GET TO KNOW going to drive the biggest change we ’ ve witnessed with the Internet since its inception .
You must start with what is driving these changes . Applications such as Factory 4.0 , Agriculture 4.0 and autonomous vehicles have several traits in common . First , they involve IoT at scale . There are lots of machines that must be interconnected . Second , they all depend on real-time computing . Third , they all create volumes of data that is both created and consumed at the edge .
Finally , with the emergence of AI , we ’ re seeing autonomous applications . These are applications that learn as they go and change the way they work based on what they ’ ve learned .
What changes to your job role have you seen in the last year and how do you see these developing the next 12 months ?
The biggest change for me has been the pivot from technical lead to executive leadership . While I do miss being directly involved in the day-to-day technical decisions , it is very rewarding to see our team collaborate and bring Graphiant to life .
Being a CEO is one of the most difficult roles that I have had , but it is also one of the most rewarding . Within the next 12 months , I will continue to develop my leadership skills to ensure that I consistently enable and empower the team .
How do we support this ? Partly by moving compute to the edge – closer to where the work is being done . That ’ s the basis of Edge Computing , and this is wellunderstood , but how we provide connectivity must also change .
The networks we build must have ultra-low latency ( ULL ) and fast performance . They must also provide rock-solid security and privacy . Finally , they must enable extremely agile provisioning and management .
These requirements are not yet well-understood but are perhaps even more important . It will require a complete redesign of how we provide connectivity .
What are the region specific challenges when implementing new technologies in North America ?
Let ’ s start by defining regions , not as south , northeast , west , and so on , but rather as urban and rural . That ’ s where we see challenges most clearly . The future requires Edge Computing , as I ’ ve discussed , but what does Edge Computing require ? Compute and storage , of course . That is easy enough , but Edge Computing also needs networks and clouds – and that ’ s not as easy .
What about in the last year ? And how do you see that developing in the next 12 months ? Would you say the same thing ?
You cannot answer this question without discussing COVID . Obviously , the pandemic caused a lot of hardships for people and the economy . But COVID was also a driver of some fundamentally positive changes .
COVID drove broad acceptance of the remote workforce . It also moved Digital Transformation from the planning stage to execution . Think of the impact these two trends have had on technology – and especially networking .
I would say the most immediate impact was that it fundamentally ‘ broke ’ how we network . We have orders of magnitude more nodes to connect , manage and secure .
These those nodes are constantly moving . What ’ s broken is this : It is too difficult and slow to provision networks since the underlying bandwidth is either too slow or too expensive , and we simply aren ’ t agile enough to keep up with all of these new – and changing – connections .
First , where is the bandwidth ? 5G ? Promising , but that ’ s a ways-off for rural America . Wireless ? Wi-Fi 6E is getting close , but is challenged in terms of performance and range . CBRS ( Citizens Broadband Radio Service ) is very interesting .
We are starting to rethink how we network to fix these issues . What ’ s excellent about this is that these changes – this next generation connectivity – is precisely what we ’ ll need at the edge . We ’ re fixing both problems .
Next , we need a new type of connectivity . These are extremely demanding applications . How do we get SLA-level performance and hardened security in rural areas ? How do we provide this connectivity with extreme agility so far from where IT lives ? These are the regional challenges that I am seeing .
What advice would you offer someone aspiring to obtain a C-Level position in your industry ?
Always dream to change the industry . Always have a dream to try . Be an innovator . p
80 INTELLIGENTCIO NORTH AMERICA www . intelligentcio . com