 Live from Las Vegas, it's the Cube! Covering AWS re-invent 2019. Brought to you by Amazon Web Services and Intel, along with its ecosystem partners. Welcome back to Vegas, Lisa Martin with John Furrier. We are live at AWS re-invent. In the Expo Hall at the Sands Convention Center, there's tons of people in here. You could probably hear some of the background. AWS expecting 65,000 or so folks. John, how many of those 65,000 have you talked to in the last two days? Well, I can hear all the conversations happening at once. It's about hybrid cloud, IoT edge, data, machine learning. My head's going to explode. I was going to say, lots of cool stuff. John and I are pleased to be joined by Grant Coraville, the VP of Products and Strategy for Blackberry QNX. Welcome to the program. Great to be here with 65,000 of our closest friends. Closest friends, exactly. So Blackberry QNX, what's it all about? What's it all about? Well, we do software, we do embedded software for mission critical systems. At this event at the AWS re-invent, what we're showing is software in a really cool car, a Karma, and we're connecting it to the AWS IoT backend services. And showing some really, really cool use cases, some of which are near term, some are which are a bit longer term. They're pretty exciting. Take a quick minute to describe QNX's background acquired by Blackberry. So it's some history, legacy, IT. Exactly. Just take a quick minute to explain that. So we were founded in 1980 and then developing software for mission critical devices in medical, industrial, and then we started developing software for automotive in 1998. So we've been in automotive for about 20 years and developing originally an infotainment and then digital instrument clusters, telematic systems, gateways, safety systems, acoustic systems, pretty much becoming the software platform in the car. Because in the car, the car, the software has to be reliable, safe, secure. So we're trusted to deliver that in automotive. We were acquired by Blackberry in 2010 and we're bringing the best of Blackberry into automotive and all of our other markets. So Lisa and I always talk about IoT, there's RPA, automation, all the stuff's going on. But one of the things that comes up is we're trying to grok what's the software development environment in the car. And Amazon won by having great APIs. That was one of their core design principles. Is there a similar design principle from a car standpoint? Because if I'm an app developer, I just love to have my mobile app sit on the car, but I don't want to have to become an expert on all the nuances of, is there a connector? So is there going to be multiples platforms? What's the principle? Can you explain that? Great question and great observation. So cars traditionally have been proprietary, pretty much closed systems. And started to open up with CarPlay and Android Auto where all of a sudden you saw your mobile device being able to communicate with the car. And now I could run Android apps, I could run iOS apps, it started to open it up a bit. And now what you've seen is cars are becoming more connected. They're becoming more automated, eventually autonomous. They're definitely, and what you're seeing in the car is in order for that car to really evolve and to offer connected services and shared mobility and the electrification that's occurring, the automotive industry is going through a disruption. We've all heard that. And it really is true. So to the point where the electronics in the car, the networks in the car, the software in the car is getting completely redesigned. And you're seeing a lot more high-end processors, you're seeing safety critical systems, which have always been in cars, but now you're seeing a lot more complexity and that speaks to exactly what we do. So where that car is going, if you think about it, is moving to more of a software platform. You have applications in mobile devices. Why? Because you've got Android and you've got iOS. That car is moving to that sort of a common platform where with the help of AWS, connected services, the BlackBerry Kinect software platform in the car, all of a sudden it'll open the door to that kind of environment, to applications, to connected services. And that's exactly where it's going. So connectivity's here and it's going to be predominant through pretty much all the vehicles coming off the line in the coming years. So you're going to see the connectivity and now we can bring the services and the apps to that vehicle. But at the same time, got to keep it safe, got to keep it secure, got to keep it reliable. It's the classic mobile device. Bingo. Mobile device on wheels, right? Of two ton mobile device on wheels. That disruption sounds really cool. And as consumers, we just have this expectation that we can have whatever we want. I want the whole experience and obviously as everything evolves, we want it to be safer and safer. And as there's laws and regulations that govern, hey, you're going to get hefty fines if you're seen with this device and you're driving. But disruption is really challenging, right? We talked, we got some great examples yesterday on stage with Andy Jassy of Goldman Sachs. How many years old are they and how they have leveraged disruption to revolutionize their consumer business or healthcare revolutionizing. I'd love to get your perspective on what are some of the automakers that are bleeding edge, going, we get it, we want to work with you guys so that they understand that this, the mobile device, the connected device on wheels is going to be transformative for their business. Good point. So first of all, every automaker we work with and we work with almost 50 automakers and we're in over 150 million vehicles and multiple systems in the cars, they're all putting safety first. That's never really changed, but that remains primary, primary objective. And to your point is how do you maintain that safety and that reliability while at the same time opening the door to connectivity, making sure that vehicle is secure and resilient to attacks and whatnot. And you've seen some of those attacks in the past and the industry's learning. But that's exactly what speaks to us and what we do. Same thing with AWS. If you think about what we do, we're plumbers. We build plumbing in the car, AWS builds plumbing in the cloud and I've had those conversations with AWS and they're like, yeah, we're plumbers. And I said, so are we, we're going to get along great. But to your point, we have to keep our eye on security or definitely our eye on privacy and safety. And that's exactly what we do as much as we all want the consumer apps and the connected experience at the same time we can't compromise on that. So the good thing in automotive is there's a, automotive safety standards, ISO 26262 and whatnot, which we've certified our products to and we're going to keep doing that and keep delivering that software in the car. But that's your point, two ton mobile device on wheels. So we got to always be aware of that. Great opportunity, people want more connectivity and safety too. That's a huge thing, security and safety. I want to get to that in a second, but I got to ask you, what is the relationship that you guys have with Amazon? Could you explain that? And what are you guys doing at re-invent this year? Is there like a presentation demo? Take a minute to explain the relationship between Queenix and Amazon web services and what you're showing here. Well, we're in the connected home exhibit. In fact, we're in the quote-unquote garage where we've got a vehicle, a beautiful Karma Revero GT. And I was told it's the first time there's actually a car at re-invent. So that was pretty cool. That's not enough one car. And it's a cool car, if you get a chance, come on over. And what we've done is we've taken the Karma vehicle and we've actually connected it to AWS IoT. So if you think about what we do, we do software in the car as I was saying earlier, and then we work with the Amazon team, with the AWS team to say, okay, what can we do? So one of the things we're doing is we're doing battery monitoring and prediction in terms of the life of the battery. That's one of the things that we're doing. The other thing we're doing is personalized cockpit, which is pretty exciting. And the last thing we're doing is kind of a business-to-business demonstration where it's data orchestration. So if you think about the vehicle, there's a lot of sensors on the vehicle, a lot of information available on the vehicle. And what we're doing with AWS is pulling the information from the vehicle, putting it in the cloud, and then we've got a few examples that we're using. So one of them is an application for an auto-detailing company where you might want to have your vehicle detailed, where we can make the position of your vehicle available, GPS, the VIN number, so the identification of the vehicle, and then you could actually contract with that expert detailing is what we called them to come to your vehicle, clean the vehicle, detail your vehicle within a finite period of time securely, and then you'll get notified when it's done and whatnot. We're doing facial recognition in the vehicle, and we also put some ML machine learning in the car. We're actually showing gesture recognition, where I can fold the mirrors with a peace sign or victory signs. I can have the mirrors fold in. I can interact with the infotainment system. I can personalize the music and whatnot. So really personalizing the cockpit, but all through the power of AWS. All right, when are we going to have flying cars? Come on, Jetsons, we need the flying cars. I love the Jetsons. Turn into a computer bag. It's better to turn into a computer bag, right? It's coming. Maybe not the flying car a bit, but okay, flying car is fine. I mean, I always say anything else that's in Star Trek or Star Wars will be invented, so we're expecting some flying vehicles soon. All fun aside. Now the serious conversation is safety and security. Worst case scenario, my car's hacked, ticked over, this is a fear. Again, it's a worst, it's a doom state scenario. I mean, it's an industrial IoT device. I mean, it's a car. How do you guys view the security posture? I mean, this is its concern, it might be on people's mind. Yeah, and that's what really speaks to where our company has been for almost four decades now. You know, when people would ask me, hey, where would I find QNIC software, Blackbird QNIC software? I'd say almost everywhere but the desktop. So where things have to be reliable, safe, secure work all the time, that's where you'll find our software. So factory floor, we're in laser eye surgery machines, we're in patient monitoring devices, MRI machines, so essentially those areas which are safety critical, where safety, security, and reliability are tops. You're really industrial IoT, all about. Big time, big time, and that's the cool thing about walking around, reinvent. There's all kinds of industrial devices and control. So if you go to the car now, you think about the vehicle, same fundamental needs, reliability, safety, security, and we're trusted to deliver an automotive. So security is one of those things that's not static. So when you make something that's secure, you're really building something that's resilient to attacks. So you'd be as resilient as possible to prevent attacks, and then you do whatever you can to prevent any malicious actions on that. So we will monitor what's going on in the system, we'll monitor any communications going to the car, for instance. So the minute we detect something a bit abnormal, we can take action based on that. So that's absolutely key, especially given the car is connected and more and more becoming connected. What's the opportunity in the trucking industry when I think of the number of sensors on trucks, the regulations for driver's safety in terms of how many hours they actually have to be able to can drive, what's the opportunity there for QNICs? Good question. So everything we're doing in the car, which I should generalize and say a vehicle, applies to trucks. So if you think about trucking, or vehicles, or drones, or anything like that, you have multiple sensors that you have to interact with, you have to interpret that information, you have to take action based on that information. So if we look at trucking specifically, everybody knows a major shortage of truck drivers. So when people ask me about autonomous cars and hey, when are we going to see autonomous vehicles? I always look at trucking and we're working with companies, trucking companies that are using our technology. And one of the first use cases that they're putting forward is something called platooning, where you'll actually have the first truck on the road with a driver and then the other trucks on the road will be operating autonomously, essentially following like a train if you want, on a highway, and then they'll have a starting location and a drop off location, and that all of a sudden becomes a real world scenario, which makes use of the same sensors, LiDAR, radar, cameras, et cetera. So from a trucking perspective, we look at it very similar to a car, an automotive perspective, because they need the same fundamental technologies. So it's pretty exciting. Like I said, what we do applies all over the place and again, all going to be connected. Well Grant, thanks for coming on, really appreciate it. I want to get your final thoughts, at least from my perspective on developers. When you see DeepRacer, you see that train, it's kind of, they got LiDAR, it's kind of a toy, but people are geeking out on this thing, so I would imagine that we're going to see an emergence of a software development environment, whereas the controlled sandboxes, because yeah, they've got the concern with the industrial equipment. How do you balance that old school industrial mindset of IOT with the new rapid agile product development? Yeah, and we're to your point, we're going through that transition now. So this is where things like SageMaker come into play where I can develop and refine machine learning models in the cloud. You still have those tight control loops that you need and there's tools for that. So that's the deeply embedded stuff that's controlling actuators and whatnot. You still need that, but to your point, you need to be more iterative, you need to be more agile, you need to develop according to the safety standards in the various industries that they might be in. So that is evolving and it's evolving at exactly the right pace. Really glad to see that evolution, but to your point, all of these devices are going to become interconnected. There's going to be new opportunities and from a developer perspective, we can't hire enough developers, no one can. It's really exciting whether it's IOT cloud developers or embedded developers. There's such an exciting future ahead. And I got to ask this, it's just propped in my head so I want to ask, because I'm curious. Spectrum and RF power is great, but you need connectivity to make an IOT device work. How do you guys, how does the car folks look at connectivity? Just when they get to a spot they can connect, so is it managing the spectrum? How are cars thinking about the connectivity? So we work very closely with the modem vendors, for instance. And today in cars you'll see Bluetooth, you'll see Wi-Fi, you'll see 4G. Obviously there's the emergence of 5G. Vehicle-to-vehicle communications is through something called DSRC, essentially Wi-Fi. 5G is going to come along. So now you're going to be able to have throughput and also what's called low latency. So quick turnaround on your messages and the information being exchanged. So that too is evolving from a QNIC software perspective. We'll make use of whatever modem's there. But to your point, we also have to deal with the cases where I've lost connectivity. I still need that vehicle to operate safely. And especially if you consider that the systems might be, the systems might be connected or we don't want to make it such that they're dependent on that connectivity. So you have to have failover scenarios and whatnot but cars will become connected, devices will become connected. We're going to take advantage of that connectivity but not be dependent on that connectivity. Thank you. Well, Grant, please let me know when that personalized service is available so that my car can be found and detailed. They'd find it right in my driveway going, lady. Take that down right now, you're in. Got it. All right, it's been a pleasure. Really cool stuff, Blackberry QNICs. Thank you for joining John and me. You'll have to go check out that car. Cool, thanks for having me. For John Furrier, I'm Lisa Martin. You're watching theCUBE live in Vegas at AWS re-invent 19. Thanks for watching.