations of the light bulb before finding the real light bulb? Do you have that staying power, right? That's what true innovation, in my opinion, really is. So for the, for the industry that, you know, that we were born to serve, which was the telecom industry, you may not have the answer today, but don't lose sight of that innovation that is happening around you and the platform potential that you could play in that world.
If you think differently about where your value starts and stops.
[00:43:37] Bill Pfeifer: I like this. I like the model of. The evolution that leads to the revolution and getting your hands dirty and iterating forward. That's, that's a good one. It is. So, Again, thank you so much for the time. This was a fun conversation and I, I appreciate having that, the conversation about how we're moving data and why the different options and why private 5G.
That's, that's one that I've been struggling with for a while and you've given me a lot more to chew on. So hopefully the listeners have enjoyed that as well, and we can all have fun. The next iteration of how we think about it. So thank you so much.
[00:44:13] Jim Brismitzis: I appreciate the opportunity, Bill, to be on the show. Thank you very much for that. And I look forward to staying in touch.
[00:44:18] Narrator 2: That does it for this episode of Over the Edge. If you're enjoying the show, please leave a rating and a review and tell a friend. Over the Edge is made possible through the generous sponsorship of our partners at Dell Technologies. Simplify your edge so you can generate more value. Learn more by visiting dell. com slash edge.