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In this episode of The IoT Unicorn podcast, Wienke Giezeman, CEO & Co-founder of The Things Network, discusses his work with LoRaWAN and IoT solutions across the globe.

In this episode of The IoT Unicorn Podcast, Remco Ploeg of Altius discusses the challenges and opportunities of creating carbon neutral homes powered by Azure. Download Transcript Here Episode: 00:00 Pete:  Welcome to the IoT unicorn podcast. This is Pete Bernard from Microsoft. And this podcast is for anyone interested in the long-term technology trends in the IoT space and the journey from here to there. So let's get started. Thank you, Remco, I appreciate your time. Thanks for joining us here. So you're actually based in the Netherlands, and I'm here in Bellevue, Washington, and through the magic of... I'm actually using the Squadcast platform right now to connect and record this, but... Welcome to the IoT Unicorn.   00:16 Remco: Thank you, Pete, for having me.   00:18 Pete: Great, so you're based in the Netherlands, and I've been there a bunch of times. I used to go there actually, when I would go to Barcelona for NWC, there was always like a flight at the crack of dawn from Barcelona, and I would transfer in the Netherlands to get back to Seattle. And then one year, I kinda got smart and I said, you know, I'm gonna go to Amsterdam the night before, get a good night's sleep, and then I'll take the 10 AM Direct to Seattle. So I've spent a bunch of those kind of layover nights in Amsterdam, so it's an awesome, awesome place, but... Are you from there originally?   00:52 Remco: Yes, I'm from Rotterdam, so that's the other big city in the Netherlands so that's south of Amsterdam.   00:58 Pete: I see.   01:00 Remco: And I was a lot I think also on the same plane as yourself, so I had to do a lot... To Seattle with the direct flight in the morning. So... And also coming back with the flight early in the morning in Amsterdam again.   01:12 Pete: Yeah, yeah.   01:14 Remco: So I'm based at the moment in Utrecht, in the middle of the country.   01:18 Pete: Okay. So you've been at Altius for about a year or two, a couple of years?   01:25 Remco: Yeah, a little bit, a little bit more than a year. And the beginning of this year, there was an acquisition of Altius by Avanade...   01:34 Pete: Yes.   01:34 Remco: So, I'm joining formally Avanade from the first of January, the coming year 2021. But already, I think for 6 months, I'm working side by side with my Avanade colleagues.   01:45 Pete: And so I know you've been... I know another thing, I did a little research is you were... Altius was named Microsoft's AI Partner of the Year, so that's a big deal. So tell me more about that. What is Altius in AI? What is the... Do you consider Altius an AI company or more of an IoT company that's using AI or how would you describe it?   02:08 Remco: Yeah, so if you look at Altius, we are at the moment, with 400 people in the UK, Netherlands, and India. We've got a full focus on data and AI, so that's also our focus. So IoT is more or less, no side-job but we saw that...   02:21 Pete: A means to an end.   02:23 Remco: A means to an end, exactly. And then started when I joined Altius so that's one and a half years ago with also combining AI with IoT, 'cause I think that that's a great combination that we have there.   02:36 Pete: Yeah, for sure. A lot of times that we've had folks from Qualcomm and other... More telecom-related, I think we had BT on here recently, and it was like the 5G plus AI plus IoT or pick your network that certainly becomes kind of a game-changer for what you can do with a little bit of data, over a large number of sensors or a lot of data... [02:58] ____.   02:58 Remco: I think, already at the moment, even without 5G, 5G is of course already rolling out, we can already do a lot with IoT.   03:11 Pete: Yeah, so actually interesting on that topic. You talk about IoT, so how much do you think with AI and IoT are you seeing on the Cloud versus the Edge, and how much experience are you getting now, are you seeing in a more of an emergence of Edge AI in addition to the cloud AI or what are you seeing there?   03:31 Remco: Yeah, that's a good question. I don't know, 10 years ago, we were moving everything to the clouds, but now we see some of our clouds going back again, so I do a lot of projects around connected buildings. I think that's a great example with Edge computing, is the amount of sensors, especially in new buildings and smart buildings, it's so enormous that moving every data point to the cloud, it's sometimes technical, not possible, and the second, it's too expensive.   04:00 Pete: Right.   04:01 Remco: So we see there are movement back putting Edge devices in the building itself again, and also doing AI on the Edge device itself because of course what you don't want to do in a building is controlling lights in the cloud, for example, you want to control locally, if the internet connection is out there you want to still put on your lights on. And since a couple of years, we are also doing AI on the Edge and AI on the cloud, of course already a little bit longer, and we are controlling, for example, Edge Tech Systems with AI depending on the expected usage of the building and certain conditions. We put certain settings into the building when running those... Yeah, AI is now on Edge device that help us and our clients a lot to control those devices.   04:54 Pete: Yeah, also I had understood talking to some other customers too about Edge AI, especially in AI Vision, it's something where you want to actually process locally, just from a privacy perspective too. I mean there's a transport, obviously, you can't keep streams of data going up into Azure and doing live video analytics, I guess you could and some people do, but for a lot of maybe smaller implementations or other implementations, you wanna kinda do things locally, act locally and then keep the data on-prem basically, right?   05:24 Remco: Yeah, exactly. So we felt also again the smart, to smart build solutions, things like security with cameras, where we can analyze the data off the camera, to see, okay, is somebody trying to breach into the building or do something else. And we all use Edge AI for it.   05:42 Pete: Right, yeah, yeah, that's fantastic. Tell me a little bit, I heard about some of the carbon-neutral housing efforts that you were doing, so tell me more about that. That sounds intriguing.   05:54 Remco: Yeah. So for one of our clients in the Netherlands, it's a company called TBI, and it's a local company with around six or seven [06:02] ____, and one of their main goals is to be the most sustainable builder in the Netherlands, and for that they are building carbon-neutral houses. So that means that the houses are totally carbon-neutral from a building perspective, but also from a usage perspective. So the people that are going to live in that home, on normal conditions, don't need to pay any energy bill every year, so they are really zero... We call it zero-net houses in the Netherlands but carbon-neutral is a better naming for that.   06:35 Pete: So, they're generating power on-site as well, so they're generating their own power...   06:39 Remco: Exactly.   06:39 Pete: And then also all the building is smart enough and efficient enough where it's only consuming the power that's generated on-site. Is that basically?   06:47 Remco: Exactly, so they put solar panels on it to be extracted data from the solar panels. We've got all kind of meters in the home, smart meters, smart edge meters, all kind of temperature, humidity, CO2 sensors in the home. We extract all the data into the clouds, to do the analytics and to prove that the house is also carbon neutral.   07:07 Pete: And so do those exist? [chuckle] It seems like... That's a tough one, isn't it? I guess it depends on the size of your house and what you're doing in your house, but is that feasible?   07:17 Remco: Yeah. So in the Netherlands, we don't have big houses like in the US.   07:20 Pete: Right, right. No McMansions.   07:23 Remco: So it's more, yeah, so it's more [07:26] ____ houses. And yeah, we have around, also normal houses, and I think 120, 130 meters, square meters, so that's not huge.   07:36 Pete: No, no. The square footage of the house also limits maybe the amount of energy you can create, right? You've got limited space for solar panels.   07:41 Remco: Exactly, exactly. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And one of the other things that is of course very important is, of course, the energy with the solar panels. Second of all, of course, if in the winter, for example, if the homeowner put the window open, the whole day, that house will never be carbon neutral because heating will...   08:05 Pete: Yeah.   08:05 Remco: Go the whole day and all night.   08:07 Pete: Can't solve for bad behaviour.   08:08 Pete: And that's why we need to...   [laughter]   08:10 Remco: Exactly, yeah. So we also try to help the homeowner to get insight in that usage and that energy.   08:18 Pete: I see.   08:18 Remco: To reduce energy.   08:20 Pete: Is the power generated primarily through solar or is there any kind of wind or other geothermal or...   08:25 Remco: No, at the moment, in the houses, it's really solar panels and of course the extra energy that they bring into the home is from green energy. So in the Netherlands, most of the homes use green energy.   08:37 Pete: Ah, see, I see.   08:39 Remco: Or other solar panels...   08:39 Pete: So they're getting a power feed from the grid, from the government grid, that's green energy, that's probably wind-powered, right? And then they're augmenting that with local solar, and then the energy they're consuming...   08:50 Remco: Exactly.   08:50 Pete: Is kind of net neutral, I guess.   08:53 Remco: Net neutral, yeah. Exactly.   08:55 Pete: Fantastic.   08:56 Remco: Yeah. Because in the winter, of course, you don't have enough sun. We don't have enough sun in the Netherlands.   09:00 Pete: Right. Same here, I mean you know...   09:01 Remco: At the end of winter [09:02] ____.   09:02 P

In this episode of The IoT Unicorn Podcast, independent civic engineer and former Chief Xbox Officer at Microsoft, Robbie Bach, discusses teamwork and leadership in the tech space. Download Transcript Here 00:00 Pete Bernard: Welcome to the IoT unicorn podcast. This is Pete Bernard from Microsoft. And this podcast is for anyone interested in the long-term technology trends in the IoT space and the journey from here to there. So let's get started.   [music]   00:23 PB: On this episode of the IoT unicorn, I chat with Robbie Bach, former Microsoft executive. He was there for about 22 years, he was the chief Xbox officer and drove that program for a long, long time. We talk about Xbox, Xbox Revisited the new book he wrote, we also talk about some other projects like Zoom and Microsoft Kin or what we call Project Pink, and just in general leadership principles and techniques for leading through ambiguity with a ton of technology, especially in the IoT space. So great Robbie, thanks a lot for taking the time to join us here on the IoT unicorn. First off, kind of disclaimer, the topics typically are IoT-oriented, [chuckle] but we're gonna take a little diversion today, but I think it's still gonna be germane and... So anyway, I just wanted to thank you for taking the time to join us.   01:20 Robbie Bach: Happy to do it.   01:22 PB: Good, good. I don't know if there's a phone ringing there or something...   01:24 RB: Yeah, that's mine. [chuckle] We can start over if you like, that's a phone that I have no control over, it's actually the house phone ringing in my office.   01:34 PB: Oh, okay. That's alright. Don't worry about it we'll... It's part of a sincere authentic nature of the conversation, [chuckle] but I think one of the things... And I read your book, Xbox Revisited, which is cool, and I thought for today, one of the things that I thought was really germane was just talking about technology and leadership, or just leadership in general, and it was really fascinating to kinda read through your journey with leadership and the pluses and minuses and what you've learned about it. And I think in the IoT space, we're sort of like awash in technology. Before we started recording, I was explaining how I was futzing with my system and just too many pieces of tech, and a lot of companies, they have a tons of technology, there's no shortage, now we got 5G and LPWA and all these AI. But how do you take that ambiguous technologies swamp and actually provide some kind of leadership and guidance and structure or framework around thinking about things, so you can get things done and you can get organizations, especially big organizations, you can imagine, moving in the right direction. And I thought there was a lot in your book around Xbox Revisited that resonated with probably what a lot of companies are thinking about today, is like how do we navigate through some of the tech?   03:01 RB: The thing I always respond... I talk a lot about innovation, and I talk somewhat about that in Xbox Revisited, but I do a lot of it in the public speaking I do. And I talk about creativity and how do you come up with new ideas, and technology ends up being third on my list of things not first. And the things that come first are ironically, business model, because it turns out a huge portion of innovation actually happens in business models, and the second thing is experience and sort of how people interact with the technology, and then comes technology. And when something is technically lead, maybe it has a good sustainable business model and maybe it has a good experience, but maybe it doesn't, and that's why the first person to market with the technology doesn't always win. And my experience has been that a sustainable business with a great customer experience will beat somebody who has a great technology without a good experience, and so we tend to focus on those first two, first.   04:14 PB: Yeah, so when you... Probably you were going through this with the Xbox, was like, talking about the purpose, principles and priorities. I think I got that right?   04:27 RB: Yeah.   04:28 PB: So you manifested that with Xbox, are there other example you've seen where companies have been able to snap to a framework like that and get them moving in the right direction?   04:37 RB: Well, think about... One of the other companies I work with, is a company called Sonos, and they're really a great company, and they have amazing technology, they've got one of the best IP portfolios in the industry, they've done some very cool tech things, but they do not lead with technology, they absolutely don't. They lead with the experience, if you have somebody who has a Sonos system, they don't talk about the cool networking architecture that it has or how it makes sure to sync audio on a big TV screen and do surround sound easily. They talk about, "Oh God, it was so easy to set up and the music played and it sounded great." That's all experience-focused work. And it's super powerful, and they have their own business model which is fairly traditional, but when you think about somebody like Spotify and the access you get to the world's music and the experience you have in accessing that music, and they have a business model, which I think is challenging, but it's subscription-based, so that's been an innovation over the last 10 years or so, and those are the types of things people end up migrating to. And there are people in the world who have, there's higher-end sound systems than Sonos for sure, they love their sound quality, but if you wanna spend money, you can get higher-end sound systems, but they're hard to use, difficult to set up, and Sonos has this incredibly simple model and it just works.   06:13 PB: Yeah, one of the frameworks we've been using is the Jobs-To-Be-Done framework, I think you're familiar with that, but that's another way of really titrating down to what are the outcomes you want to accomplish, and then how do you get those jobs done?   06:26 RB: Well, in particular, if the jobs done reflect back on customer issues, to me, so much of what happens in the IoT space has to be, "Okay, what problem are we trying to solve? And if we're trying to solve a customer problem, okay, I get that." And so let's focus on solving the customer problem. Well, like turning on lights, not actually a customer problem, right?   06:54 PB: Right. [chuckle]   06:54 RB: Unless you wanna turn on the light. Now, if you say, "Oh, customers want controlled settings and they wanna make... " There's other issues with lighting that customers can relate to and wanna fix. Okay. Great, let's get after those. Customers knew how to set their heat, it turns out, but now solve some other issues around heating that were actually real customer problem. And so if the jobs done relate to customers, I'm all in.   07:22 PB: Right, right. Yeah, no it's true. At the end of the day, if you cannot solve a customer problem. I thought what actually was interesting in your book, they had a couple of things that caught my eye. First of all, I didn't realize you were a tennis player.   07:33 RB: Right.   07:34 PB: So, I'm a tennis player.   07:35 RB: Oh, cool.   07:36 PB: But you were in the top 50 in the US, so you'd probably kick my butt, but I thought that was cool. Are you still playing tennis by the way?   07:45 RB: I play a little bit of tennis, I don't play as much. I have a shoulder that has hit about 300 and too many serves.   07:53 PB: Okay. Yeah. That's a tough one.   07:54 RB: So I'm trying to avoid shoulder surgery. If I really wanted to keep playing competitively, I would have to have some work done.   08:00 PB: Yeah. Okay. Yeah, no, I was good. Actually, I got back into it, kind of a funny anecdote. I'd played for a long time back in the... When I was a kid, back in the '80s, and took a long time off and got back into it a few years ago and actually stepped on to the court at the pro club here. And I had my Donnay racket with me and the pro is like, "They went out of business like 10 years ago." So the first thing was, "You need to get your gear in shape." And so I learned a lot. But yeah, I play a few times a week, that was fun. That's good.   08:35 RB: I had the same experience I went to... I had some mid-size rackets, which were old and I went to upgrade them, which was fine, and then I went to go get them strung, and the guy asked me what tension I wanted them strung at and I was, "Oh, I don't know, 58 pounds." He said, "Well, is that for the horizontal strings or the vertical strings?" I was like, "Oh, well, that's a new idea." And, "Dude, what kind of strings do you want?" Oh, different for horizontal and vertical strings, I mean, these are all new ideas when you had a small face Donnay, none of that mattered. Now with these big surfaces. Again, the thing we're talking about, the technology, the solution you're solving is tennis players can keep the ball on the strings for a long time. And that would be a lot of control.   09:18 PB: I know. It's amazing I mean, how the sport's evolved, but like many things. The other thing that kinda popped out, I love this phrase, seagull management. Maybe you can talk a little bit about seagull management, that is something I will use over and over again, but can you give me like a...   09:35 RB: Yeah, look, I think there's lots of people who as leaders think their job is to dive in, evaluate something, poop on it and then leave, and so those are the seagulls. And in fact, as a manager, your job is actually quite different than that. Your job is to put a framework in place, to work with your employees to establish the set of priorities and things that they're gonna focus on, and they'll come back to you and say, "Hey, here's how it's going." And you'll give them ideas and thoughts on how to improve or make progress and answer questions, and, oh by the way, facilitate solutions where you can actually help. But the idea in your job is to sort of occasionally fly in and spot check their work, and then tell them they're doing the wrong thing. I

In this episode of The IoT Unicorn Podcast, Matt Chatterley and Tom Bennett of British Telecom discuss some of the benefits and challenges of implementing 5G. Download Transcript Here  00:00 Pete Bernard: Welcome to the IoT Unicorn Podcast. This is Pete Bernard from Microsoft, and this podcast is for anyone interested in the long-term technology trends in the IoT space and the journey from here to there. So let's get started.   [music]   00:21 PB: On this upcoming episode of the IoT Unicorn I have a great conversation with Tom Bennett and Matt Chatterley, both of British Telecom. And they explain to me what the term hospital pass means, we talk about some great British beer and all things 5G, past, present and future, and not just for iPhones. So please join us.   00:44 PB: Thanks, Tom and Matt, I'm gonna... This is actually an interesting milestone for us, this is the first time I've had two guests at once on the IoT Unicorn, and I think when I originally was thinking back about having you guys on the show... I've had lots of conversations with each of you individually, and also some really good conversations together and I thought, "Well, let's just get everybody on the horn here and talk about some things around 5G and stuff like that" so I appreciate you guys both making the time all the way from the UK to pipe in here and join us on the Unicorn, so thank you very much.   01:19 Tom Bennett: Thank you for the invite, yeah.   01:21 PB: Sure, sure. So maybe before we get into lots of acronyms and Telco stuff, well, maybe just give us a little bit of a back story. Maybe Tom and Matt about sort of... We're talking about BT, British Telecom, so that's quite a storied institution, and I know that you had worked at EE before that and stuff, maybe just give us a little bit of background about how did each of you get here to this point in time.   [laughter]   01:47 TB: How far back are we allowed to go?   01:50 PB: Oh, you know.   01:50 TB: 25 years, maybe not. So yeah, I joined this thing called 2G, it was a small company that started, anyway, that was 25 years ago. Matt and I, we started a little bit of history of space to EE. So EE is the largest and best mobile operator in the UK and it was formed 10 years ago from the merger of what was then the third and fourth place operators, so it was Orange and T-Mobile. Now by forming that merger it created not just a company, but great assets, and in fact it is number one by customer number. It also had the opportunity to go on to be the best from a network perspective and we did that, we were... In fact, Matt and I started to meet yourself, Pete, was eight years ago when we launched 4G and we were a year, year and a half ahead of the competition in the UK.   02:44 PB: That's right.   02:44 TB: And the rest is history from there. We launched 4G first in the UK, launched our new brand, EE and the rollout was phenomenal. From there, we hit top 10 cities, and then right now, I think our 4G coverage is just pushing 85%, 86% of the geography of the country, not just people, geography of the country, and that's kind of phenomenal eight years after launch. In fact, our launch anniversary is this November. This first week in November we launched. And yeah, that's where we started and then obviously BT, which has no mobile assets, BT originally was just the fixed operator. I've looked at this new EE upstart with its phenomenal 4G network and said, "Yeah, we want some of that." And four years ago Matt? Four years ago they bought us.   03:39 Matt Chatterley: [03:39] ____.   03:41 TB: We all moved in to BT and really that was very much a both commercially strategic and technologically kind of architecturally strategic decision because...   03:52 PB: Wow, that's cool. Something happened.   03:53 TB: Because as you roll forward, I'm sure you know, really it's about running forward with the best 4G and now 5G network, and it's a converse plate, it's how you leverage both assets together for the fixed and mobile network, and that's a very, very, very brief snapshot of where we started as third and fourth place operator and now we work for the largest Telco in the UK.   04:15 PB: Right. And how long have you and Matt been working together?   04:18 MC: It's far too long...   [laughter]   04:20 TB: Way too long, I mean we have counselling, it's a bit like a marriage.   04:24 PB: Good, good, with an HR benefit.   04:25 TB: [04:25] ____.   [laughter]   04:27 MC: At the start of the JV, I was actually in Deutsche Telekom, working for DT International, and then they wanted someone to go into the JV and the Clean Team where if it didn't work out, you get six months pay not to work and then, unfortunately, it did work out. So I've had [04:40] ____.   [laughter]   04:40 MC: Yeah, so I think we started right at the very beginning, didn't we Tom?   04:45 TB: Yeah, we did.   04:45 MC: When we figured out what the right approach would be to go to make devices work in this space, so yeah, we were right at the very start.   04:51 PB: I see. So, today what is your... For Tom and Matt, just for our customers, and our customers are our listener's edification, what is your current accountabilities or what are you guys working on? [laughter] Or not working on, I don't know.   05:06 TB: Yeah, exactly, we only work as much as we can. No. So I'm accountable for partnerships, external partnerships such as this with Microsoft and innovations, so I pick up anything from a innovation perspective, be that technology, service, solution.   05:21 PB: Okay cool.   05:22 MC: And I look after all things related to devices and identities, which is what we call SIM cards, but it's actually much more overreaching that, and then the partnership as well from a mobile perspective. So the team that we've got looks after pretty much... If it goes onto the network we've tested and approved it and made sure it works.   05:40 PB: Right. Right. Cool. Yeah, actually before we got into the official podcast here, I was mentioning to Tom about... I remember going to the Great British Beer Festival with Tom a few years ago. [laughter] Which was a lot of fun. That was pretty cool. That was serious beer culture going on, and I know they didn't have it this past year, but...   06:00 MC: There's some very bizarre beers there though.   06:02 TB: Hell yeah, there is.   06:03 PB: Yeah, wild stuff. I saw some controversy where they were gonna... This year, I think when they were gonna have it, they put out some sort of glass or something and it had Coronavirus little logos on it, and I think they got a lot of pushback on that...   [laughter]   06:15 TB: Yeah, I can imagine they did.   06:17 PB: Way too soon, way too soon, but if you're gonna go to the UK, beer has gotta be part of the... Part of the experience.   06:23 TB: Oh absolutely. Yeah. Very, very much. Yeah. Beer's absolutely part of the culture here and it's a very big microbrewery ecosystem that this is... And to Matt's point far too many people you know had to brew beer and go "Oh, wonder what that tastes like?"   [laughter]   06:42 MC: Let's throw this in there and then call it something crazy.   06:45 PB: That's right. That's right. Well, you know, it doesn't take much, but that's good. So let's talk about 5G a little bit, 'cause I know you guys were really on the front edge of a lot of 5G development and deployment in the UK. And I know that BT's made a lot of noise about the 5G deployments. Maybe can you share with us what surprised you about that or how is it going? What was the learnings from that early, early rollout of 5G?   07:18 TB: Yeah. Should I start with the network, Matt, and you can talk to the devices.   07:23 MC: Yeah, cool.   07:25 TB: So I suppose when we launched 4G, we were in a unique position. We had quite a significant amount of what was then 2G spectrum, so 1800Mhz, and that gave us a great opportunity because we could reuse the existing antennas. Basically what we didn't need to do is organize a crane, a lift crew and install brand-new equipment up the tower or on the rooftop. So our 4G rollout was phenomenally fast. 5G, we didn't have that luxury. Let's be frank. 5G, even though last year, what we launched was 5 GB radio so we haven't launched standalone yet. I thought that these are on the record. Last year was very much a 5G non-standalone, but that still comes with significant logistical challenges because it's a new spectrum band so it's 3.4, 3.5. And that requires brand new antennas. It requires new equipment in the base station and it required upgrade to the transmission to the site, so the backhaul for 10 gig in most cases.   08:32 TB: So, yeah, logistically a much slower rollout. You are talking about good old-fashioned concrete and steel rollout, and therefore that was probably one of the key challenges for us, was the sheer volume of change physically on a per-site basis. Whereas previously, as I said, with 4G, relatively simple. Not massively simple but relatively simple being you weren't changing the antenna. Now we're installing brand-new antennas. And then the complication that brings in terms of the integration and the assurance of the service, because now we're installing new software, new hardware, active antennas, active equipment at the base, and we've gotta get the 4G and the 5G working together for the best service experience. And that's the point at which traditionally I will come to that because as a customer what you care about is what's on the device.   09:24 MC: Yeah, and I think that's what we tried to focus on as well, was the it's all well and good what we do from a network point of view, but if the customer doesn't get a good experience on the device side, then it's irrelevant. And I think some of the things we were talking about earlier on, where I think 2G went from standards complete to devices launching in around three years.   09:43 TB: Yeah, it was.   09:44 MC: I remember being involved in 3G when I was a an [0

In this episode of The IoT Unicorn Podcast, Sarah Maston, Senior Solution Architect at Microsoft, discusses the development of the animal conservation initiative, Project 15. Download Transcript Here 00:00 Pete Bernard: Welcome to the IoT Unicorn podcast. This is Pete Bernard from Microsoft, and this podcast is for anyone interested in the long-term technology trends in the IoT space and the journey from here to there. So let's get started.   [music]   00:21 PB: On this episode of the IoT unicorn, we talk to a very interesting person doing very interesting things, and that's Sarah Maston of Microsoft. We talk about Boston University where we both went to school, a little bit about nutrition and nutrition technology, but we spend quite a bit of time talking about Project 15, which is an open platform effort that her and her colleagues have been championing. It's an anti-poaching platform that's been adopted by a number of NGOs around the world, and we talk about that and the technology behind it. So please join us.   [music]   00:58 PB: Sarah, thanks for joining us. We've had a lot of different guests on the show from silicon partners to telecom, internal Microsoft, I think you kind of fall into the category of very interesting Microsoft people that are doing very interesting things, so I'm gonna tee that up. Maybe you can give us a little bit of an intro yourself and sort of some background.   01:18 Sarah Maston: Sure, it's funny, when I look at my cats, I don't know that I'm that, they think I'm that interesting, but thank you. [chuckle] I'm really happy to be here. Where did I come from? So I actually have a really long history in the database space. I started out making data warehouses before that was a thing, that kinda grew, and so I started out as a medical programmer, actually, at a company called Meditech in Massachusetts.   01:56 PB: I see. Oh, where in Massachusetts, by the way?   02:00 SM: Ah, they were in Natick, but I lived in Arlington, I went to BU.   02:04 PB: So interesting, interesting... Oh, you went to BU? Oh, I went to BU also.   02:08 SM: I did, once upon a time. Oh, yay!   02:10 PB: I was a BA/MA BU grad, isn't that weird?   02:12 SM: Go Terriers!   02:12 PB: No, I was gonna say... Yeah, go Terriers. I was gonna say I had, my first job out of college was in West Natick.   02:19 SM: Oh, interesting.   02:19 PB: There was a little shop called The Bit Bucket computer store, and my professor from BU, my assembly language professor actually ran the company, The Bit Bucket, and we built computers, branded computers, and I was his first engineering hire, and it was in West Natick. I didn't stay there that long, 'cause it was kind of like a weird job, but yeah, The Bit Bucket, I remember West Natick... Yeah, Natick's a nice area. That's cool.   02:49 SM: So I was gonna say did they have a lot of Twinkies, 'cause I believe that the Twinkie fact... I don't know. I think it's in Natick...   02:57 PB: Oh, the Twinkie was there?   02:58 SM: I'm unclear.   03:00 PB: I think that was it, I know there's Necco Wafers too was out there.   03:01 SM: Oh, delicious, delicious.   03:01 PB: I'm not sure where that is, yeah.   03:03 SM: Yeah, no, I actually have a degree in psychology and women's studies from BU.   03:08 PB: Fantastic.   03:09 SM: So, a little bit...   03:10 PB: Fantastic, okay. Go Terriers, yeah. Okay.   03:13 SM: Okay.   03:14 PB: There you go.   03:15 SM: Back to this.   03:15 PB: We should have cleared that up in the pre, in the preamble before we started recording, but that's okay, now we know, so that's good.   03:21 SM: Thank you. Yeah, so I did a lot of data warehouses, and I put myself actually in Harvard's night school to kind of get out of data and start learning more Java-ey, getting into more programming stuff, because I had a really weird side hobby then as well, where I had been really sick in my late 20s, and I started studying nutrition, and I ended up creating what was a graph database of food, and I wanted to go and put myself in Harvard 'cause it was easier to learn how to code it than to sort of explain it. And so that journey led me to... I actually invented that over at IBM a couple of years ago and working at IBM, I met a colleague there that had come to Microsoft and so how did you come to Microsoft? Well, I had a friend, and then I met the IoT group and they... It was funny because I hadn't, I was kind of the first person in the group that hadn't built a computer to be.   04:44 PB: Right, right.   04:45 SM: Wasn't a hardware person, and but when they brought me in to start talking about that bigger data conversation, so that's how I got here.   04:57 PB: Interesting. Yeah, cool, so obviously you've been here, I think a couple of years or two years or...   05:01 SM: I have.   05:02 PB: Just about that. That's exciting. Yeah, so that's an interesting path, I think a lot of people get to Microsoft through professional connections, personal connections, there's all sorts of different ways and so you were involved in nutrition and...   05:16 SM: I was.   05:16 PB: And kind of analyzing that. Is that still a big kind of passion of yours, personal nutrition and things?   05:22 SM: I, well yes, personal. Once I designed the graph with the team there, which was the connection of food to disease through phyto-chemicals and the reactions in your bios, kind of like a Facebook of food. I had spent so much... Honestly, I had spent so much time on that in my life that the IoT space and starting to learn more formally about that was so exciting, and a lot of my data colleagues in my circle, same thing, because sometimes you can be doing the same thing and database, database... What's new? And so this was actually really fun, and it was in the beginning of when I got here, my job was a lot of enablement. We were gonna teach people how to use Azure and how to use Azure IoT and etcetera. And that's my fault that I'm having a notification 'cause clearly I...   06:25 PB: That's okay.   06:26 SM: I could have turned that off.   [chuckle]   06:30 SM: But what's interesting is that I... This, it's kind of a strange story in the sense that I... It's not that strange, but I was outside and of my apartment and I saw a lot of smoke and I freaked out, and I ran into my building to save my cats and long story, very short, lots of stress, but the next day, I ended up designing a safety platform that could use IoT to speak differently in a crisis, and so that's really something that whenever I talk about my journey to Microsoft and learning something new is that it was so great to have the space to be like, "Hey, I have an idea." But anyway, that's another story. [chuckle]   07:26 PB: Fascinating. Yeah, I do actually, I use the... I'm kind of a Fitbit fan, and I use the food logging on Fitbit, and it gives me a macro-nutrient breakdown and stuff, and so I've been kind of on my own health journey in the past year or so and feeling good, feeling fit. And part of it is kind of analyzing what I ingest, and I feel like we're just sort of at the beginning of a lot of that science like I would love for the data I'm putting into the Fitbit system, which I guess is now Google, just to get even more analysis of that over time. So it's fascinating kind of measuring what you put into your body and how your body is working, and we had a Dr. David Rhew from Microsoft's chief medical officer on a few weeks ago, and talking about COVID of course, but also just more of the intersection of health and technology and very early stages of really taking advantage of that kind of combination, so...   08:24 SM: No, that's true. It's my work, it was... My work pretty much focused on just taking stuff we do with process, architecture and analysis, and then data, of course, but if I think back when my hair was much browner, I just thought what's breaking when it came to metabolic syndrome, and it was... Well, what happens when I do this and then how does your... And what does your intestinal villi do? And so basically connecting those dots to go through the process architecture of digestion and then to make sort of the data model of that. And to say, "Oh, when you eat oatmeal, the pectin and beta-glucan, pectin from apples and pears comes in, it absorbs bile salts." Basically, all those different processes and then how those can combine and really... Back in the day, I created what's called a food program, and that's also known as a diet, but a food program that would layer what foods to eat, how to change your internals to do what it needed to do. And I guess my own doctor took notice because I lowered my cholesterol 90 points in under three months, so...   09:48 PB: Wow.   09:49 SM: Then I made a system that did it, and so that was really... And I met a lot of really cool people in that journey. Then unfortunately, I got sick from stress, but when I came out of that, here I was, and then I invented some new stuff.   10:12 PB: Good, so let's talk about some new stuff. You've been sort of very, very busy, not only being a new... Fairly new Microsoft employee, but also building up something that is referred to as Project 15 for probably some of our listeners are probably familiar, but why don't you give us a little bit of a recap of the origin story around Project 15 and where that's at?   10:40 SM: Sure, I'd love to. I do a little project in the... Although it's a little bigger now, in my spare nights and in weekend hours with a few friends of mine here at Microsoft and... Alright, so the origin story, once upon a time, it really speaks back to that incident with the cat, and essentially, I made a safety system that could use IoT devices to speak to a community within an emergency. So if you thought about some of the stuff that was going on, you have to go to Twitter to find hashtag, you have to go... You don't really know what's going on. There are so many systems getting good data to first responders, but for us, we don't really

In this episode of The IoT Unicorn Podcast, Rene Haas, President Intellectual Property Group at Arm, discusses the development of edge devices and the 5G wave. Download Transcript Here 00:00 PETE BERNARD: Rene, thanks again for joining us here on the IoT Unicorn. I was trying to remember the last time actually we saw each other face-to-face. That's something that we do these days. I think it was Barcelona 2019 or something. It was a while ago. But again, thanks for joining us today. 00:23 RENE HAAS: You are welcome. I wasn't sure if it was CES of 2020, but... 00:28 PETE BERNARD: It could be. 00:28 RENE HAAS: Gosh, you might be right. Barcelona, 2019. My gosh, over 18 months ago. 00:32 PETE BERNARD: Yeah, that was a long time ago. Well, CES 2020 was our last... It was kind of the last hurrah for events, although going to Vegas always has its potential infection rates of all sorts of things going on there, but... Not in that case, but... Cool, yeah, no, it's good to see you again, and we've known each other for a little while and worked on some interesting projects, so it was great to have you on the show, and obviously very timely with the DevSummit coming up and some recent news that we'll talk about as well. But maybe you can give us and the listeners a little background on your journey to where you're at as President of Arm IP. 02:07 RENE HAAS: So my role at Arm is I run the IP products group. Our acronym is IPG, Intellectual Property Products Group, and that's the sales marketing development of all of our products, GPUs, CPUs, NPUs for the markets that we serve, the client market, infrastructure market, automotive autonomous and IoT. I am in the Bay Area now, but I've had a fun journey at Arm. I have spent seven years at Arm, but only a few years in the Bay Area. I was in Shanghai, China for two years, and I was in the UK for three, living in London, commuting to Cambridge. And I just came back to the Bay Area at the beginning of 2020, and... 02:50 PETE BERNARD: Are you an original California person or what's your... Where is your home base? 02:54 RENE HAAS: I'm originally from Upstate New York. Yeah, I'm, originally from Upstate New York. 02:58 PETE BERNARD: Wow, cool. 02:58 RENE HAAS: My dad was a Xerox guy, so I was a son of a Xerox guy working in... He was working in Rochester, New York, which is where I grew up. And then I came out to California in the mid-1990s, and I've been here ever since. 03:12 PETE BERNARD: I'm a New Jersey person myself, so that's something we have in common, the Tri-state area. Although Rochester is pretty far up state there. 03:21 RENE HAAS: Serious snow country. 03:22 PETE BERNARD: Serious, yes. Good, good. Excellent. So you've been at Arm for a while then, and you also spent a little bit of time at Nvidia. 03:31 RENE HAAS: I did, I did. I'm gonna pre-fetch probably your next set of questions, but before I spent... 03:37 PETE BERNARD: No pun intended. 03:38 RENE HAAS: Seven years at Arm I was with Nvidia for seven years doing a number of different roles there, but primarily in the notebook graphics space, GPUs, as well as Arm-based CPUs that went into all different types of laptops including the very first Surface that was running Windows 8 on Arm. 04:00 PETE BERNARD: Yes, those were the days. I had one of those. A lot of us up in Redmond had one of those. [chuckle] Unfortunately, not a lot of the other people had them. That was the problem. [chuckle] But, so cool. So now sort of full circle, just to touch upon that topic, Nvidia and Arm. For you, it's kind of break out the old badge, I guess... 04:20 RENE HAAS: Yeah. It's something that came live last Monday. Obviously, the rumors had been out for a number of weeks, so some people were surprised, but some people were not so surprised when it finally was announced to everyone actually last Sunday. It was supposed to be on Monday, and then we pulled it forward to Sunday. We're actually very excited about it at Arm, we think it's a really, really amazing opportunity. Nvidia is an amazing company, has done some fantastic things over the years obviously. And Arm efforts around client and data center, autonomous and such. When we think about what's going on in the next wave of computing where everything is gonna be touching something that is around artificial intelligence, I think the opportunities for the two companies to be a combined entity in this new area of computing, the opportunities are somewhat limitless. 05:17 RENE HAAS: So we're quite excited. Me, on a personal level, sometimes when these M&A things [05:21] ____ talking to the company on either side, there's a lot of questions of, "Do I know these folks? And can we really understand what their language is?" But for me, having spent equal amount of time in both places, I feel very fortunate to be in a position to be where we are on this, and it should be very exciting. And someone over there even pinged me not long after the announcement and said, "Hey, your email address is still available." So it's interesting how things circle back. 05:55 PETE BERNARD: Yeah, yeah, I wonder if you get credited those seven years at Nvidia as part of your Arm tenure. So how that works I'm not sure. 06:00 RENE HAAS: You know what, that's a really good question. I haven't... 06:03 PETE BERNARD: You might get a double hit on that one. 06:06 RENE HAAS: Yeah. In fact [06:08] ____ Pete, that was not on the FAQ. That's a good one. I'm gonna go check on that. 06:14 PETE BERNARD: Well, one of the things that's happened over the past number of years, what's been super exciting working with Arm is kind of the proliferation of where Arm is, the Arm silicon showing up. And you mentioned the early experiments, early efforts I should say, on Windows on Arm, but we had kind of a relaunch or a re-emergence of that tech a couple years ago, and I know I had the pleasure of working with you guys on that. So Windows on Arm, Windows on Snapdragon and all that stuff, it seems to be kind of a resurgence now on that as well. So what are your thoughts there? 06:50 RENE HAAS: Oh gosh. And as I mentioned, the history with working with Nvidia and Arm and Microsoft for me goes way back. And having worked on the original Surface product, that was basically what we called [07:06] ____ back in the day. And if I just think back to the value proposition we were hoping to get from those systems, it was really around extended battery life, always on, always connected, things like that. But you go back those years, there was no connectivity story, so those were just obviously purely WiFi devices. And the app story was really, really incomplete. I remember meeting with analysts early on and one of the biggest questions that I got asked when we were going to press reviews was, "Will it run iTunes?" And the answer to that question at the time was, "No." And that was a bit of a killer, if you just think about how people were getting access to music back and when these products came out. Fast-forward to now, the landscape is so different when you just think about, A, how many of our applications exist in the Cloud? B, the devices that have been introduced by third-party OEMs and as well as Microsoft. You have these amazing connectivity type of solutions that are brought forward by Snapdragon, so there's a great story in terms of connectivity. There's a great story in terms of app compatibilities on Windows 10 with everything running across. So we... 08:19 PETE BERNARD: Including iTunes, by the way. So iTunes now runs on that. 08:23 RENE HAAS: ITunes runs. And I bet you if I went through and asked that analyst and told them that iTunes ran successfully on these Windows devices, he would not care. But yeah, the experience is great. We use a lot of them inside of Arm. In fact, when I was living in the UK, I used to use it all the time on the train because the WiFi was actually spotty on the train and the cellular worked pretty good, and it was a great device to use. And not the least of which, I would literally leave my power supply back in the flat during the day. I wouldn't bring it with me, wouldn't need it. And so the devices have really, really advanced, and then there's just more great things to come. 09:04 PETE BERNARD: Yeah, fantastic. I use the Galaxy Book as my main PC and yeah, it's a game changer. When you don't have to worry about power and connectivity, all of a sudden, it's like a behavioral change in how you use a PC, so it's pretty cool stuff. And then I guess the other big thing where you're making a lot of headway with partners is in the Cloud and sort of bringing a lot of low-power. A lot of times, people think of low-power as battery life, but it's not just battery life, it's just low-power, a greener, more smarter consumption of power, overall, especially in a big data center. 09:42 RENE HAAS: Yeah, no, that's exactly right. Arm has been working on products for the data center for actually a long time. Even from back in the time when I was at Nvidia, Arm was working with early partners around SSEs for the data center and such. Like everything else, over 10 years a lot of things have changed. Confluence of a lot of work being done on the engineering side to get great products. We've gone from 32-bit to 64-bit. The performance has increased. Geometries have also gone in such a way that you've gone from 10 to seven to five nanometre type of technologies now, so you can get some really, really powerful type of processing. And then just again, like any technology trend, you need a confluence of a number of things to take place. 10:32 RENE HAAS: 10 years ago, we were thinking largely about the enterprise; we weren't thinking as much about the Cloud. And what has happened with everything moving towards the Cloud, to your point, it's put such a premium on data efficiency, on power. These Cloud data centers typically have a very, very fixed power budget and a very fixed area where they put the compute capacity. So efficiency really, really matters, it's really, really important. And we continue to innovate in this area. We've introduced some new products. Our Neoverse V1, which has scalar vector processing for HPC and high-end computing. Our N2 plat

In this episode of The IoT Unicorn Podcast, Cory Clarke, VP of Product Management and Strategic Partnerships at RXR Realty, discusses some of the IoT solutions his company is using to facilitate a safer return to the workplace during COVID-19. Download Transcript Here   00:00 Pete Bernard: Cory, thanks for joining us, appreciate you taking the time. And I've done a little bit of looking at your LinkedIn profile and kind of understanding where RXR is at, but maybe you can kinda give us a little introduction about who you are and what your story is, and then we can talk a little bit about what you're doing.   00:19 Cory Clarke: Sure. I'm Cory Clarke. I lead product at RXR's digital labs. RXR is a New York real estate company, we own around 26 million square feet, 20 or 30 buildings, many really iconic ones like the stair at Lee High or the Helmsley Building. And yeah. Before RXR, I worked at WeWork for a couple of years, leading their Powered by We Group and Powered by We Technology. That was the technology they were building for enterprise clients to improve the experience of the workplace. And always kind of been interested in the overall workplace experience, actually I trained as an architect.   01:03 S1: Yeah, I see that.   01:05 CC: Seven years of architecture school, and then got entranced by technology and started working in software development and never really looked back. I did a lot of work for companies doing intranets and a lot of employee enablement, and really got interested in how technology can transform the employee experience, and that's what led me to WeWork and ultimately to RXR.   01:29 S1: Yeah. Well, it's interesting, you mentioned that... I talk to a lot of folks, and it seems every company is turning into some kind of technology company, or every company needs to have an element of software technology as part of its strategy. There's no such thing as a kind of a pure play, non-tech company anymore.   01:47 CC: Yeah, yeah, it's interesting. Every financial company is a technology company, I think every real estate company is eventually gonna be a technology company.   01:55 S1: Yeah. I was actually... A kind of a side bar, but I was futzing around with these bluetooth connected water systems over my long weekend made by Orbit. And Orbit makes all these little sprinkler googahs. And... So now they have these Bluetooth connected googahs, and they have an app that you download, and it's pretty cool, but you can tell at Orbit at some point the switch went off to say, "We're not just a sprinkler company, now we need to be a tech company with sprinklers and we need to write apps and we need to do stuff." So I suspect realtors like RXR and other folks are like, "Yeah, we're doing this thing, but now we really need the tech to take it to the next level." And...   02:37 CC: Yeah. I think the real estate world's kind of where I feel like where retail was maybe in the late 90s, early aughts, where like the... Brick-and-mortar was making this huge transition to online and real estate really in the last five, 10 years has gotten a ton of investment in PropTech and trying to make that same transition into a more... Like... Technology enabled services.   03:02 S1: Yeah. No, I can imagine. I asked you this before we started recording, but... You're kind of... You said you were a East Coast, you're an East Coast transplant.   03:14 CC: Yes.   03:15 S1: Or you're a... You've acclimated to become an East Coaster. I'm from New Jersey myself, that's why when I saw the background in New York, I thought maybe you were East Coast-y. You consider yourself now the East Coast person.   03:28 CC: Yeah, I am naturalized... Naturalized.   03:31 S1: Naturalized, yes excellent.   03:32 CC: Yeah. I've been in New York City... There's definitely people that were born and bred here, but there's a lot of people that come here and never leave. And yeah...   03:43 S1: Awesome. Yeah, it's an incredible area. I was actually in Long Island this summer for a little bit and got the New York vibe there, so that was good.   03:52 CC: Yeah, it's definitely been interesting during this time. [chuckle]   03:56 S1: Yeah. Yeah, clearly. And speaking of crazy times... You guys are kind of right in the middle of a lot of big transformations going on, not only technologically from your business transforming, but obviously the world is transforming in the way we are being much more remote in what we're doing. And maybe you can share with us where does RXR see offices and office work sort of transforming and moving post-COVID?   04:29 CC: Yeah, and I think the... The phrase is, the reports of the office demise are greatly exaggerated. I don't see the office going away, but I do think it is gonna fundamentally change whereas... Prior to COVID, people worked in the office and regardless of the type of work there was, with most industries, like an expectation you were gonna come to the office to work. And now, this mass experiment in work from home has proven out that people can do work from home, and particularly do focused work. If I'm gonna sit down and work on a spreadsheet for eight hours, I can do that anywhere. I can do it at home, cafe, co-working, it doesn't matter. And I think companies are now comfortable letting their employees do that. There's trust there that they can get their work done and do it effectively, but the collaboration and teamwork is not as effective remotely.   05:35 CC: And definitely from all of our surveys and research, there are gaps there and that's where I think the office is gonna be... It's gonna be focused on the teamwork. It's gonna move from focused work to teamwork. And I think it's gonna change the nature of the office where it isn't so much that you have a desk and you come into your desk every day, it's your team has a space, you may come in to meet with your team when you need to. It might be that you have a... Team norms and you come in Monday, Wednesday, Friday or it might be that you have tools that you can collaborate across the team and decide, "Hey, we're all coming to work tomorrow for a meeting." But I think it's gonna be focused on that collaboration and move away from individual... Individual...   06:25 S1: Yeah. Well, Microsoft have been on that journey as well in terms of shifting their office layouts from the individual office to more team rooms or team-oriented spaces. And so I think what you're saying is more flexibility around dedicated spaces and more team-oriented spaces and the idea of working from home is gonna be sort of baked into people's protocols, but obviously the personal collaboration still needs to be there at some point.   07:00 CC: Yeah. Yeah, I think it's gonna be an interesting challenge in terms of managing capacity. I think prior to this, most companies kind of allocated a certain amount per person, and it was...   07:11 S1: Sure.   07:12 CC: A couple hundred square feet with the assumption that most people would probably be in and most people would probably need somewhere to work and a desk.   07:19 S1: Sure, yeah.   07:20 CC: But I think all of those standards in terms of allowable square foot per person and overall density are going out the window because, if only half your workforce is gonna come in, or maybe it's a quarter, I don't know, but like, what... Being able to plan for that capacity, make sure you have enough room... You can flex when there's... Times happen when... It's the beginning of the quarter, and everybody wants to get together to collaborate...   07:48 S1: Right, right. Yeah.   07:48 CC: And you're planning, like, "How do you allow for 100%?"   07:51 S1: Right, exactly. Huh, yeah, no, it's interesting. One of the things I like about this kind of remote collaboration is that it tends to normalize the meetings in terms of who's in the room versus who's not. I mean, it used to be where if you were "dialed in", and not in the room, you were sort of in the... You were in the cheap seats.   08:10 CC: Yeah.   08:11 S1: In terms of the conversation. And now everyone's sort of in the same cheap seats, I guess, at the table. And so it'll be interesting to see how some of those norms transfer back into the physical office, you know? And the meeting protocols and things.   08:27 CC: Yeah, it has been interesting. So we've actually come back to our office, full time. Most of the people... I mean, there's still some people that are either higher risk or have... School hasn't opened yet... There's definitely a lot of extenuating circumstances. So it's probably like, 60% have actually come back full time. But it has already created some interesting challenges from like the collaboration standpoint where, yeah, there's... Again like, haves and have nots with like, "Are you in the room? Are you on the screen?" There's definitely more effort to include people on the screen now. Whereas I think beforehand, it was like you... Maybe you forgot to dial them in 'cause it was that one person. Or they're like...   09:08 S1: Exactly. Yeah, how many times does that happen? You start a meeting then half way through it's like, "Oh. We forgot to turn on the thing," you know?   09:10 CC: You can only come one the phone... Yeah. Where now there's much more conscious effort to include people on the line, but it is still hard to include them in the casual ad hoc conversations where you bump into somebody in the hallway or the... Standing six feet away from them in the kitchen, you know?   09:34 S1: Yeah, yeah. We used to have a thing, one of our... We had a, one of our satellite offices down in Palo Alto, and we had a kind of a live feed at the coffee machine, where we had a monitor and a camera, and it was sort of like permanently on and connected to the coffee machine, like the coffee area down in Palo Alto. And so anyone who went in to get a cup of coffee in the kitchen was sort of connected in real-time to the folks in Palo Alto, if they happen to bump into them and they're getting a cup of coffee there. So that was kind of a cool way of co

In this episode of The IoT Unicorn Podcast, Rob Tiffany, VP and Head of IoT Strategy at Ericsson explores the development of 5G and LPWA technology for IoT solutions, what it looks like for Telco’s to be successful in the IoT space, and how the Internet is playing the hero during the uncertainty of the Covid-19 pandemic. Download the Transcript Here   00:00 Pete Bernard: Great, so Rob, thanks for joining us today on the Unicorn, and really appreciate you taking the time. I was going to start by asking you a couple things about what your role is currently at Ericsson, kinda how you got there. I know that you and I did work together at Microsoft years ago back in the Windows Mobile days.   00:24 Rob Tiffany: Woo hoo.   00:25 PB: Good times, good times.   00:25 RT: Those were good times. Yep, absolutely. [chuckle]   00:28 PB: Yes. I thin, I think you were... Let's see, when did you stop working for Windows Mobile, like 2008 or something? Or is that...   00:38 RT: Yeah. And certainly by 2010 or around that timeframe I took an architect role in another group and probably started spending more time on Azure. I was at Microsoft for 12 years and so the first half was Mobile, Windows Mobile, CEE, Windows Phone. Second half was Azure, Azure IoT. And you know what? We had some good times in the Windows Mobile days when it was just us and BlackBerry slugging it out. We were making... When things like Exchange ActiveSync was a big deal to people.   01:21 PB: That's right, that was a big deal.   01:24 RT: Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And then no doubt, when we rebooted and did Windows Phone 7 and 7.5 and all that, I used to do so many EBCs for mobility and you noticed a difference and you had to get really thick skin. [chuckle]   01:42 PB: Yes, yes, yes, I know. Well, I peeled off after six... I think, so I went on to Zune incubation, I did Kin and I did all kinds of weird phone things and went off into the wilderness for a while on that while everyone else finished up with Windows Phone, but...   02:00 RT: Oh my gosh.   02:01 PB: And I also noticed on your LinkedIn profile. So you went to SUNY Albany. Are you from that area originally or...   02:07 RT: You know what? I finished college on board a submarine, so when I was in the Navy driving subs I had what, maybe 30 or so hours to go to graduate, and so I've actually never set foot on the SUNY Albany campus...   02:26 PB: Oh, wild.   02:27 RT: But the military has programs with lots of different universities around the country and to show how old I really am, I was able to take college courses underway on the submarine using Pioneer LaserDiscs.   02:42 PB: Wow.   02:43 RT: For college instruction, if anybody remembers what that was. [laughter]   02:47 PB: Yeah, that is old school, that's old school.   02:50 RT: That is fully old school.   02:52 PB: I actually just dropped my daughter off at Bard, which is a little south of Albany, so I was just there like a week ago, so that's why I asked.   02:58 RT: Oh, okay.   02:58 PB: I saw that on your profile and I was like, "Oh, yeah." It's a cool area, the Adirondacks, the whole upstate New York thing is cool.   03:04 RT: I know. Absolutely. Yeah, I just dropped my daughter off at Arizona State last week.   03:09 PB: Yeah.   03:10 RT: It was a little warm down there.   03:11 PB: Yeah, I could imagine, I could imagine.   03:14 RT: To say the least. But you know what? I think everything started back then with submarines and teaching myself how to code and do databases, and when you think about IoT, you're just remoting information that you had on these local sensors and we were surrounded by sensors on the submarine. There's the obvious things like sonar and things like that and this higher frequency one to see what your depth is below the keel, but inside you had CO2 radiation, all kinds of gas sensors and things like that to make sure we were still alive, which was kind of a thing. [chuckle]   04:02 PB: Yeah, it's kind of important.   04:04 RT: Yeah, yeah, absolutely.   04:06 PB: That's interesting. So you did the Microsoft thing and so you joined Ericsson a couple years ago, I think?   04:13 RT: Yeah, yeah, yeah. I did the Microsoft thing. I was recruited out of the Azure back when we were doing incubating Azure IT. There was that time... And actually Microsoft IoT stuff started in the embedded team with Intelligence System Service, but then I went to Hitachi actually to build an industrial IoT platform called Lumada, which was really interesting. But yes, I joined Ericsson a couple years ago. Up until recently, I split my time between Seattle and Stockholm. Normally I'd be in Kista, the Ericsson headquarters with the rest of my team. So yes, certainly disconnected these days.   05:00 PB: Yeah, interesting.   05:00 RT: And what Ericsson is doing in IoT is very different than my background both at Microsoft and Hitachi for sure, which was more data-focused, outcomes, analytics. Ericsson manages among... We have an IoT team. We have three products. Our big one is this IoT Accelerator, which is basically a global connection management platform. If you know what Jasper is, it's kinda like that in some ways. It spans about 35 or so mobile operators around the world and lots of enterprises. But the key thing, you know how we're always talking about that initial bootstrapping of devices to get them connected, right?   05:46 PB: Yep.   05:47 RT: In the event that you're using cellular for IoT, one of your options would be this IoT Accelerator thing we have at Ericsson, and so the narrative would be if a machine is being manufactured in Shenzhen and at manufacturer time, they're putting in the microcontroller and the software and the security keys and all that stuff, and there's also a cellular module, and if they're using our technology then when a customer buys that product and they turn it on the first time somewhere else in the world, maybe France, then it wakes up and connects to a local mobile operator to start sync telemetry.   06:24 PB: I see, so it's like a bootstrap profile kind of thing that phones home and then you guys connect it up to the right telco network.   06:35 RT: Yeah, and then it roams as well. But it's different than anybody who, if you... At least when IoT was getting hyped I was doing IoT-M to M in the '90s, but when it really started getting hyped after 2010, 2012, whatever, you started seeing these global SIMs and things like that that are just roaming all the time.   06:58 PB: Yes.   07:00 RT: But what the average person doesn't realize is mobile operators don't always want you roaming and just camped out on their network if you're from somewhere else.   07:08 PB: Yeah, yeah.   [laughter]   07:10 RT: And so our technology, aside from the technology and we're operating our own network, so even though Ericsson creates the technologies that mobile operators use, we actually manage our own network that spans the globe, that interfaces with all these other mobile operators, and then there's lots of contracts and everything. But the take away to make sure that it's all okay with them, that these devices... And we are also in the connected car space and we've been doing that for a long time. And so you can imagine a car manufactured in Japan and sold in Europe.   07:46 PB: Sure.   07:47 RT: And the whole infotainment, and then as we move forward, more and more IOT telemetry coming off, those cards may wanna roam from country to country, so we do a lot of stuff with those guys too.   08:00 PB: I noticed that recently I got an email this morning from account team in Finland talking about a telco, there seems to be this confluence of telco and IoT. And I've seen, and I think you might have had some commentary on that too or pointed some articles about 5G plus AI plus IoT, or there's something about... We're seeing some telcos have really... Forward leaning telcos, really investing and thinking about IoT as the next big wave for them. Ericsson is part of that story too. Is there some unnatural attraction between IoT and telco or what's going on there? Are you seeing the same thing?   08:40 RT: Yeah, I am. But of course, if you'll remember, we saw this before. When the IoT craze started taking off, you might remember a lot of the telcos built their own IoT platforms and waited for people to come...   08:54 PB: That's right.   08:54 RT: And people didn't always show up, and so it seems like most of the mobile operators actually took a stab at it back then. Of course, if we go back further in time, most mobile operators thought that it was their right to be the cloud as well and they gave a shot at that, but it didn't work out either. But you're right, there's a renewed effort. I think a lot of it's just numbers and money. We've saturated smartphones and people, and so we need... Lots of mobile operators for better or worse, think of the world in SIMs. [chuckle] Connected SIM endpoints, that's how they see the world. And so it's like, "Okay, we've maxed out all the SIMs on people. [laughter] Where are we gonna get some more SIMs?" And so they're thinking, "Oh, it's IoT." And so that's where a lot of it's coming. We've certainly seen some of them turning on, some of them like NB-IoT and CAT-M1, LTE-M networks to try to take a stab at that. And so that's kind of cruising along.   10:09 PB: I noticed that... And I love to buy all the gadgets and stuff and I'm also very invested in the whole LPWA space, I'm a big believer in that. And I'm curious and I see some things happening there, but it just seems like such a no-brainer for some of these WiFi connected things. Like I just installed a garage door opener in my house, I have a separate garage and it's WiFi connected for some reason, but I have to stand on a step ladder and scan a QR code and hold it next to it. I'm like, "Why doesn't it just turn on and connect through a little power cellular?" Just such a no-brainer, but it hasn't quite yet turned on.   10:49 RT: Yeah. No,

On this episode of The IoT Unicorn podcast, learn from Lou Lutostanski, VP of IoT at Avnet, as he discusses the evolution of IoT including the need to partner on solutions, especially at scale, lessons learned from years in IoT, and the ways IoT and AI can be leveraged specifically within the healthcare industry, including with remote telemedicine. Download the Transcript Here Pete Bernard: Welcome to the IoT Unicorn podcast. This is Pete Bernard from Microsoft. And this podcast is for anyone interested in the long-term technology trends in the IoT space and the journey from here to there. So, let's get started. Pete Bernard: This week we are talking with Lou Lutostanski, who's the vice president of IoT at Avnet. Lou’s been in the business a while and he’s going to be talking about his journey there and also reflect a little bit on the lessons learned that he sees over and over again. And how can we work together to help mitigate some of those things. We’ll also talk a little bit about how things like national emergencies like the pandemic accelerate existing trends.  This was recorded actually only about a few weeks into quarantine back in March so an interesting perspective there. So please enjoy my conversation with Lou. Pete Bernard: So Lou, thanks again for taking the time to join us here on the IoT Unicorn. I know that we've been working together for a few months now, I think we met last June at the NXP Connects event for the first time. And, maybe you can give us a little background as to what you're currently doing at Avnet and maybe we can chat a little bit about how you got there and what that journey looks like. Lou Lutostanski: Sure. Well Pete, thanks for having me, I'm excited to be on your podcast. It was last year at the NXP event that we met and we've been working together quite frequently here over the last few months. But I'm currently the VP of IoT at Avnet. We're traditionally come from a historical industrial distribution business and we realized that the next wave in technologies was all around IoT. So I'm doing that now. But to go way, way back, my formal education was in electrical engineering at Purdue University. Pete Bernard: I see that, yes. I'm looking at your LinkedIn profile as we speak. Lou Lutostanski: Yeah. And I quickly discovered that my area of interest wasn't really in hardware and moles and electrons migrating across a PM junction, but more interest in software, all kinds of software. So there was a new technology in electronics when I went to school sweeping the land called microprocessors and I kind of fell in love with the 8080. So by the time I graduated college I had taken classes in computer system design, which is the equivalent of computer engineering before there was a name for it. I did a lot of embedded programming. I had written two pass assemblers for the PDP-11 processor in   C and wrote disk allocation systems for mainframe resource management. And I actually worked summers for my dad's company writing applications around accounts payable or accounts receivable, inventory management and work orders. So, I kind of loved all kinds of programming. Pete Bernard: Sure, sure. Cool. And yeah, it's interesting. I've had some guests on here, it's okay to refer to IoT as embedded systems because that's what we used to call it. But now it sounds a lot cooler. But it sounds like you had a lot of hands on experience with that through your career. So you ended up at Avnet, it says 2013, was that when you started at Avnet? Lou Lutostanski: Actually, I ended up at Avnet in earlier than that. 1987. Pete Bernard: Holy mackerel. Lou Lutostanski: Yeah. I came off a brief stint at IBM out of college went to work for my dad's company. He had a company that did industrial equipment and so I sold for him for a while before I moved back to Austin, Texas, where I had started with IBM. Love took me there, I married a girl from there, and got involved in the wonderful world of distribution. So, my first job was with Hallmark Electronics and I was a sales manager, or actually a system sales manager selling storage terminals, PCs, monitors, motors, and printers. And I did that job for about a year before I figured out all the action in industrial distribution was in the semiconductor world. So, I converted over to become one of the first field applications engineers in distribution for the Motorola line. And later on, I moved up to sales management in Dallas and moved back to Austin as branch manager. Around that time Avnet bought us. So that's where I became a member of the Avnet family, even though I started in '87, 1993 was when the acquisition happened. Pete Bernard: Wow, okay. You put your time in there. That's good. Lou Lutostanski: I did. And I floated through the ranks of VP area director until 2000 and that's when I went on my, what I'll refer to as a sabbatical. So I left for Motorola and after serving as a VP of global sales for both the HP account and later the Motorola account, I became the VP of sales and marketing for the Americas as we transitioned to Freescale. So my sabbatical there lasted 12 years and I returned to Avnet seven years ago running sales for the Americas. Pete Bernard: Wow. So you've been involved in sort of industrial, commercial, computer things kind of forever. You followed your, that's a kind of a red thread, they call it, through your career. That's pretty awesome. Well, it's good. It's good. It's good to have that, I think sometimes people take wildly different right and left turns to sort of find their passion and other folks just know, they have an internal compass that sort   of just kind of keeps pointing them in the right direction, which is pretty awesome too, but that's cool. Good stuff. I was down in Austin, let's see, I was visiting with NXP, I think I told you this story, and they took me to a place called Chuy's. Lou Lutostanski: Absolutely. Pete Bernard: That was delicious. And it had hubcaps on the ceiling, and it was kind of one of the local, I guess, awesome restaurants that you have in Austin. So that was pretty good. Lou Lutostanski: You got your chips and queso out of a back of a classic car's trunk, I imagine. Pete Bernard: That's right. Yes, exactly. Yes. And the Elvis chicken, I think it was what I had, but good stuff. All right, I'm getting hungry. It's around lunchtime, by the way, when we're recording this, I probably shouldn't talk about Chuy's restaurant. Anyway, so you've been in the business a while. You've seen the evolution, like I said, we used to call it embedded systems, now it's called IoT and stuff. Maybe you can share with us what have we all learned as an ecosystem, as a community around this space over the years. What are some of the lessons learned that you've seen sort of repeated over and over again? Lou Lutostanski: Yep. So it was a funny story. I was in the field selling for Avnet, running the sales organization in the Americas. And I started hearing about IoT and over time that's all everybody wanted to talk about. So I thought originally thought IoT was kind of a marketing hype thing. So, when they created the position here at Avnet, I lobbied for one of my marketing friends from Freescale to come over and join and unfortunately he didn't get the job, but a year later it was available again. And in that year I grew and understood it was really an incredible opportunity to transform businesses through the application of IoT. So, three years ago I joined this mission here at Avnet. And the lessons I learned in IoT were many. And I've kind of distilled them down to the 10 main issues. Lou Lutostanski: So it was funny the first time, I got this job around March, three years ago and I was a keynote speaker at a IoT World in Santa Clara a couple of months later. And my first thought was kind of being intimidated on what am I going to talk to all these people about? And when I got there, I realized IoT was really in its infancy and there were a whole lot of people there trying to figure out really what IoT was. Even though they've been working on it for a year or two or decades when it was called- Pete Bernard: For a decade or two, yeah exactly.     Lou Lutostanski: But the first lesson that I learned is that nobody knew enough about IoT, but they were certain, whatever it was they contributed to, it was the most important, and was the most margin. Lou Lutostanski: I tell the story about the blind men and the elephant going through and feeling various parts of the elephant and all coming out and having a violent discussion over what exactly an elephant was. And it's the fact that no one saw the entire elephant holistically. None of them were wrong, but none of them saw the thing holistically. And I think that's where IoT was several years ago. I also learned very early on lesson number two, that from Microsoft, it took 10 to 20 companies to do an IoT implementation, which is why very few IoT implementations were happening. It's just a lot of work to try to get 10 people or five people to agree on anything, much less figure out how you're going to support a customer over long-term and where are the liabilities for service and warranties are going to lay after the original installation. So that was another thing I learned. I also learned that IoT is really about, it's a technology enabler for business transformation. And what I saw when I got here was that people were very focused on the implementation without even understanding why. So, I learned very long that that business case has to far precede the actual implementation because, there's no way you can succeed understanding technology but not understanding why. Pete Bernard: Yeah, totally. We see that a lot now and a big part of our process with customers is to start with the business leadership and talk about business outcomes and objectives and then let's get clear on what those are. And then the technology will follow. There's no shortage of tech, but if you don't have a North Star of a business outcome that you're shooting for, then you're probably just going to have a series of science experiments. Right? Lou Lutostanski: Exactly Pete, exactly. I think another thin

In this episode of the IoT Unicorn Podcast, Dr. David Rhew, Chief Medical Officer & VP of Healthcare, Worldwide Commercial Business, from Microsoft, shares his experience navigating through today’s pandemic and the digital transformation of healthcare. Download the Transcript Here 00:00 Pete: Okay, well, we're here with Dr. David Rhew from Microsoft. David, really appreciate your time. We have a lot of things to talk about today, we're gonna try to squeeze it into the allotted time period, but thanks again for joining us. 00:14 Dr. David Rhew: Thanks, Pete, it's a real pleasure to be here. 00:16 Pete: Good, good. Yeah, and full transparency, something happened in the first conversation I had with David where it didn't record properly, so we're actually going through this one again. So it should be nice and well-practiced. So live and die by Teams, I guess. But anyway, David, so we, as I mentioned, chatted a couple times now, and you're actually fairly new to Microsoft. I think before we get into a lot of really interesting topics I think listeners wanna hear about around digital transformation of healthcare and what's going on with COVID-19 and Microsoft, maybe you can give us a little run-up to how did you end up here at Microsoft, and you've been here almost exactly a year now, so you can give us a little bit of background on yourself and your journey to Microsoft. 01:07 DR: Sure. Well, first of all, I'm a physician, I'm a healthcare researcher, and also a technologist. And really the combination of those three have evolved rather organically throughout my career. It's been remarkable how those three have converged to allow us to be able to start thinking about how healthcare can be used to improve health outcomes, or I should say how technology can be used to improve health outcomes, and really excited to be a part of that program here at Microsoft as we start launching technologies, predominantly cloud-based solutions with artificial intelligence to drive that. 01:45 DR: My story, I guess, begins when I was in college. I was thinking quite a bit about different types of ways that I could help people, and I guess my initial thought was helping people would probably be best served if I went to medical school, so did a curriculum, a pre-medical curriculum. And as part of that program, I think I gained a lot of the basic skills needed to be a doctor, but one of the things that I did also was I was curious about other types of activities and other types of skills. Technology was always a fascination. This was around... In the 1980s, and video games were pretty popular then. These are the arcade video games, not the ones that we typically use... 02:28 Pete: Yeah, the good ones. 02:29 DR: The classics, the Space Invaders, the Pac-Man, Mario, and I was fascinated by that. I just felt, what an incredible way for us to be able to start thinking about how we can not only spend our time, but also how we could use technology to create new experiences. And I started doing a lot of programming, in fact, I became a computer science major as well as a cellular and molecular biologist. And then I went to med school, and in med school there's not a whole lot of opportunity to use computers apart from a word processor, so I felt in many ways that that part of my career journey was put on hold. And it was on hold for a while because what I ended up doing is after I graduated from medical school, I went down a path of exploration in healthcare, specifically looking at ways that we could reduce variation and improve access to care and improve the overall quality of care. And it was done predominantly through what we referred to as guidelines. Turns out that if you were to go to a doctor in... Probably your local doctor, and you were to go to maybe survey the same type of... Ask another doctor across the country or even the globe how they would treat the same type of condition, you'll get a lot of different responses. 03:54 DR: And in fact, when they've done analyses, they've found that variation in care is pretty dramatic, even for things that have been proven to be beneficial. And what we learned in some of the investigations that I was a part of and others have been actively looking at is that a lot of that has to do with just the fact that we don't have mechanisms to remind clinicians to provide that right information at the right time. And I started building basically programs that would provide that right information at the right time. It was very manual. In many cases we had nurses and other clinicians run around the hospital, identifying patients, giving pieces of paper to doctors, saying, "Oh, by the way, your patient fulfils low-risk criteria, you could switch him from an IV antibiotic to an oral antibiotic and send them home," when traditionally, they might have stayed for another few days or maybe even longer. And we ran these programs, we found that it was highly effective. And not only did it reduce the length of stay and reduce total cost, but when we followed up with these patients, they actually did quite well and they were quite satisfied, so... The less time you can spend in a hospital's always good. 05:05 Pete: Yeah, for sure. 05:06 DR: People were having a good time just finding that, hey, you know what, this is something that provided value to just the patient, the health system. And that really got me thinking about how do I start scaling this, because you can't have a person run around the hospital with every piece of information. It really has to be automated. So working with some colleagues, we put together some software that ultimately became a company, and this company got acquired by Cerner, which is a large healthcare information technology company, and next thing I know, I'm in the middle of implementing EHRs across the country and even the globe. And so seeing patients half the time and working with technology was my life work for quite a bit of the early part of my career. And I learned a lot, I learned a lot about how technology is an enabler. It really helps us to be able to achieve some of the goals. But it was really predominantly focused on the inpatient and in-clinic experience. And so I started thinking about, what about outside of the hospital? Could we actually start engaging patients and family members in a more effective manner than simply just sending them a text reminder or giving them access to the patient portal? 06:30 DR: And so what we started thinking about as an industry was this whole category called digital health and connected care. And there were many consumer companies that were looking to get into the space, Apple would be a good one, but also Samsung. And I had an opportunity to talk to folks at Samsung, shared a bit about what I was interested, in terms of where I wanted to take technology, and they shared a similar vision, so it was kind of a great match, and they asked me to be their chief medical officer. For six years I was Chief Medical Officer at Samsung. And during those time periods of working at Cerner and the electronic health world and also working at Samsung I kinda got a chance to experience both ends of the spectrum in terms of what clinicians experience and what patients do. And that bridge was something that I was looking to find a way to make it more seamless, more ubiquitous, which really brought me to Microsoft because of the fact that with its enterprise cloud infrastructure ability for us to be able to have those communications, data communicating also now more freely within the electronic health records space into using HO7 fire standards into a common platform. We could do a lot more than what we were currently doing, and that really is the opportunity for all of us to start thinking about how technology can help us achieve some of the outcomes. 07:51 Pete: Yeah, it's fascinating. I think it's... You can imagine healthcare is one of the great data science challenges we have, there's such a massive amount of information and knowledge base, and like you were saying, the knowledge and the way people are treated and the treatment plans kind of vary, and having access to all of the knowledge collectively and having all the data analyzed. I'm a big Fitbit Versa fan myself, and the measure itself is a pretty key part of my regimen. And especially in people that are not doing too well being able to have all of that data accessible from edge devices and being able to basically get to the right outcomes and treatment plans is pretty, pretty critical stuff. You can't think of too many more purpose-driven business outcomes than that. So that's amazing. It must be... And you're... I know when I joined Microsoft, the first two years, people said it takes two years to find the bathroom at Microsoft, 'cause it... There's so much going on. 08:54 Pete: So you're a year into it, and of course, and we'll talk about the obvious elephant in the room here, you've been in the middle of helping us steer through this pandemic, probably halfway through your first year. So that must have been quite a challenge to sort of come on board and then sort of this all happened, right? Can you give us a little insight as to what was that like, how did that sort of ramp up for you? 09:22 DR: Yeah when I joined Microsoft, I guess there are two chapters or two parts to my time at Microsoft. The first six months were essentially spent working very closely with our partners, our clients, implementing the technologies, the cloud-based technologies to help them achieve some of their business goals, and then when COVID hit and it really started in... For us in January, I know December was probably one of the first times we started hearing about this in China, but we have colleagues, we have Microsoft folks that work in China, and we were very concerned about their health and what was going on. And then when it continued to spread throughout the country and then to other parts of South East Asia, we realized that this was something that was gonna require a pretty coordinated effort within Microsoft around this. Turns out that my background as a physician is in infectious disease. I was actually an AIDS physician during the

On this episode of the IoT Unicorn Podcast, hear from Philip van de Mortel as he provides insight on what the future of IoT looks like within the Intel space as they continue to develop their journey with AI on the Edge. Download the Transcript Here

In this episode of The IoT Unicorn Podcast, we speak with Lilac Ilan and have an interesting conversation about her journey from the Federal Reserve to AT&T where she is the Assistant Vice President of IoT. We talk about how finding the right mix in a team helps diversify ideas and how that can make you successful in any environment but especially IoT. Then we delve into AT&T's work in the 5G space. We find out how combining the efficiency and power of 5G with AI and edge computing means lower cost, improved safety, and higher ROI through digital transformation. Tune in and hear about all that, and more, on this latest episode of The IoT Unicorn Podcast. Download the Transcript Here

In this second of our two-part interview with Jeff Torrance, VP of IoT at Qualcomm, we imagine what Low Power Wide Area (LPWA) connectivity means for the future of the IoT space. Can you do more with less power? Can you use it to reduce your total cost of ownership because your devices can still perform, but while consuming less?  And how might you leverage these advancements for the next couple of decades in the space? Tune in and we'll answer those questions, and more, on this latest episode of The IoT Unicorn Podcast. Please subscribe to our show, share, leave a comment, and rate us! Download the Transcript Here

In this first part of our two-parter with Jeff Torrance, VP of IoT at Qualcomm, we learn that 5G and IoT go together like peanut butter and chocolate and take some time to talk about what it’s going to look like when they meet in the marketplace. This episode is loaded with learnings on how Qualcomm is gearing up to leverage and expand 5G from mobile phone tech to all types of adjacent IoT spaces. We also have an interesting discussion about how 5G will enable a much broader interface with the real world. Please subscribe to our show, share, leave a comment, and rate us! Download the Transcript Here

Hot on the heels of the Project Bonsai announcement at Microsoft //build recently, I am joined by Autonomous Drone expert Guada Casuso from Microsoft. We explore her journey from Argentina to Japan to Seattle, the use of drone technology (including chicken teriyaki delivery), and how her team is positioned to develop AI to empower and enable autonomous systems.   Please remember to subscribe to our show and share with your friends and colleagues. If you enjoy our podcast then please rate it or write a quick review on your favorite platform. Thanks for your support!   Download the Transcript Here  

In Part 2 of this 2-parter from The IoT Unicorn Podcast I finish my conversation with Gerhard Loots, who runs Global IoT Solutions at Telstra. In this episode we talk about the use of robots in everyday life, and how 5G IoT is positioned to open doors for its more widespread use by crushing latency, being optimized for machine to machine communication, and leveraging massive bandwidth to operate smoothly.   Remember to subscribe to our show!   Download the Transcript Here

In Part 1 of this two-part episode of The IoT Unicorn podcast, I talk to Gerhard Loots, who runs Global IoT Solutions at Telstra, about our earliest IoT experiences back in the 70's and 80's, why Black-screen monitoring might be the future of asset tracking, and friction driving IoT innovation in Australia. Remember to subscribe to our show! Download the Transcript Here

Recorded in February, 2020; In this inaugural edition of the IOT Unicorn, Pete chats with Andrew Hardy, the VP of Sales and Marketing for the Americas at NXP. On this episode we talk about IoT scale, Ultra-Wide-Band, and San Jose. Download the Transcript Here