 Live from Bahrain, it's theCUBE. Covering AWS Summit, Bahrain. Brought to you by Amazon Web Services. Okay, welcome back everyone. We're here live in Bahrain. This is theCUBE's exclusive coverage of the Amazon Web Services Summit here, where Amazon AWS is launching a region in early 2019. It's been announced this is going to change the game and also creating, it's creating a lot of gravity. A lot of people coming together. Of course theCUBE's first time here. We have lots of observations, lots of commentary and amazing new guests on theCUBE. We're super excited. Our next guest is Sammer Al-Gishi, who's the group president of BFG. Welcome to theCUBE. Thank you, sir. Nice to be here. So what is BFG? Take a minute to explain. What is BFG? Big Friendly Giant, no. So BFG is one of the, it's an industrial firm where one of the first industries in Bahrain was set up in 1975. As a composites manufacturer. It has grown over the years. So now we're in our 43 years. And it has grown to become a small multinational, concentrating in about, let's say, quite diversified, but broadly covering four different product sectors. So we are working in the architectural area as a supplier of facades and complete building envelopes utilizing composites plus other types of innovative building materials. So if you look today at buildings designed for the likes of Sahadeed, where you've got non parametric architecture and you've got non-repeatable shapes. Architects are looking for different types of materials that are able to achieve those visions which are quite grand and aspirational and achieve them cost-effectively and efficiently. So we are one of the, I would say one of the top players in this area. A second key area for BFG today, we're recognized as one of the largest suppliers of components to the rail industry. So we serve most of the rail industry in Australia, in the Asia, in Europe and the Americas. We supply, some of the parts are structural. Some of them are decorative. In structural parts, we make the front ends, for example, we make the front ends of the TGV. We build the toilet cabins for the majority of trains, a highly sophisticated integrated product and all of the interior linings. So transportation is a big area for us. We also work in renewable energy. We work with GE, Siemens and others to supply generator housings for wind turbines. And then we work, we have a very strong program on waste treatment management. So it's quite a lot of different sectors, they're quite varied and it's quite interesting. I think, in a way, we'll be talking about industry 4.0. The variety that we have in types of client and the products for those clients- So what is industry 4.0? It's important. Explain that, what is industry? That's a great question and it's actually a hard one to answer simply. Industry 4.0 is a whole, I think just to begin with, let's talk about industry 3.0. So industry 3.0 was the time when you had relational databases like SAP or Oracle or many other products from Microsoft and others come in in order to put some structure into a manufacturing organization and to provide information and visibility. And we had also robotics, so a substantial amount of robotics coming in. Industry 4.0 goes a step further from this in that what we are now doing with industry 4, we have the capability today through the cloud and through machine learning, deep learning and other tools we're able today to do real-time optimization. And that's a big difference between industry 3.0 and industry 4.0. I would say simply, perhaps if I could say industry 4.0 in short, it's bringing out real-time optimization out of a disordered environment. So when you look at manufacturing, manufacturing is not a very ordered system. You've got suppliers that have delivery schedules that are never matching. It's either ahead or behind. Different quality levels, different capacity levels. You have the supplier of your suppliers. If you go one step up, then you've got operators. So I would do something in a different way and speed than you would do it, even though if it's the same process. So you've got variations in people, variation in people's skill, variation in people's quality. And then you've got machines that could perhaps do a certain process a little bit faster than they do in other process. But also they could fail. They could sometimes fail unpredictably. And if you take all of that and you look at one failure, it could affect a complete program that you had for the day. You've got to write software for this. You could program this. Is that what 4.0 is? Yeah, basically. It can be much more programmable. Basically, it's taking- Not the old static, you know- Absolutely. Known process. Absolutely. Or known technology, not very flexible. Absolutely. Like all the ERP systems of Industry 3 would give you a program for a day. But they wouldn't really recalculate what happens in the middle of a day. And they're not learning. So they're just based on data that's input statically. With Industry 4.0, we're putting real-time data acquisition on the factory floor. We're putting in tons of IoT sensors, images, imaging sensors, cameras, operator measurement systems. Machine measurement systems. So flexibility is critical. So I talk to a lot of people who use cloud. And I haven't had many manufacturing gurus like you, but the ones that are in operational management roles, they say, the old days we had processes that were locked in and we kind of did tech and we kind of managed it. Look at the dashboards, look at the data, had meetings, tried to fix it. He says, now we have kind of known technology, but the processes are changing in real time so that on any given time, we might want to deploy a new process. Absolutely, that's not only this, but if I take it forward a few years forward with artificial intelligence, now that you're picking up all of this data and a computer looks at it, it will be able to in itself suggest optimizations of process. You no longer need people to do so. The computer will actually see that a particular operator has done something in a different way. It resulted in improvement. It in itself can go and change that operating procedure. Well, okay, I got to ask you a question because my mind's going into operating system mode here. I'm writing the kernel in my head. Okay, so let's do that. We just built this cool system, but where's the data? The data really is the key here. So if you have good data, you're going to have a really good flexible AI. Bad data is bad AI. Exactly. So how do you view that? How do you set up the architecture? How are you thinking about architectural frameworks for managing great data quality? Well, so you've got to have, first of all, you have to have a good and reliable sensor suite. And those sensors, for example, could capture environmental parameters, could venture other types of, say vibration and other types of either motion or sensing or different types of temperature, humidity. And then you have actually the operators themselves become connected. So you have to find how to connect that operator and extract data of what they're doing into the cloud. You could go as far as actually measuring their exact motion in the future. We don't yet have the hardware or the tech to do so, but imagine that you can actually measure their motion or you could have very intelligent imaging where you've got a camera that actually looks at an operator, understands what it does. There's petabytes still coming in. That's a lot of data. And so the challenge is not just the data centers like Amazon, but it's also creating that bandwidth to feed data from the factory into the cloud. And that's going to be very, very important. Well, I want to ask you about your biggest challenges that you guys are doing right now. But I want to get, because I want to jump quickly to something different. I want to get your opinion since you're an expert. The number one question I had coming over here on this trip was, Amazon, well they put a region over there for us, hot as hell. Right. Cooling is the biggest problem. Why would they go to the hot place? So where are you going to put the data center? So again, the question is, is someone who's been involved in sustainable building materials, what do they do? I mean, that's the number one question I get is how do you make it work? Is to cut cooling challenges, also using solar, son's a friend, the sustainable renewable energy is going to be a key piece of this data center. What's your opinion? You know, are you working on it or do you have an opinion on it? Well, I just think from a data center perspective, yes, it is a hot area in the world and cooling is an issue. But remember, we're still, we're one of the, this region supplies fuel for a large part of the world's energy production. So we do have energy in plenty and we certainly have sunshine in plenty in this area. And with solar energy becoming so cost competitive today, we believe that it can very quickly return the additional cost of infrastructure on cooling or even the operating cost. So you see solar no problem supporting what they need on cooling and power? For sure, for sure. Okay, so get back to some of your challenges. That's what we go, industry four, which by the way, I think is a whole new management practice. I don't think, you know, the Peter Druckers of the world wrote those books. I think that was industry one, wasn't it? I don't know, I'll give them some credit. We'll call them 2.5, maybe three. I think three. Okay, we'll give them three. 4.0 is a new paradigm shift. You're on the cutting edge of it. What are some of the challenges that you're facing that are opportunities? How are you thinking about them? Your thoughts. There are a lot of challenges and technology is still developing. So there are a lot of things we would like to do but are not yet enabled. Certainly, let's just talk so from our implementation in Bahrain, the skill gap is still one of the key areas. So in my team and the FGI, taken in about 12 young engineers, fresh graduates, and we're getting them acquainted with the process because we want to develop homegrown talent. We believe industry four out of Bahrain is going to be big, but it's important to have the local skills. Need the young guns, the young talent. Absolutely, and they have to get involved quite early. So that's from the local angle. We have a lot of support coming in from government and other bodies in Bahrain. Everybody's fully aligned with this. When we look, however, on the actual implementation of the development, there are certainly still certain gaps. For example, there are a lot of things that we believe require a higher degree of image recognition and image analysis. I'll give you an example. You've got a robot. So if you have a robot, you've got to position, robots are dumb machines. So unless something is placed exactly in the right place. And a lot of people are building more robots more than ever. So there's more robots out there. And you know what's surprising? We're discovering that the robots aren't very connected and they're not yet today. The programming of the robots doesn't enable you to develop them or to connect them or to implement industry four on this. Just in an announcement recently on Microsoft, for example, is rolling out robot programming languages, which would be a great start. And that's what you need. So we find that there are quite a lot of missing technologies to make industry four really, really operational. Related to our robotics, imaging, and some data acquisition. So the phase we're in now is connect and then make intelligent. So IoT and robotics is okay, let's connect it. Let's get power to it. And then make it more intelligent. Absolutely. So today I think we're at the stage where we can collect data, we can analyze it, we can project what's optimized. But I don't think we're yet at the stage where we can take that optimization and actually implement it very quickly, real time on the shop floor because of certain interface issues. But I think the tech... Interfaces or databases or what's in there. Are they technical or are business challenges? And programming, they're more technical. Okay, okay. But the technology is developing so quickly that I think a lot of these challenges will disappear in a couple of years. What are you most excited about? Assume that the connecting and the power of parts happening, that's easy to do. On the making more intelligent, what are you excited about? What are you looking at? What are you bullish on? What are some of the things that you're really investing your time on? Well, I think it's... This technology is very interesting and can be applied to when industry four rolled out, it was mainly the large process industries that adopted this or maybe even large mass production type industries which adopted this. I think there's tremendous, tremendous potential for this with the medium and small enterprises, particularly those that are doing what we call discrete manufacturing, which is producing limited series or limited amounts of parts and where you have a high amount therefore of human interaction and labor input and know-how. With the ability to do this, you will be able to create something that's equivalent of factory in a box. So you can actually box that know-how and you'll be able to transport it anywhere in the world and be able to localize and become international very quickly. That was ungettable in the old model because of the cost and the size and the equipment and the requirements to do it. And the fact that know-how was mainly still, even if it's written, was mainly in somebody's head. And this is going to impact everyone from street vendors to... Absolutely. All kinds of businesses. Absolutely. And this is going to make, hopefully, create more efficiencies. Hopefully, yes. Around smart energy, maybe, and then... Absolutely. Again, like industry two to three, industry three to four, it has its own number because it will create such a large transformation of business as we see it. Well, I really appreciate you saying we're coming on theCUBE and sharing your insights. Great conversation. I'd like to talk about... Thank you. Process improvement. It's one of my little dark secret hobbies, manufacturer, although I'm not a big operational guru, I don't like... I'm not a detailed person, but I love the operating system concept around manufacturing and systems. We'd love to have a conversation a few months from now and show you how the demonstrator has gone ahead. I'd love to keep in touch and follow all the construction. Final question before we break. I know we got to go. Just quick thoughts on the impact of having a region on Amazon here in Bahrain. Well, I think having Amazon here is a huge thing. For the country and for the region. So just the presence of Amazon, not only is it an enabler, but it by itself will create such a great support for the developing ecosystem here of startups. The Bahrainis, so we as Bahrainis, I often tell people innovation, entrepreneurship is built into Bahrainis since thousands of years ago. Learning culture. It's a learning culture. I'm always surprised by the level of skill, the level of enthusiasm for know-how, for innovation that happened. Having Amazon come here, I think reinforces this with people in Bahrain and in the region. And I think it's going to create, it's going to leapfrog the development for sure. New energy, for sure. One thing I'll just say, I know we got to go, my comment is that I've seen Amazon do this before. It's not just big businesses, developers going to scale up. And this whole skill gaps thing, we've seen it now for nine years. I've witnessed it and talked about it. And here's the common trend, the pattern. It doesn't matter if you're 15 or 50, you can level up and be the next guru in months. Look at blockchain, you could be, I know people who went from eight weeks are doing serious deployments. Crypto, these new AI, you can literally come from any point. And level up and be one of the best. Versus the old linear education. So if your culture's got that mojo of learning. This could be, this could transform and we no longer limited by say just capital. Now we're just limited by creativity and you could have that any place. And so you could find some global names arising out of Bahrain very quickly. I really bullish on you guys. My advice when I was in the ground table yesterday was you guys got a good community. They're active, they're vibrant, they complain a lot, which is a good sign because they should be, you have capital and you have a power source coming in here with Amazon and resources. Let the ecosystem organically develop. The soil's been planted, let it grow. Don't try to make any forced decisions. Feed it, get out of the way when you have to, help it when you need it, nurture it. Don't worry about it, it'll figure itself out. I think that is a good pattern. It's hard to get the community. It's hard, you can't buy a community. No, you can't force innovation. You can't go and find somebody, please be creative today or be innovative today. It has to be built in. You can't buy community, you can't buy the advancement. Thanks so much, we're here in the queue. We're a little bit over, but you know what? We're getting all the action, getting all the smart people, creating some great insights and we're going to continue all day today. Stay with us for more coverage after this short break.