 Welcome to JSATV, where we're covering the latest stories, trends, and innovations from the leaders in global connectivity, digital infrastructure, and the networks within. And I am speaking to Herb Villa, the senior solution sales architect at Rital. And we are talking to you live from Times Square, DCD Connect 2024. Herb, welcome to JSATV. Thank you. It's nice and good to see you guys, and love to talk about what's going on out there. Obviously, they're happy. Something's going on out there. Yeah. But Herb, we're going to talk about something that, from the PR and marketing industries, we have heard a lot about, particularly over the last five, maybe 10 years. And that is modular and edge data centers. Why don't you tell our viewers a little bit about what Rital does, and specifically as it relates to modular and edge data centers? Well, Rital is a global manufacturer. We manufacture in multiple countries, privately held German-based company. We do just that. We do, and we use the marketing term, modular enclosure solutions, right? The enclosures, we are the infrastructure, so the cabinets, the enclosures, climate control, heat removal, power management, air flow management. We do it for everybody from Fortune 500s to the large internet companies to industrial consortiums to schools, CERN, Brookhaven Labs. All of these are our customers. We're all over the place for the infrastructure side. All right, Herb. I'm going off script. You said it would be okay. So here we go. I want to talk about edge data centers. Yes, you do. Specifically, we heard a lot about edge. Get it as close as we possibly can to the end user, because it's that latency that is ultimately going to, or negating that latency, is ultimately what's going to help bring the newer technologies to meaningful deployment. Correct. Is that still true today? Okay. So the question is, how did we get here? How did we get to the edge? So years ago, we invented the cloud, and it's a data center. But now we're at the cloud, pardon me, so we have to be at the edge. But we've always been at the edge. Anybody who manufactures, anybody who was building something, or running a warehouse, or assembling cars, they were at the edge, because they were doing something at a very, very local level. The term that I use is hyper-local. Every place that is not a data center, but you gave me the misnomer, edge data center. Sorry, guys. There is no such thing as an edge data center. You're either at the edge, or you're in a data center. When I hear data center, big building, medium-sized building, generators, security, cooling, all of that, that's a data center. Edge is below us, downstairs in the subways. We are in all of the subway stations in Manhattan. That is not a data center. That is a subway station. We are on the production floor. We are on the distribution center. That is where the edge is, that hyper-locality, put it as close to the data as you said is possible, but I will not call it an edge data center. I will call it an edge site, an edge installation. That is the most comprehensive, yet simple explanation of the edge. Excellent. Excellent. Okay. We're going to move on. How can the operators best, and this is a good one too, best navigate the complexities of deploying these solutions at speed and scale. Okay, so speed and scale is important because I'm going to need them. Scale is, I'm not building a 500-foot print data center. I'm putting one footprint in 500 spaces. Think of Amazon, right? Every fulfillment center has three or four cabinets doing stuff. Think of an airport, think of the subway system. There are 400-some-odd stations. Each of those is a location. We have to treat that edge deployment as if it was a data center. I need the climate control. I need the power. I need the security, but I'm doing it in one or two footprints. I am in any place that doesn't have a raised floor, that doesn't have climate control, that doesn't have generators out back. So we have to plan for that. The scale is to make it scalable, make it adaptable, but now we have a couple of new ill-ty words as I call them. My manageability, my scalability, my adaptability, now two more words. You already said one of them. Repeatability. That gives me seed to deployment. And finally, portability. I need to move it from point A to point B. I'm closing that warehouse, I'm going here. I'm closing that school, I'm going here. I'm moving that office, I'm going there. So those are the new ill-ty words that we use. Portability, flexibility, repeatability. I love it. That's it. I am an old school telecom guy and it reminds me of like 20, 25 years ago when we were talking about last mile connectivity. It is analogous to do you have last mile connectivity? It is analogous to do you have an edge? Correct. Data, like, data center like this. Do I have an edge installation, an edge deployment? Yeah. You know, we use the term, I will graciously let the industry say, I'll call it a micro data center. OK. All right. So find some compromise, are we her? I'll be good. But I don't want to hear a micro edge, a cloud edge, a big edge. Because there's an edge. This table has an edge. There is another edge behind this one. That's it. That's edge. That's where I'm at. That is that it's not that final mile, it's that final meter. Got it. That final meter. No, I love it. And it all makes a lot of sense to me. Go ahead. I was going to say we could also learn from the modularity that I do want to have that capability to grow and expand, to plan for some idea of future proofing, some idea of where I see my next generation. And also, the other thing we have to ask, because you talked about deployment, is ownership. So who is going to own it? A facility manager at a warehouse or a production site, an IT guy sitting 3,000 miles away. He doesn't know from air conditioners. A facility guy doesn't know from IP addressing. They have to both work together. So we look at the ownership and make sure it is a joint ownership for that end user. Herb, I'm buying everything that you're telling me right now. I'm buying everything that you're selling. And honestly, I don't understand how, why other, I mean, and you have some high profile clients, obviously. So it all makes a lot of sense to me. Right. What we do is because, as you said, I've been doing this way too long. That's why I'm the senior solution. This means I'm old. But we do have that data center almost prejudice. Yeah. All right. So I will stay in that comfort zone. But now I am out of my comfort installation. But I have to do it. The facility people, the industrial controls people, the manufacturing people, they do this for a living since Henry Ford perfected the assembly line. I would say 100 years ago, that was the first edge deployment just without computers. So we've been doing it all on. But after the cloud, the edge guy said, I got to give it a name. Yeah, we need something. I need a marketing term. I need to say the PR term. I'm happy to oblige. I'm out the edge. I got the edge. Where is it? Who is it? Who owns it? What's it do for me? But again, the data center is critical because, remember, it's on your network. It is part of your infrastructure. I can hack in. I can be at that warehouse or in that subway station, open a door, find the USB port, and stick my virus onto your, I'm inside your firewall. So we have to be aware of all of those requirements that we do see at the data center. But now it's under a cell tower in the middle of Nebraska. We're on cruise ships. I am 2,000 miles from land with 7,000 of my closest friends on the icon of the seas. It's a floating data center with my edge deployments. Herb, we're going to end right there. Thank you so much for being with us on JSATV. My pleasure. Guys, thank you for having us and enjoy DCD. You bet. You bet. Thank you very much. And thank you viewers for watching JSATV. Stay curious. Stay connected. And we'll see you soon.