 From around the globe, it's theCUBE with coverage of SousaCon Digital, brought to you by Sousa. Welcome back. This is theCUBE's coverage of SousaCon Digital 20. I'm Stu Miniman and really happy to welcome to the program. We have one of the keynote speakers, Alexander Kocher. He is president and managing director of Electrobit. Really excited to dig in, talk about autonomous vehicles. Alex, thanks so much for joining us. Thank you Stu, and I'm really excited that you pronounced my family name correct because this is quite difficult for you. It's a German name. Thank you very much. Well, luckily on theCUBE, we do have lots of global people we have on the program. I try to do my best. My German, extra kind Dutch is all I can say really. Yeah, the C-H is very, very, very difficult to pronounce. All right, so Alex, obviously autonomous vehicles, one of those use cases that we talk a lot about everything from edge computing to AI, software, eating the world, really one of those transformative technologies. Why don't we start with first, Electrobit, give us a little bit as to where Electrobit fit in kind of the global auto landscape. Yeah, thank you Stu. So Electrobit was founded in the late 80s, 1988. And since then we are really doing embedded, we are pioneering the embedded software and providing solutions, software technologies for the automotive industry. Since then we are powering more than one billion devices in much more than 100 million vehicles worldwide. And we are serving the automotive industry since then. So software is really becoming the single biggest enabler of innovation in the car. And software creation is our passion. So we enjoy solving challenging problems and providing solutions that drive the mobility ecosystem of the future vehicle, where mobility causes zero fatalities, produces low emissions and is perceived as quality time. This is also our mission. And with that, we are providing services, software technologies and tools for the automotive industry. Yeah, it has been fascinating to watch software in the automotive world. I'm old enough to remember that when you used to take a car and the first thing they did was put it up and look under the hood and everything. And now pretty much they plug a cable into the computer and go to the diagnostic screens before they do anything else. When we talk about autonomous vehicles, I think many people would be familiar. There's really that five stage model of going from helping to fully autonomous. Give us a little bit as to what you're seeing in the trends out there and how this market has been matured. Yeah, I think the trend in the autonomous vehicle, we are at the moment at level two, level two plus. So where you're still assisting the driver's behavior with various functions. We are starting to go towards level three, hands-off in the next couple of, yeah, hopefully just months or a single years. And then going from there to fully autonomous reheated where you also not only have hands-off but also eyes-off and then hand over the complete control to the car. But since then, it will still be a path. We just had recently the announcement that not only the functionality within the car but also then the legal environment needs to be in place so that you also can check that all of the various functions can be approved. I think the first step which we will see is that we have it in a kind of a clean road environment which means highways. Highways, so the highway pilot where you have a kind of ensured environment and you can predict certain use case. And with that we are targeting at with the next generation of the cars which come out in one or two years. Yeah, really interesting stuff. Because of course, it would be really simple if we had nothing but the Autobahn and nothing but autonomous vehicles. I'm sure you could have that running perfectly today but number one, you start going on different roads and number two, you add that ever unpredictable human element when you have the cars that aren't on the same system that can cause some issues there. I'm curious, anything from a European standpoint, what's the partnership between government and industry on that? And I guess anything else that's different about Europe than maybe what we'd see in North America? Yeah, I think one of the biggest differences here is as soon as authorities approve cars then the liability goes to the authority. In America's, there is a complete different behavior in that perspective. Liability is taken completely by the companies and with that of course, although there are authorities to control certain environment but the main liability issue stays with the company itself and this per se is a complete different approach for that. I think technology-wise we are here and there on the same level, on the same technology level and as you can see already in today's drive assistance functions, technology-wise we are not far ahead. You can already try certain of those functions for at least a couple of seconds. But in order to really accept and calculate all the use cases, you need to start step by step. Highway is one of the perfect measures for that. But when you just go, I'm living here in Southern Germany when you just go to an ancient city center like we do have here in Nuremberg, it can be really, really tricky that you consider all the specific use cases. So here we need to optimize algorithms, the technology, also the horsepower in terms of processing, load and of course, the accuracy of the sensors. So here is still for full autonomy, still a path to go. All right, so Alex, you're part of the keynote here at SousaCon. Obviously, innovation is a key topic as well as open-source and community is a big topic at the show overall. Tell us a little bit about the partnership between Elector Bit and Sousa. Yeah, thank you very much for this question. This is really an exciting thing. So two companies like Sousa and Elector Bit, by the way, we have been founded here both very, very recent area, so Nuremberg area. So Sousa is a leader in delivering mission critical Linux and container technologies in several industries and Elector Bit brings in the automotive experience. And what we aim for is to really provide a future software platform for automobiles that fulfills all the key requirements around openness, about reuse and also about a huge pool of open source methodologies and new modules so that we have a tremendous pool of talents as well as a tremendous pool of innovation here. So this is the key topic. The automotive industry as such is changing, in a way that you continue to develop the technologies along the life cycle of the car in order to really enable our customers to download new functions and new services during the life cycle of the car. This methodology is already used in several other industries and here we introduce with this partnership exactly the basis for that in order to really prepare our customers to focus on their differentiating technology and differentiating features. Yeah, fascinating, Finkie. You brought up the skill set, of course, is a key piece. Any industry that's going through change, you wonder who can come along and who's ready for that? It sounded like you were saying that Linux and the other technologies in the space, there is a large pool of knowledge out there and that can help really kind of the growth generation of the automotive industry, am I getting that right? Yes, I mean for sure the development methodology in open source and embedded is completely different specifically when it comes to liability. So here you need to comply to certain standards of course but this is one topic. The other thing is that really the innovation, the innovation span you have in open source as well as the modules already existing and the best practices from other industries, this is a tremendous advantage. And also one thing is in terms of changing in our industry, the automotive industry, the development methodology, excuse me, the reuse of certain platforms is limited as soon as you have to jump to new generations of processes of software modules and so on and so forth. Here we can, with the partnership, also leverage the experience to have technologies which are also for a long period of time backward compatible and reusable in the essential lower layers of the software which you need to have by also complying to the relevant standards for performance as well as safety requirement. Yeah, really interesting mix of balancing that differentiation in the marketplace while still being an upgradeable path. I'm curious, you talked a little bit about the open source model. One of the key things when you talk about going through a digital transformation is data. There's obviously a lot of data if you talk about autonomous vehicles. We see everybody about how many gigabytes per hour and all the maps and everything there. What is the role of data in this entire process? Is there sharing of data between some of the different players involved? So yeah, data is, I would say data is one, first of all, data is in general independent from industry, the new currency. This is one thing also realized in the automotive industry here. Of course, we need to consider certain privacy rules independent from whether it's the car maker itself for his project or the driver. So we need to respect this, but independent from that, car is one of the most accurate sensors we do have in our environment. And of course, creating data, we're talking about one terabyte per day roundabout and this is already now reused. Amongst common factors amongst the industry, just think about a certain here as an acquisition of several players in the industry where they are sharing map data because it doesn't make a difference for a GM car, for a Ford car, for a BMW car, for a Daimler car when we use the same road. The road stays, of course, the brand and the car changes but the information about the road infrastructure is exactly the same. And this is the first topic which has to be or will be shared and is already shared. Second thing is traffic information where you have mobile providers in there and this already is considered and there are a lot of discussion and already business models undergoing or in preparation for that. Yeah, well, you know, you hope the roads don't change. I live in the Boston area. There's times if you take six months off and all of a sudden you're like, wait, this road used to go a certain way. At least it's a lot easier to update, you know, your software than it is for older vehicles that I'm driving. You talked a little bit about privacy. I know cybersecurity is one of the aspects that elector bits involve. Talk to us a little bit about the security aspect in your company's experiences there. Yeah, with transferring data into the car or outside of the car, data security is a key feature. It's just a must. So in former times, as electorate as we are coming from inside the car as an embedded software provider, we protected really the devices within the car, for example, the automator from manipulation and generated certain securities in the internal bus with our customers. But this is no longer enough. You need to go outside the car. So when you transfer data from the cloud into the car or vice versa, and therefore cybersecurity to protect the whole chain in inside the car communication, they are all interfaces where you can connect devices or the back end from where you transport the information. For that reason, elector bit acquired a company in Israel two years ago. But also we know that in the basics, in the basic technology from SUSE distribution, there's already a lot of technology in there which makes data transfer really, really safe, sorry, secure so that you can trust the data and really keep the privacy you need to have for specific reasons. All right, well, this is a very fast moving industry. Give us a little bit as to what you see happening in the next 12 to 24 months. What are some of the kind of major opportunities as well as challenges that are being faced? Yeah, I think one of the biggest opportunities we will see in the upcoming directly next generation is the car really becoming a part of the internet. I think with that, a lot of the business models from the car manufacturer itself, from the suppliers need to change so that really the car manufacturer enables their customers to continuously update their device, mobile device, namely the car. It's very similar to those devices at the moment from technology which we do already have since the decay in our pocket. Of course, you cannot put the car into your pocket but you want to have the same convenience with new services, with new functions. And I think this is the most exciting opportunity of the car. With that, you need to have new technologies on platform. You need to have data security. You enable completely new business models and this will change our life completely, also our business completely. And I think these are the most important and the most exciting changes in the near future as the next generation already is under preparation and will be launched really, really soon. And of course, second topic is the autonomous driving. It goes step by step as just discussed in the beginning and this is the second opportunity than for many other companies making business with the time when the drivers then have quality time and can do something different than just steering the car. Excellent, there's so much excitement in what is happening in the industry, definitely one we want to watch. Alex, I want to give you the final word, SUSEcon, the partnership between Electrobit and Tuesday and final takeaways that you have for the event. Yeah, thanks a lot. It's just exciting for us to have such a great partner like SUSE, an experienced partner. It brings lots of new aspects into our industry, helps us to provide the right solutions. And with that, we are sure that we can generate and we will generate the basis of the next smart cars of our customers in terms of software platform. Thank you very much. Alex, thank you so much for joining us. I'm Stu Miniman, lots more coverage here from SUSEcon Digital 20. Thank you for watching theCUBE.