 Hi everybody and welcome back to another edition of from the rock to the cloud in this series We're talking all things server related Azure related and today we're going to talk about something really exciting, which is edge Computing and that's a big buzzword in the industry. There's a lots of new terminology around it Lots of stuff happening that kind of well to be honest. We probably don't even really understand yet So as always, um, we've managed to get hold of someone who is actually an expert not just me babbling on We've managed to get the Batman Anthony Bartello. He's back again Obviously, I've got I've got my bar Behind me to represent you and obviously as we said before you're originally from the rock to Broghter So it couldn't be any more Have you Sorry, there we are. Yeah, I'm going. I'm going mad And getting myself like an idiot as always. This is this is why I can't this is why need you to tell me about server information Because I can't remember But we're you know, we're gonna talk about edge computing today and see and just remind everybody though a little bit about you beforehand and just so they can refresh their memories and hopefully remember that from Malton not Gibraltar and The and then we'll get into it. We're getting to talking about um edge Computing more and whatever that holds. So yeah crack on Anthony. Tell us about yourself. Oh good So Anthony Bartello senior client advocate here at Microsoft. Um, I dabble in all things operations So it professional based But I'm on the fringe area. So I get I get to play with all the cool toys That it should be taking the consideration when looking at supporting their organizations because if This technology is not at your organization yet. It's probably on the Front of thinking in terms of where the organization is going to go and in this day and age where We want to ensure that the it professionals or the it departments are not seen as a cost center They're seen as an enabler for the organization to move forward these type of technologies like edge computing It should be top of mind for them when deploying Burn in I think that makes a lot of sense. I mean, you know, I think we saw a you know satyr's recent You know Kino a build he was talking about sort of the percentages of you know spend Globally that's being spent on it going up from 5% to 10% and then he was talking about like what the other I think it was 85 90% are going to be spending their tech You know their their money on which is tech and so all of this is kind of interweaving and I suppose Edge computing is a really massive like it's a big subject But you know, where where where do we start talking about that today? You know what what you know? Where would you start? What would you describe edge computing as Anthony? Well, let's take it. Let's take it a step back and well what we're going to do is we're going to go through a journey in terms of How we got to edge computing in this day and age Are you familiar with iot? Yeah Okay, so iot Internet of things internet of things right connecting all devices to capture information My first project that I actually completed in iot Was this this is a two dollar mousetrap connected to a raspberry pi And what it did was when the mousetrap went off it alerted the pest control company to say hey this mousetrap has caught a mouse That's all it did right nothing more. That was the that was the information that was being sent back We then took this scenario and multiplied it by 100 so we built 100 of these traps and deployed these traps inside of a building and Then was in a span of 72 hours understood the travel patterns of mice through that through that building by how quickly the traps were set off And that information coming in Imagine now so that's 100 traps imagine. It's a million traps And all this information is being pushed out to the club It's a rudimentary thing in regards to it's just a trigger that the trap is set off and it sends that signal Said that the circuit is closed that means it's caught a mouse and it sends the information up What happens then when you have? Sending the information about when the mouse is caught How you know if it was dark if it was light the temperature the placement inside of the room or the building of where the trap was set via wi-fi triangulation via gps all that information now you're setting up all this information to the cloud Is all this information? important hundred percent Is does it require to send all this information all at one chunk possibly not right The other aspect to this is the latency of the information coming back and forth So if i'm sending all this information up to the cloud awaiting for the computation to come back down possibility better placement of traps to catch more mice If I have to keep on pushing back and forth there's that latency and you know in a mouse traps You know there is no requirement for quickness in terms of response other than cleaning out the traps You can you know wait a couple hours to know where the better placement of the traps should be But in scenarios like you know when you're trying to save individuals out at sea when they've their ship has Gone under distress and they're in the water on a life jacket, you know stuff like that where it's you know minutes count You can't have this scenario where you have to wait for data to come back and forth Edge computing is that next step now that we have these devices that are out there and capturing information in the world They do the computing on the edge as opposed to pushing all the information up to the cloud You don't have to do the you know the terabytes of data push to the cloud for computation now You can actually do what you know what we see as a cleaning of data all the raw data being processed at the iot device To have a deduction of what you're trying to accomplish And then pushing up the results of that calculation up to the cloud for x whatever x may be Okay, so it's kind of like smart use of data that's out there And it's kind of like curation of that data so that you're only sending The bits that you need to the cloud say for example for that big processing, but then locally I specifically need that You know that that that mouse You know trap data for timings or whatever, but that's kept there and computed locally So it's sort of dividing the workloads And then it's making it more efficient and it's saving money as well because obviously if you were to send all of that data All the time to the cloud and back that would actually be costing you a lot of money So there's a cost saving as well as an efficiency saving as it were um now Something we talked about um, you know previous and we were talking about like discussing the solid matter We were talking about there's ot and iot right, okay, so um first of all what is ot right because um You know people at home might not have heard of that, but what's the difference between iot and ot? Maybe you could explain that for the audience Let's start with iot first. So iot internet of things can also be you know Discussed as information of things right so in the mousetrap scenario you have that Information it's being flown to azure for compute and capturing that information Another example based on the mousetrap Actually platform was in toronto the ice cream trucks are also outfitted what iot devices for triangulation as to as to Where's the best areas to sell the most ice cream and consume the least amount of gas? To run these trucks right like that's the information that's being pushed up to the cloud Of things is the whole automation piece So now you instead of the information being pushed up to the cloud is the you know The perfect example that I provide is irrigation systems in farmers fields Right you have this scenario where I have a crop of tomatoes And it requires x amount of water so I program these edge devices to say hey I'm placing you in an area that you're providing coverage for tomatoes and the soil moisture has to be x And you have you know if the temperature is this temperature How much water should the should the irrigation system being pushed through the crops to make sure that there's the highest Heal for tomatoes right so it's more of an automation piece where you have these devices That understanding environmentals around them specifically catering to what they're Gardening, which is the tomatoes to know how much water and That type of information in that scenario there. It's not really pushing information up to the cloud It is sometimes pushing the results to say Okay, so I water this field and now you know the starting moisture was this and the ending moisture is this And that's the information that's pushing up to the cloud based on the factors of sun heat Plants all that type of information But it's a result of automation as opposed to just capturing of information itself Perfect, so yeah, it's I suppose it's it's connecting all those little dots and you know again Just thinking through if we've got like a very traditional kind of in you know environment And you know we've got that you know business with their you know their on-prem server But they want to start utilizing free. I'm just thinking like a shop, right? So a shop suddenly wants to Um, you've got your traditional tilt system connected to an on-prem server That's you know doing its daily backup and all that kind of stuff But they kind of want to smarten up and maybe look at footfall traffic So then they put a sensor on the door and then they want to start utilizing maybe some of those Azure features. I suppose that's where things that we've talked about previously like You know azure arc or when the windows admin center those kind of things can then pull those things in and then People can start using those with those combined You know bits of technology is is that how somebody would approach this? It like I like I like your example. So let me take it a step further Um, what you're talking about is the information of things in terms of capturing a foot traffic inside of the store Let's take it to you know for the grocery stores. They have Freezers in their grocery stores for frozen produce and you have this scenario where each freezer has its own condenser The condenser itself has to be defrosted twice a day Because if you don't it actually overheats and if the condenser Stops working and the freezer is no longer being kept cold and that's and that's a problem, right? So Okay, what you're looking at from a grocers perspective is so you have to heat up these these conventers twice a day There's electricity costs to do that In ontario, uh, the hydro rates fluctuate every five minutes. So understanding, you know at what time sometimes it's it's a There is a surplus of electricity that the ontario hydro would want you to use and they'll actually pay you To use that hydro at those instances That calculation of edge computing does the machine learning exercise to understand When is the best time is based on hydro rates to set the condenser to defrost so that it It ensures that that the condenser doesn't blow up, right? And it's and it doesn't take out the groceries in that respect It's that piece that's on the edge is doing that calculation Uh, instead of just waiting for the information because remember that latency piece and that cost piece of sending information back and forth That can become troublesome for a scenario like the condensers because they're crucial to the running of those freezers Inside of those gross grocery stores um No In in those scenarios there having it on the edge makes more sense because it makes the grocery store the freezer is intelligent to to self uh To take care of itself in terms of when the the condenser needs to be defrosted and what times to ensure that there's low cost to do so Okay, you know that that makes sense and I think we've got a good picture of what edge computing is. Um, and I think that's You know some great examples What's it? You know what's it's a role in this because again people probably think of it as again the person that services the server or The guy that fixes your broken computer or you know my my blinking mouse isn't working again Get me a new mouse that's it's fault. Like what is what is i what is it's responsibility? I think that's probably even better than than role, right? What's what's the responsibility of it with edge computing because obviously this is going to blow up, right? So so here's the thing your your mouse Um story is 100 correct mouse stops working. They call it. I've seen organizations. The toilet Doesn't flush and they call it tea right it's it's been called for everything The the thing though with this especially in iot and edge computing is it's another device That's capturing information. It's another device doing automation of of tasks Let's go back to the freezer example Um because this was a real example that occurred and was a project that I was on The initial conversation that occurred with this example was the way that this the solution was initially implemented Was in such a way that they did not incorporate it in this conversation So the organization had put forth that they had to save x amount of millions every year Based on their cost usage The business decision makers and the developers of this organization went out and got a third party manufacturer to come in and deploy The solution at the organization and didn't tell it There was no security parameters put into place based on the agreed upon requirements of that organization Based on it's recommendations. Everything else had had that security capability except for the freezer solution Okay hacker got in Discovered there was no authentication required to gain access to the freezer to set the temperatures took out 10 million dollars worth of inventory overnight Because disabled all the alarms to to you know notify that the freezers had gone down when the The general managers of the stores walked in the morning or whoever was opening the stores in the morning These freezers freezers were all down and everything was thought out and had to be thrown out Right wow that's what happened This is the thing right so what happened in this scenario immediately Immediately when this occurred it was called in and said hey what happened and it's response was I had no idea. This was even implemented at our organization. Nobody had talked to us about this We saw that there was something on our network But when we inquired about it, we were out your your cost center. You're not our innovation group We don't need you to be aware of this scenario. We're taking care of this ourselves They have it any they have it in writing so they were safeguarded needless to say those that implemented the solution were all let go And we were brought in to help, you know provide a better Implementation of the solution because it's a very viable solution But it wasn't it wasn't brought in in regards to this and it caused this major issue Any information that is being consumed by our organization There are security requirements in place that it professionals In collaboration with the business decision makers and the developers at an organization have to set forth security parameters Authentication parameters there might be ISO standards in terms of where the data can reside if it can be in cloud If it has to stay on-prem there's all these considerations that have architecturally It is it was responsibility These devices capturing information automating of tasks are also it's responsibility And yeah, and I think I think in the keyword there is responsibility like these and and again I think again probably for the audience maybe maybe some of the concerns around this is The fear factor that bringing this new technology and this creating this automation Is actually going to somehow make it less relevant and I think it's the opposite I think it's actually more relevant. There's there's more layers to it There's more things happening and there's more things to be responsible for it's just it's not necessarily unscrewing the back of a pc and fixing a pc It's actually You know, it's the management of of the data it's management of the security and it's actually That responsibility to make sure that the cost savings that people Think they're going to make are actually achievable and they're actually all in the right benefit of the company So it's for me. I think it's it's an elevation of the it Or the role of it within businesses because it brings them into bigger decision processes outside of just like How does our network work? You know, like how does our how does our website run? Those you know, those are kind of I suppose the it questions from five to ten years ago Now it's actually how can the technology we're implementing as a business save us money Um, so it's actually creating jobs. It's you know, and it's a new skill set for people I think that's kind of what i'm picking up from what you're saying Remember the terminology byod I think I think it was you know, a very hot topic. What eight years ago bring your own device We actually we do by ob which is bring your own beer Which I personally prefer to byod but carry on with byod So byod back in the day bring your own device people were bringing their you know Their own personal phones smartphones into the company and say hey it connect these and that was the big deal Back then is how do I secure them? How do I enable them? Now we don't even hear that terminology anymore because it's now it's yet connected to the network All the parameters are set for security capabilities in a way we go We're now in the era of byod for iot and edge computing Because if you can walk into your local retailer and buy a smart device All you do is bring it back to your organization Something as simple as the light bulb with wi-fi connectivity to turn on and off and to do an understanding of when it's dark to automatically turn on Because I've seen you know smart light bulbs that have edge capabilities That could take down an entire network if they get hacked Right. Yeah and unsecured pass unsecured channels it's not about Disabling the ideas and creativities of those that are bringing in ideas into an organization for automation for better best practices For save cost savings in terms of day-to-day operations It's for hey these devices can leak information these devices can cause downfall of An organization if they get hacked It needs to safeguard that needs to govern that and that's why the conversation between all those that participate inside of an organization is still important the whole byod thing happened because People were told no you can't connect this device to our network to our infrastructure And they found a way to do it and that information got on the device in a way we went The same scenario could occur on iot and edge computing should somebody attack an edge device as doing calculations Computations on whatever information whatever information if information and data is the new currency And it goes into the wrong hands or If somebody sabotages that device it does an automation piece like the crops if I go in and I and I change the Just something as simple as i'm going from tomatoes to celery and celery takes less less watering as an example That may you know kill off the tomato crops because it's not it's not the appropriate level of water These are the things that it has to take in consideration from safeguarding And from a from a security perspective in terms of these deployments of these devices and I think and you know It's it's good that people started to think around this all stuff. So thanks for explaining that But I suppose that's one of the reasons why you know bringing it back to you know window server That's why we need people to move to that latest version It's it's not that we're trying to cost them money What we want to do is give them the upside of the benefits of all these things and they can't do that if you're If you're working on a you know 2003 edition Yes, it's running that old app that um, you know, I'm just thinking like we're in 2021 If you're still using 2003 to like run that app like that's it's quite a few years But you're not going to be able to like modernize and get the advantage of the new iot and you know Edge computing era with that old technology. So that's one of the reasons why You know, we want to help people modernize But what deployment and security considerations would you know it Need to consider in adopting edge computing because obviously, you know modernizing is one But actually there's more to it, right? What what what things do people need to think about? So The biggest thing is what is the organization trying to accomplish right in regards to deployment of these devices What are they trying to do is an automation piece is a data capture piece? And then who's to gain access to that information, right? Who emits the organization should have access to the raw data to the the result of data or calculated data? And where is the data going to reside? Right? Is it going to be on-premises? Is it going to be in cloud? Can you even send anything to the cloud? Does everything have to stay? On-premises there's the utilization of azure stack hci as an example be a requirement for that capability of on-premises for capturing and calculation of data that there's there's so many things that need to be explored And that's why the open dialogue is so important, right? Back in the day it would just dictate and say yep, we're going to deploy these servers I'm going to deploy my my server 2003 implementation because this is what I feel is the spec and then you know The business decision maker would just say okay, uh, that's great But I want you to do a 10% less cost Next year, right? Yeah, and and that and that's the challenge now, right? Because a lot of organizations see that and say well, okay If I'm seen as a cost center and I'm asking to migrate to a new version of server to to safeguard an iot solution You know, how do I how do I relay the value to the business decision maker that I need to make this investment? Which will be over the threshold of the 10% I was supposed to say Right, this is why the conversation is so important with the rest of the organization If you're seen as a cost center, it's always going to be cut cost cut cost cost And that's sometimes to the detriment of the organization that you support So if you're on that old 2003 server, you miss out on the functionality of governance and security on solutions like edge computing in the scenario of Being part of the conversation Now it is not seen as a cost center They're seen as a Participant in the evolution of the organization that they support and so when the thought is, you know Hey, we need to upgrade to the newest version of server We need to deploy azure stack hci and azure arc for automation of where the data is to be residing and Computated now you're seen as part of the organization solution to move forward and to be profitable profitable in the future Then you're not seen as a cost center and then you have a little bit more Wiggle room in terms of your say in where the the company is going to be moving forward I couldn't I well, I couldn't have said it better myself Anthony so look we this is some like again big topics and You know, I think Is there some maybe some links or some information that we can share with this post that we can get from you That maybe would give people a little bit of a road to go down to You know where to go to find out a bit more about edge computing Is there any recommendations that you Yeah, there's a plethora of links that i'm going to be sharing so that you'll be able to provide alongside this podcast There are microsoft learn modules that are available. There are docs that are available We have a lot of blog posts that are available that specifically talk about this There are step by step interactions microsoft learn. I love the platform because it's hands-on You actually try the technology For free in in a sandbox that microsoft learn provides doesn't even require an azure subscription to do it But there's also step-by-step labs if you're doing an on-premises implementation That will will be sharing alongside this this video Sweet, okay. Well, thank you for that and thank you very much for your time today to Just give us the tip of the edge and we're not talking about edge from youtube. We're talking about edge computing But as you know, we've got to that time in the show Where me and you the bart man We're going to look at some memes now as you know, um, I really uh, you know, I don't know what half of these things mean So, um, it's probably going to look silly again as always But here we go. We're going to go into the meme review now. Um, server meme review. So meme review Number one, here we go three two one go. Let's get the reactions What if I told you At the end of the day the cloud is Somebody else's server, right? So people think of all this data is just floating in the air. No, no It's a server that microsoft has or a huge collection of servers somewhere under the ocean Some are in big server farms around the world. Uh, but in essence, yes, it takes serverless runs on servers It's it's very true. I uh, and this is But i'm not going to get into the whole conversation because trying to explain to my 70 year old lad about the cloud But that we we did we're like we had a family barbecue We were sitting around the table and he said what is this cloud And I just my my heart sank. I was just like, uh, we're like, how how far do I go with this? But basically the inclusion I came up with that is there's lots of computers. They're called servers They're connected all around the world and they store data and that is the cloud And yeah, he didn't get it. So, uh, yeah, it's you know, it's somebody else's it's somebody else's server, right? Oh, man, old old people on servers. Um, yeah Anyway, I I love my dad, but he's he's he's not going to sell a server anytime soon So yeah, the only server that he gets is somebody that brings him his his food in a restaurant. So That's about as far as Right. Um, okay. So meme number two Here we go Right, uh, hopefully the switch to the cloud computing is not like this. Well, no, that's that's pretty true that's from uh, that's indiana jones and uh, which means that is it the temple of doom I think it is the temple of doom, isn't that? I'm not sure. Yeah, I'm not I'm not familiar. I I've watched the movies. It's been a while actually They're actually coming out with a new one, which is interesting the the you know Yes, there's another there's another indiana jones coming out. Is it nine? I don't know. It's almost as What's interesting about this meme though is this is what a lot of organizations think cloud is They think that it's going to be a straight swap for your on-premises implementation to cloud computing And it's actually not and it's actually not even a swap because hybrid You know technologies mean that you have some of your compute on-premises still as a requirement that you have So I you know, I find this analogy, you know, perfect because the whole thing of swapping the idle for the Sandbag because it was the same weight. Uh, it's it's not that it's not the situation. It's you're actually providing more value and more Enhancement to your compute to your storage to everything else and your access to your information So in essence the sandbag that you're swapping in is a lot heavier than the idle that's there right now Anthony, I love how you've actually you've gone back. You've switched the meme from from funny to selling Like i'm backing up selling the solution like that's it. Like screw harrison forward and you know in the temple of doom I Get straight on to selling some more. Sure. I love it brilliant Well, let's just do a quick recap for everybody because You know, I think I've actually written down one with like my one takeaway really from what you've said Obviously the edge computing is big. It's about connection. It's about joining things up But for me the thing I've taken away from what we're chatting about is it's from turning that it or when I say it The you know typical IT In a business from being a cost center to being an innovation center And that will create jobs it will save money and it will give businesses the things they need in the future to evolve And that's really where I think the conversation is around edge computing. Is there anything else that you would add to that? Maybe the you know, probably a better summary than what I've just wrapped up there The one thing that a lot of people forget is what does it mean? It's information technology, right? And so that information that's being captured by these edge computing devices and being processed by the edge computing Devices are directly a responsibility of us inside of IT We have to do better and we can't you know, stay along the sidelines and let things that an organization occur without our input or influence Uh reason being because at the end of the day IT is always going to be looked at as well. Why wasn't this safeguarded? Why wasn't this secured? You not being part of the conversation is as detrimental Uh, if not more so as if you know, you were there and you provided the wrong solution, right? Being part of the conversation is definitely important and it ensures that you know The value seen in terms of what your contributions are and brings you out of that cost center play to the investment aspect of the organization that you support Perfect Well, look Anthony, thank you so so much for your time again I'm sure um, I'm sure we'll talk to you again. I have no doubts um, so thank you very much for uh, you know everything about edge computing And this is a subject which I think is going to get more detailed and run and run and run So, um, absolutely. Thank you for your time everybody. Thank you for watching this episode of from the rock to the cloud Remember if you've got comments for means or you want to talk more edge computing Let us know and we'll make sure that we get somebody an expert somebody like Anthony the bart man to come and talk about Talk about these subjects in the depth that you want to hear So, um, you know, if you've got questions, please, please Please let me and Anthony know and we will absolutely do our best to make sure that we can make From the rock to the cloud as relevant for you as possible Thanks very much for your time today and we look forward to talking to you again soon. Cheers. Bye