 Welcome to JSA TV, where we're covering the latest stories, trends, and innovations from the digital infrastructure network and the real estate within. I'm Buffy Harakitas of JSA, and joining me today is Paul Gamp. He is the CTO of ConsulConnect, one of the world's leading network as a service providers. So welcome, Paul. Thank you, Buffy. Great to be here. One important issue this year for 2024 that ConsulConnect is covering is some of the challenges that IoT devices have been presenting. Can you give viewers a little bit more about that? Yeah, of course. I think all of us have thought about the internet-connected fridge, right? And you think, well, if my fridge gets compromised, then somebody will know that I'm probably eating too much ice cream at night. But if you were to think through if that's a medical device or a large manufacturing plant, the risk of compromise is really significant. So at ConsulConnect, we started to think, OK, IoT devices are connected over mobile networks, and IoT devices now are typically sending their telemetry to cloud environments, as are IoT, AWS, IoT. So then we thought, well, ConsulConnect actually connects mobile networks, and we connect to cloud. So we can afford all of these industrial IoT devices private, secure connectivity to cloud environments and take away the risk of having IoT exposed to the internet. So we call it IoT Cloud Router. We think it's a really revolutionary solution to significant industrial risk for IoT devices. Yeah. I mean, we're hearing so much about all these vulnerable attacks and things that are happening across IoT devices. So I think that this is a wonderful way to help keep solving some of these challenges that IoT has been presenting, which leads us to expanding into the partner ecosystem and how you can continue growing that area of ConsulConnect. Can you tell viewers a little bit more about your partner ecosystem and what you have planned for 2024 there? Yeah. The partner ecosystem began, as you would anticipate, with the traditional network to network interfaces, or NNI, as we would call them. And what we're seeing is that traditional network connectivity is not dynamic enough for the modern enterprise. They want to be able to provision connectivity to new locations at a click at a button, like they can with computers as a storage, as a service, or storage as a service. So what we're encountering is some of our partners are now capable of building APIs. So we're able to do deep integration, not just at the network layer, but also at the provisioning and settlement layer. And we have a couple of our great partners here with us this week. So we have Colt, who we've done a bilateral API integration with, and DC Connect. We also have a bilateral API integration. So in terms of our partnership, it's great to see the traditional wholesale carrier community embrace APIs and begin to provide this sort of automation that enterprise need. The second one that we've seen is really exciting is that often there's an emerging type of cloud connectivity or cloud provider that serves a specific niche. So we've all heard about generative AI, whether it be chat, GPT, I'm sure you heard it, every interview you've done. And so there's a merging trend of cloud providers to serve a specific use cases. And one of them is our partner, Kato Digital. And their goal is to deliver bare metal, sustainable GPU compute. And so as a specialty organization, they haven't got all of the sort of software development capacity of an Amazon to build Direct Connect. So they partner with Console Connect so that we can provide Direct Connect to Kato Digital compute. So I wouldn't call them tier two, but that second class of specialized cloud providers are using our ecosystem to provide connectivity. And that's a great way the partnership is working for them. I think the third that's really important is the fact that we've now got a marketplace capability built into Console Connect. So if you're a storage provider or a compute provider or even a SaaS application provider, you can host those product offerings in our catalogue and gain access to the thousands of enterprises in our ecosystem. So these are the three types of partnerships that are really starting to take off for us in 2024. Yeah, I mean, there's nothing better than a partnership to help expand and keep the business growing for sure, especially with this ecosystem as it stands today. Yeah, we agree. So tell me a little bit more about any of the trends when it comes to network as a service that you think are going to be big in 2024. Well, in terms of our product capabilities, what I'm really excited about what we're launching in 2024 is so we're a fully vertically integrated. We call ourselves a network as a service provider, a software defined cloud interconnection provider. But we're really a combination of a 20 year old mobile network. We're in the top 10 IP networks in the world, combined with this dynamic network as a service product offering. And so because we're that full vertically integrated, we can offer you transmission on demand. So this year, I think we'll be the first company in the world to actually allow you to log in and pick specific cable systems and provision connectivity across our cable system, which obviously underpins our IP network and cloud connectivity. So we're super excited about that coming to market. And the second thing that I think is really critical for us this year is that marketplace product offering. The fact that you're not just a source of connectivity, you can also be a destination of connectivity. So for those SaaS applications and emerging ecosystem of solution providers, because often enterprises are using connectivity as the first thing they look for, we've got a JSON seed to upsell and cross-sell as part of that transaction of providing connectivity. So that's really important. And then the emergence of the MEF and other standards around making it easier for us as a carrier community to integrate at the API layer, as I mentioned earlier with Colton others. So I think that's key. I guess I would, I've only said GenA AI once. I'm sure I've got to say it more than once. Thinking about the enterprises 2024 roadmap, are large language models. You all know that underneath chat, GPT is a large language model. And we've probably all heard how risky it can be if corporate information accidentally makes it into a large language model. So it was almost a year ago that we saw what we think was the first of the large language models moving across our network. So it was a customer of ours who had five terabytes of data in one hyperscale cloud provider. They provisioned a cloud router and were able to move that large language model from one cloud to another cloud within days. If they'd done it over the public internet, it would have had the security risks, substantial egress charges and it would have taken them months. So again, it's about being able to provide the enterprises private connectivity, whether it be between on-premise and cloud, but also in our case with cloud router, from cloud to cloud. From cloud to cloud. So you're moving things. I know, we're trying to wait five terabytes. What are they moving? And then realize, okay, it's probably a large language model. Right. And the security there is critical. Completely private network guaranteed bandwidth. Exactly. Well, you guys are doing great things. Thank you. So thank you for all that you do for the community here. And is there anything else that you'd like to add today? Not at all. I think that's it. Well, thank you for providing such great insights into console connect and everything that you're doing from IoT to moving terabytes from cloud to cloud, keeping everything secure, a wonderful partner ecosystem. And it's great to see you again here at PTC 2024. And Paul, thanks again. And for our viewers tuning in, stay curious, stay connected, and happy networking.