This isn't your father's Tractor - Edge to Cloud Panel
Transcript
(air whooshing) >> So we'll try and get this done in about 30-35 minutes. It's going to be tough 'cause this panel of experts are an amazing panel we've had Jo Peterson on before Joe, you're VP of research at? >> Actually I'm VP of cloud and security at Clarify360. >> Welcome back to the program then Tina Gravel. >> That's it. Hi, I'm Tina Gravel and I am Senior Vice President at AppGate, which is displayed right there. (laughs) >> All right, nice.
Then, Rob. >> CEO and co-founder of RackN. >> And then Mark. >> CEO and founder of Edgevana. >> So we have three business leaders on the lines, Keith Townsend, principal of the CTO Advisor. I got to have more than a couple of employees before I call myself the CEO of the CTO Advisor. (laughs) We'll get that in order before the end of the year, and maybe I'll promote myself to the CEO. For those of you listening hadn't registered for the event.
First, thank you, for those who registered in the chat room. Be more than, feel more than empowered to ask questions either via the chat or the q&a. I'll be monitoring both. This is a panel on IoT to Cloud... I mean Sorry, IoT to edge to Cloud. We're going to define kind of these three terms and then have a little back and forth because each one of these panelists were specifically selected for their expertise when it comes to edge and Cloud and the relationship of the two.
I don't think we need to talk a whole lot about IoT, but we will get in that discussion. But first, I want to open this up. The first question to Jo, Jo what are some of the business drivers of the age to begin with? So this all starts with a business conversation. What are the drivers for edge? >> Well, thank you for having me first, with this great panel of folks they are fun and funny and smart. But before we do that, I wanted to sort of talk about what I'm seeing from my lens if I could a second.
I think we're oversimplifying by calling something edge here. Just like we did years ago when we called it Cloud. Right? It's really an ecosystem of technologies that we're seeing come forward. And it's a platform. And it's the compute. And it's the storage. And it's going to continue to grow and define itself just like Cloud did. So we're sort of right now sort of painting it with a broad brush to encompass all those technologies. And as it matures, we're going to refine it further.
And I think that, you know, what's driving to your question to ask your question, what's driving the conversation around edge is the customer experience. We want to put data closer to the customer. We want applications to respond faster. When we ship the compute and the storage away from where the data is being gathered, and consumed. We add in latency. So we want application to perform better, and then ultimately, we want to be in a situation where we're controlling cost better.
By shipping storage elsewhere, it gets more expensive. You've got increased network costs, you've got increased storage cost. So those are some of the things that I think, from a technical perspective are actually driving the edge conversation. >> So we queued up a video that I wanted to share, I'm going to drop my video because we're on zoom and I've learned that if you share zoom tip, if you want to share live video or share video is best to stop sharing your high def video and then share...
>> All right so Jasmine, am on the pass. I'm at the end of field and I just wanted to show you what it looks like when I get set up and I'm going to go back down the field. So I'm going to do a semi-auto-steer which is on this monitor and just go back and make sure I'm in the right track. Okay. Then once I'm far enough back. I mean on this monitor, my low speed stats receipts are coming out.
Put my implement down and start my 32% to 34% up, and get to speed throttle up. And... That's about all. So what I'm watching is I keep my speed appeared about five miles an hour. This monitors for my auto-steer, and just making sure I'm in the right row and on the right line. We did just set a new line for this field on pivot, so it should be all straight. This is my John Deere monitor. So we actually use a lot of different things to control the Planner.
This one is pretty much just to control the hydraulics which I use to switch I actually need to dial up. This needs to be at 25 pounds. So I'm going to go to my hydraulics right here and just kind of dial that up, make sure it gets to 25. Okay, so I'm watching these gauges this is a starter and 1034 which we're putting on along with the corn seeds. So that's what's on the tape so on either side here, so I'm really just watching those.
This is uploading all of our planting data all the population to cloud real time. So dad can actually be in the office and watch me planting and then we use this combine in... We use this iPad in the combine when we harvest and it'll actually show us comparing the population with what we're actually harvesting for bushels per acre. And then this 2020 seeds that's monitor is super cool. It shows us the simulation population and a whole bunch of numbers that half of them I don't even know what to do with.
But it's kind of a lot to keep track of. And lots of screens but once you understand it, it's really cool setup. >> Now your daddy's tractor. (laughs) >> I did not, the only thing I understood was tractor and Cloud. (laughs) >> (Mark) I understood iPad. >> Oh yeah, there she did say iPad and then her daddy can monitor her yield. >> And combine and plant you know what planting is. >> I know what planting means, yes. >> Okay, Sarbjeet is telling us, he's a farmer.
Just saying. >> Sarbjeet hi Sarbjeet. He's our buddy. >> So you know what, I'm going to we're going to call audible since I know Sarbjeet I'm puts you on a blast here. We're going to elevate you to a panelist you weren't invited to this, but you're typing up and you know what, you join the conversation. So bring up your video or audio as you like, I know you're always prepared to offer context and since you are a farmer. Hey, you can explain some of this to us.
But a while Sarbjeet has the option to do that. Tina, I'm going to throw you this what seems like a softball question after we've seen that video. Who uses the edge like who's the customer for the edge? >> Well, we just saw, what we would call an IoT sort of arrangement. I've been warned by my panelists not to do cloud, excuse me, edge washing. See, so easy to do. I already started Cloud washing, right? So I'm going to be very, very specific here.
Autonomous vehicles, edge computing in edge. Really, you want to look at the device doing processing, either locally, either with a device or with a server. To me, that's a real specific way of looking at edge and not doing edge watching and it can be done on a server in a data center or it could in a that's close by in proximity as Jo has discussed, processing data that you want to get and have adjacent, so there isn't latency. Or it could be simply a device in your home, that's smart, that is doing some computing about, that you need, or want or some sort of basic smart device, if you will.
But it's not just collecting data. I think that for me, and I'm going to challenge my panelists now, because once again, I was warned not to be overly simplistic as I have a tendency to be. And as the color person, I do often do that. But let's be specific now. Is it the computing that sets these edge devices apart from other IoT devices, I like to turn it to Rich now since he was warning me. Go for it. >> Rob?
>> Rob, like put my glasses on here, how else do I see people's names. (laughs) >> T. >> I think edge washing is definitely a danger from a marketing perspective. But there are times when you can look at a scenario like what we saw from the tractor. And it is clearly compute, analysis, analytics and processing happening all on that tractor, right, that tractor is what we would traditionally say is an edge from that perspective. And I think we can acknowledge that.
The thing that I think is funny from an edge washing perspective is I don't think John Deere cares what you call it. They are operating a tractor, right? They might call it IoT, but it's and this is where it's becomes edge washing, right? From their perspective, they're trying to run a system. And the thing that's funny is that looks like an airline pilot or airplane cockpit from the 70s, right? Where it's like, ah, I need airline controls, here's a monitor, here's some controls, here's the thing.
And, and what we clearly see in this case is you don't need to call it edge or not, we have a complex machine that a lot of control systems, all those control systems have been automated to one extent or another, and none of them have been connected together into what IT would think of as an integrated system. And so what what we're seeing is real edge infrastructure. But it's all what what we were describing earlier was it was an operational technology or OT technology, not IT technology.
And, and so while what we saw was amazing as far as individual systems, what we saw from an IT perspective, was a travesty from all of these. Now, so what you know, and I'll just to extend on that. What happens if one of those systems breaks The whole she can't plant the field? >> Well, there's clearly no integration there. I mean, we can see that otherwise she wouldn't have separate monitors, she probably just have one. And eventually we'll get there like the airline you just described in our planes today are all flying themselves, right, essentially.
But I want to just challenge something. And this is what Jo said. She said it's a platform. To me edge is an architectural decision, just like the cloud is an architectural decision to me is it, are we cloud washing by saying that this is a decision that we're going to make for a style of computing. To me it's a style of computing that people use, to makes sure that their data is processed closer. Am I right? Or am I wrong?
>> So let's I love where you're going with that Tina and I think the next question that we have for Mark will kind of tee up this deeper discussion of edge washing versus not edge washing versus does it really matter? One of the things that I got back and forth on Twitter about and said, you know what, a smidge, OT let's define OT, operational technology OT operational technology versus IT information technology. The young lady in the tractor had a business outcome that she wanted.
She wanted to optimize the planting of seed in her farm. The fact that it wasn't a single pane of glass. If she had a single pane pane of glass, that'd be great. But the thing is that she has an advantage over her competitors other Farmers she couldn't be more efficient, because of this John Deere thing. I came up with this convoluted example of someone having a manufacturing piece of equipment and connected to a Tandy 1000. Because 30 years ago that was cutting edge.
And now they've built processes around that to give them a competitive edge. Is that the edge? So when, what I want to ask Mark who's doing really interesting thing and distributed data centers, et cetera. Where's the edge? Because your business model kind of, it kind of floats in between this looks like the edge, but it also looks nothing like what we just saw in this tractor example. >> Right. Yeah, so, I mean, this is a problem in the space.
Absolutely. As Jo pointed out at the beginning of the call that even when I talk about edge what I'm usually euphemistically referring to as the edge is an opportunistic environment for deployment of applications that benefit from being and processing and doing analytics at or near where they're the customer is actually using the environment or an automated system is using the environment. Right. And so when I think of edge, I think of a deployment model for applications, I think of an architectural model for solving for remote locations.
I think of all of it, but generically speaking, when I think of what the tractor was doing, I see the tractor as mobile edge. And the what was interesting about that mobile edge was that it was actually to a question that I get often asked and in fact debated with Several times with Sarbjeet is how much edge will rely or might rely on cloud. And in this particular model, it wasn't so much that this mobile edge relied on cloud. But that if we were really paying attention, we would have noticed that when she dropped seed, they recorded that data of how much seed dropped were, etcetera, etcetera.
That data was put up in the cloud because they're planting seed that immediate data is not important at that point. What is important is later on, when they harvest from that same row from that same batch of seed, they can use cloud analytics to determine what the harvest was based on those seeds from six months ago whenever it was they planted. So it this is actually a perfect example of IoT designed around a relatively complex and not user friendly mobile edge that is also semi-reliant, or I wouldn't say reliant, but benefits from connectivity and use of cloud analytics.
And at some point, could all of that stuff be just at the edge? Yes, it could. But what this doesn't take into account in this particular model of edge is it doesn't take into account the ability to have portable workloads. As in, I'm flying across the country in a 300 mile an hour bullet train, and can my workloads can my profile follow me at latency, regardless of where I am while I'm traveling at 300 miles an hour. Can it continue to follow me, even if I'm outside the range of my normally preferred edge provider.
These are the parts of edge and edge development over time, that offer considerably more complexity, but I think offer any I mean, we could go on for hours about the potential workload opportunities and business model opportunities that will be created on that footprint. >> You nailed it. Oh, sorry. >> I was just going to say are you talking about an edge gateway then at that point? >> To some degree, I mean, think when I when I talk about edge, and I speak about a gateway, and this is something that Rob and I have talked about at length, Keith and I may have talked about it, maybe even Sarbjeet and Jo I'm not sure Tina, you and I, unfortunately, haven't had enough time to converse.
But generically speaking, at some point for some percentage of edge, and I think it actually could be the dominant overall individual implementation of edge is that edge becomes the equivalent of a marketplace. Now, it could be 5,10,15,20 different marketplaces. Or it could be a few, but the idea would be that Keith and I could develop an app over the weekend, or over the course of six months with 20 people, but because we could deploy that app, as if it were being deployed to the iPhone store, but being deployed to the edge, and we can get so many eyeballs on it, that even if we only made a penny per person, we could still make money on that app, which is basically the monetary and commercial model for putting a new app in the Android store or the iPhone store.
>> Oh, Joe, you've had some define work around this concept of the network. Help us understand a little bit more about this concept of the, kind of where the cloud network and the edge network, at least considerations around where they meet and things we should think about. >> Well, actually, I'd like to talk to Rob about this because I'd like to see what he thinks. I mean, he's steeped in cloud, just like I am, but in my head, I see them as disparate architecture, right?
Distinct architectures. And that the architectures can communicate with one another, but they are still distinct architectures. And I think part of the reason that they're distinct architectures is back to your initial question, Keith. The driver is actionable data. Right? So we want to have that actionable data closer to the source where it's being produced or consumed. And beyond that actionable data, we've got all these cost, that are baked into Cloud, look at how much egress costs today, that's a killer.
People go and look at their Egress costs and go holy, holy Tamales, what the hell? >> I'm doing a cloud study now. And it's sponsored in. I have a fixed expense budget and part of that budget is cloud services. And I'm on the team constant like please, please big about Egress I don't want to wake up to see a $2700 Egress charge the next day. (laughs) >> Right or storage, right? So, you're all of a sudden think about what's going to happen with IoT or edge, you're going to have this explosion of devices that all need to talk, right?
And all need to store data and all need to communicate. So what you've got going on in your you think cloud cost control is a problem. Holy Tamales. Look at look at edge cost control is going to be. So Rob, I want to ask you, do you in your head, do you see these as ideally two distinct separate environments from a architecture perspective? >> It's an excellent question. And the short answer is yes. But it's a lot more nuanced because I think that a lot of the cloud development paradigms and operational techniques in the way we're operating cloud.
We're not going to invent totally new ways to pipeline application development and deliver things right? Like, is Kubernetes the right fit for edge? Probably not. But it will be the way we deploy applications on the edge, because that's what we've been training people to do. I think what you're saying is 100% online, and people need to understand the core design premise of the cloud. And see I said premise the right way in this case. (laughs) core premise of the cloud.
>> You do the Virtual Donut. >> Tina: That was perfect. (laughs) >> You are irregardless Rob >> Tina: Oh, that's right, irregardless. >> Jo: Irregardless. >> irregardless or irregardless lee? (laughs) >> Rob: I completely derailed everybody. >> Come on. >> The core premise of the cloud is that the net work doesn't matter. It's, it's completely elastic, you get as much as you want, you have to pay for it. Jo I think that's the important consideration, and you can put it anywhere, and it really doesn't matter, right?
That the cloud is supposed to be this like, just send it up there. The reason is the cloud is I don't care what it is or how it is, it's just there. And I can use it. And the edge is a totally different paradigm, it does matter where it is, it does matter that it stays local, right? You don't want to communicate to the device. This is the problem with that tractor. If they want to change the way the seeds are getting laid down in the field, they probably have to go up to the cloud talk laterally to the system that's controlling the tractor speed and back down back down to the system.
And that works, in this narrow case, the OT case where we've cobbled everything together. It doesn't work if we want new people to show up with applications or to optimize it or to get really fine tuned in how these things go. And so I think that we're really holding ourselves back when we try to just say, Oh, it's going to be the cloud. And in some ways, we're using the cloud as a crutch to solve these problems instead of saying, okay, I need open API, so I can exchange between systems, or I need to create a local data center infrastructure.
So I have a local repository for the tractor. >> So Sarbjeet, I want to get Sarbjeet in this conversation. Sarbjeet, you're architect, you've dealt in platforms and building platforms, you've also dealt in with product teams and building products. Is the edge as we just thought in that John Deere use case is the edge something that traditional iT players can productize? I see platform you from HPE, Dell etcetera. I see these edge platforms. But when I just looked at that, that tractor example, I'm thinking man, they're so far away from what OT does and what they sell maybe what OT needs.
But that gap is huge. >> Yeah, I think Can you hear me guys? >> Tina: Yeah. >> All of we can. >> Okay. Hi, guys. Thanks for promoting me to be your panelist. Yeah, I'm glad to be here. I think the the main thing is, I think you're trying to get to is that there's application and there's data, right? And you cannot collect data or distribute data without having applications in place. Right? And how do we cook those applications?
I can use a food analogy, like, how you formulate those kitchens, if you will. That's where we cook, data, if you will. We produce data and all that stuff will consume data. I think that matters a lot. What that means is I think cloud will be used for the distribution of applications. So, I usually say that cloud will be the control plane for the edge, edge will be more like a data plane, when I say that, there are like, let me qualify that.
There will be more applications sitting at the edge, but they will be pushed from the cloud. So the distribution of the applications and building of those, right? Has to be central, to keep the operational cost minimal creational and operation cost. I think that is why that's where the role of the cloud is that from apex to apex. That's one thing, but having that central control over things like once you update one thing, everybody gets that all everybody gets those applications, sort of, to their devices.
In edge case that that will happen. I think I think cloud will play a huge role. And I actually, you are talking with a terminology, right? Why we came up with the new terminology edge when we have other terminologies to describe the same thing. We have been doing edge for 20-30 years. I'm sorry, there's a loud truck next to me somewhere. In a way the CDN was edge, right? >> Right. Yeah. Absolutely. >> It was.
>> So the like, we were using edge for distribution of data and not collection of data. Wee were collecting the data, by the way through a CDN also, like I worked with Fox Studios in LA, and when you vote on these voice shows and all that. Millions of people vote within few seconds for a candidate. Right? And they collect the data through edge. I mean, there's no other way to collect that much data. So I think we have been, we are gone from, like distribution of data to collection of data.
And that's a journey from CDN to edge, I believe. And yeah, I will stop there. I can talk for a long time. >> I love what you're going on with this. You weren't in any of our prep meetings. We promoted you last minute, but you kind of set Rob up for the question. I want to ask Rob, which is all the tools that we have now, when we look at the cloud tools. We look at all the different variations of on premises cloud.
How does that stuff fit into the edge. When we look at the big providers, Amazon, Google, Microsoft. >> Microsoft has. >> Keith: Yeah. >> I mean, every one of these cloud providers recognizes that their data center footprint is going to have to move into the local physical environments. Right? This is that there isn't there is a wave coming, that regardless of edge. Computational power is being applied to everyday tasks in our physical presence. We're moving from computers being single unit things like desktops in the cloud, where they were getting involved in every aspect of our life and connecting us together to actually moving back into our environment and being part of essential services in how we operate in a connected way.
They're already there. Ot wise, we're talking about connecting them in an IT way. And every one of the cloud providers recognizes that the explosion in the next wave is not going to be in the centralized data centers, but in the environment and so every day, they're all trying to get into this In this platform. And Sarbjeet is exactly right. The delivery of the applications and software into that model is one of the biggest barriers for us being successful. I don't agree that it has to be centrally managed.
The challenge with centrally managed means that we're going to have like we have today where every vendor is designed to own, way to push applications into the edge. So we're either going to move towards a big monolithic Amazon owns every device, basically in the control and management of every device, which is not-- >> (indistinct) >> Which isn't,yeah, some of the future that I'm signing up for. It seems a little scary to me. So, I'd be hopeful that we can actually see more decentralized management and common API's and having people able to control these themselves.
That's certainly what I'd try to promote. >> It's a hybrid world right now. I think people want a hybrid world. But they're lighting up the world. So to, so like no mistake, they're going to go after World domination, if they can do it, they're going to try. >> I'm super interested in is this concept of, I'm an infrastructure guy. I believe that if we build infrastructure, if we build roads, if we built highways, if we build data centers, etcetera, smart people are going to come and consume those things.
If we make it consumable. That just, I'm just going to say that organization that we saw inside of the tractor really cool practically. But as IT infrastructure guys, I put my IT infrastructure head on. And I think about scaling that across dozens or thousands of farms, and correlating the data and leveraging the scale of the app. Let's call the tractor that app. How do we bridge the gap between folks, everybody here builds infrastructure and enables infrastructure. How do we bridge the gap between building the infrastructure and getting to the OT, guys.
I want to be greedy, and add kind of a focus piece of this. Well, let's look at IT devices versus IT infras... I mean, IoT devices versus IoT infrastructure. Today, if I just wanted to collect data, if I want to go into a manufacturing facility and collect data off of the various OT devices, I'm speaking to like three or four different protocols. And building that infrastructure to even get it to the cloud is an extremely difficult gap. So these are the environments that as IT infrastructure folks we're selling into.
How do we translate what we do against the ultimate question I want you guys to tackle. How do we translate what we do into something the OT folks that IoT and OT folks can understand consume. >> I'll take it. >> Rob: I have an answer too. >> Yeah. >> Yeah I have a thought. >> I mean, I think we might have a, I don't want to say misconception, Keith. But we might be focusing on the problem the wrong way in the sense that, what we saw in the cab of that vehicle should be one application, but in reality was seven different applications that were being humanly correlated.
Right? And so why is that important? Well, it's important because if what I just said were true, then there's less issue for someone like me or Rob or Joe, in putting infrastructure in a data center somewhere that allows for people to build applications and deliver them. It's more about what are the capabilities for those folks to deliver applications to the right format on the right device in order to make it usable for the consumer. And so I think, to Rob's point, and something that certainly I've been writing and talking about at length for the last couple years, is that overall demand for edge is likely to outstrip public cloud demand in the next five or six years.
And that's an amazing number all by itself, when you consider that public cloud is made up of somewhere between 35 and 50 million servers today, right? Just in the in the top five or six brands. So that's an amazing stat. So from that perspective, we have to realize that whether or not there needed to be a computer on a light pole or a computer in a data center near where that John Deere was working in the farm right now is immaterial, is what we have to think about is what will we need when there are 100 or 1000 of those John Deers within In a particular region, or a million autonomous vehicles, and people building services and other application capabilities to ride on top of those notes, new services, what do we need to support from a compute and network standpoint then?
Right. It's like a lot of folks that I talked to when I when the question that Rob posed, or the point Rob posed in the chat earlier about the inverted nature of the data, something I've also written about, is that right now, many of the people I talked to are thinking about edge and deployment and putting data back in the cloud, similar to the way a cigarette smoker thinks about dropping their one cigarette bat it's just one cigarette bat. (laughs) >> That's so good.
>> You're in the clouds, we're done. >> Jo: That's good. >> What happens when 100 million people smoke cigarettes? Right. That's a real problem from an edge standpoint. and I don't think, we understand what the potential need for compute and storage at the edge will be, nor do we really understand how much additional networking we're going to need from a localization standpoint, to make all that stuff effective. >> So and they want to make sure I capture a summarization of that is that as infrastructure folks, we should be focused on making sure that the robust infrastructure is in place for this inverted traffic path.
Whatever it may be, the App folks are going to do what the app folks are going to do, but from a infrastructure perspective, we need to be able to identify or reasonably predict with some level of magnitude, how we're going to ingest some of this data, even if it may not go all the way up to the cloud to everyone's point, but locally and within that region of the world, whether it's 5G or whatever the technologies that support 5G, we need to have. So Rob I'll give it to you next then Jo.
>> Tina go ahead you're jumping in. My call to hold. >> I just want to remind you, because this is near and dear to my heart, and we'll talk about it on another panel. But don't forget the security. >> Thank you. >> Mark: Tina you don't have the security. >> Thank you. >> The security aspect, oh If you think it's hard to lay out security in the cloud, wait till you do that on that inverted program that Mark's talking about.
You are talking about an exponential problem that you've never ever, ever even can conceive of. >> I want to give just a snapshot of that in concept in like the office world. I had assembled my first virtual team to do my first study sponsor study. And I hit the simple problem of how do I how do I collaborate with 10 people that's not in my organization. And the number of options is dizzying. But the other problem is, how do I secure that data?
Because it's not inside of my data center anymore. I have a data center, I chose not to put it in my data center, so that we could be agile. And I just opened up this whole slew of security issues that I just punted. And I'm like, I don't really want to think about it. I'm just going to act like a regular naive user and just give people the access they need to do to get the work done because I have to get the work done.
How much, I'm a IT infrastructure guy, how much more so are the OT folks operating then. What is just one bat, one cigarette bat. Mark, I'm still in that one cigarette bat that's going to be one of (indistinct) now. >> Well, what can I just can we zoom out a minute, 'cause we're all digging in the dirt here and looking at the architecture Sarbjeet. And Sarbjeet you've heard me say this before, Cloud is as much about technology as it is about a corporate preference.
So IoT and edge is happening somewhere over here. Over the picture frame, right? (laughs) Rob is laughing. The executives haven't come in yet and said, hey, this is important. And oh, by the way, everybody needs to play together. Because you've got the IT folks not playing with the OT folks. So traditional facilities, not talking IT. OT's doing what they want to do. Forget security Tina, that's not even happening in most places yet. Right? >> Tina: Yeah.
>> But there's no executive sponsorship making this all come together. That's where I think we're missing because it's immature. It's technology pretty early with it. It's pretty wild west city. It's not even unless they're in certain verticals up on the executives radar yet. That's the problem. >> Though Jo just so you know, you just performed your short for when I quote this on Twitter that whole frame in there. (laugh) It will be the Jo Peterson show. >> Oh no.
>> Jo I think you're entitled I think the reckoning on cloud IT controls in the cloud is is yet to come. We're just walking into, oh wait, all the stuff that the cloud people ran away from in IT have to come to cloud 'cause it's really about controls repeatability process and sustainability. But the edge stuff gets walked away from because people think the blast radius is small. And so they're like, oh, it's one tractor that might get hacked. I don't have to worry about blah, blah, blah.
And so so I think that the clouds going to be, it's a very attractive target and we're going to go there. The point that I was making based on sort of this broader conversation is is the heterogeneity of these environments is mind numbing. It's already the thing that right one of the reasons why cloud is super attractive is if you move to cloud, then you're yeah, I'm dealing with three vendors. Right, Tina's point about hybrid is very real and hybrid is really hard.
Edge is super hard in part because nobody's buying nice clean, expensive Dell, HP, Lenovo, Cisco servers and switches to put in these tractors, They're buying, not even a nook. They're buying an embedded Sir computer that has to have a 10 year life cycle on it. And they're using protocols like ITC and Bluetooth and CAN. But here's the thing people have to get over. That's the right thing to do. We're not Going to put Ethernet and fiber in the tractor. (laughs) so-- >> I'm just going to have a long stint in Cory.
>> I have to push back when I have to ride a lot more and I have a 10 gig switch. (laughs) And acting for it though. >> Watch out for the fiber when you mount. Can simulate your black hole experience. (laughs) >> I just got a visual. >> I want to shift the conversation, we only have my 35 minutes when we're out wee can do so. We only have six minutes. And I wanted to shift the conversation to the business conversation from a IT vendor and landscape perspective.
When you're telling the edge story, who are you telling that story to? Is it to OT, IT or are you trying to tell it to the CEO. >> I think you're telling it to the CEO, but I don't think you're saying edge. I think you're saying digital transformation. Okay. I think there's of this whole wave that everybody's talking about digital transformation, digital twin, digital this, digital that and how you're going to transform your business. And I think there's a lot of edge in that.
I really, really do, because a lot of these applications that we're seeing that are really making, I guess, disruption in these industries have this going on. >> Well, and I would add on to what Tina said and something that I've said a few times now in other forum or formats, is that first I don't like it seems like Tina doesn't like the word either. I don't like the term digital transformation because we've been doing digital transformation since we plugged in the first network printer.
>> Tina: Yeah. >> And so if that's our success, then we're fucked. So what we're really doing is business transformation. And what business transformation is, is a better ability by leadership to leverage technology that's been available by and large for the last 15 or 20 years. Right? When my leadership has told me in the past, as an 1T contributor or a infrastructure developer, they've said I want data in real time Mark. Not a single time in my entire history of delivering to business applications not monitoring the data center or a broken out.
But for business application data, not a single time in my career has that real time data turned into real time anything even approaching real time response from the business. So business transformation for me, has lots of little benefits and I'm not being sarcastic, little benefits like efficiency in the production line and reducing error rates on on robots and so on and so forth. All of that is real, but what the real benefit, is the diversification of your organization. So that you can respond to customers and include customers in new and unique ways.
And to to finalize on what how Tina got us to this point is that I refer to the corporation, as the body as the human body, and edge is the equivalent of our hands and arms. And so what's the importance of a hand and an arm, you hug somebody, you give somebody a shake what comes through with that warmth, connected trust, strength, and those are the things that edge can help deliver for the modern business as they go to compete to get access to the customer.
>> So you're talking about customer experience, and maybe that's the conversation as opposed to digital transformation. And CX gets you out of the it silo, right? It gets you talking to product. It gets you talking to marketing because they care about customer experience. >> Right? >> So maybe that's the thing, maybe the thing is to make it more relatable is to get out of the it silo. >> By the way, I don't even talk about digital transformation all I talk about is how to fix the mess that they've created with digital transformation on the security side of things.
(laughs) >> Digital transformation remediation work. >> So Rob and Sarbjeek I'll leave get to with the last two words about a minute each. You know, what message? Because Rob you sail edge solution. What message Are you taking to the business when it comes to outcomes? >> Oh, that's simple for us. It's about autonomy. So the right self management and control so for us, our customers. And to me, this is where edge is really powerful. It's really about coming back and saying, you can actually run and manage infrastructure in a controllable way.
And to me these questions are driven by, I have to do compute locally. Because I'm trying to apply these advanced techniques, but I need to do it as a systems and I want to do it where I have control of my own destiny. I don't want to keep vendor siloing one at a time, and I don't want to just send everything into the cloud and let somebody else manage it. And then I want to connect things together and all three of those things, translate into, can I run my own infrastructure again?
Can I make Can we make that possible? And that to me is where edge is been stuttering. Frankly, where we keep saying use edge. It's great. It's on premises and local and you have control and autonomy and then we're going to tether you back into the cloud. And you hear the sad trombones go. And so I feel like we keep sort of having this vision of what we want to be able to do and how we want things to operate.
And then we we can't organize ourselves as an industry 'cause we're so busy chasing Amazon. Frankly. >> It's now Sarbjeek last word to you. You're muted. >> But let's back up a little bit like I am a student of economics and I happen to practice technology for last 25 years. Economics matters a lot. But let's put economics aside for just a second and then talk about just technology. And I think things come will come clear. If you put cost aside.
Right? Egress costs and all that stuff like you put aside. Where will you do? Compute if you have a choice. Centrally or on the edge? I think the answer always is centrally as much as you can If the network is strong and all that stuff. I think edge should be consumed only when you need it. Like the last resort, only when it's life and death situation only when you, putting money aside, again, right? Like when you and hospital like ventilator needs to send data to the central server, because nurses are monitoring something like that, right?
Or self driving car can bump into somebody else because we do accidents happening there. So I think edge should edge will be consumed I believe in that context when it's life and death situation. That's how edge will start, will take off. I think gradually it can get into other use cases but I think we have to start there. Don't just do edge because it's a sexy term or you can sell more boxes and stuff like that. I think it creates a lot more problems for you to manage in the field, like why will you ship boxes when you ship data?
I will stop there. >> So I really appreciate all the panelists taking time out there immensely busy schedules. We're in the middle of analyst conference and each one of these influencers are being pulled in a thousand different ways. I appreciate you guys taking out the time to have this conversation around edge computing. >> Thanks for having us. >> Tina: Thank you. >> If you want to find out more about these fine folks and their offerings, you can visit the show notes or if you're watching this live, you see the lower third, It's how to reach out to them.
Talk to the next CTO Advisor. A thing I don't know what to call this webinar. (laughs) >> Jo: Security things. >> Yeah, security. Yeah. >> Bye. >> Bye, everybody.
