 Welcome to the telecom exchange CEO roundtables both for our guests right here in the audience at Tex LA as well as our viewers joining us as we stream on Facebook on our JSA page and and download on JSA TV Our second panel today is IOT and the data center. We're talking crowd power and performance We're honored to have my friend Rich Miller. He is the founder and editor of data center frontier Rich is an unbelief unbelievable Journalistic resource in our industry I've known rich since he was writing for carrier hotels calm back in the day and He then founded data center knowledge of course in 2005 which later sold in 2012 to Inet interaction part of Penton media Today as the editor of data center frontier Which does in-depth reporting and interviews the CEOs managers and data center professionals? That are on the forefront of the data center industry and the cutting edge of cloud computing Which makes him yep a perfect moderator for our all-star panel today. So without further ado, please welcome rich Miller Thank You Jamie it is It's been great to see since I have known Jamie a while It's been awesome to see the operation that she's built to help all of us here build business and get educated about the the industry so With that as our prelude. Let's learn some things about the things our topic this morning is the internet of things Which is a broad subject Encompassing all kinds of devices that now have brains and are connected to the internet and are being applied in all kinds of different Businesses and services and applications. So We have a really great panel here today to help us talk about this and understand what where the internet of things is taking us Let's let's I'll start with brief introductions and then we'll get the conversation going First we have Tony Lynn who is a director at GI partners Which has a long history of work in the data center industry? Locally most of you will be aware of them for their ownership of one Wilshire And then next is Jonathan Martone who is the director of data center engineering for Century Link Which has been in the news a little bit you're making news with your data centers there Next is Simon Lee who's a director of Santeris and managing director of sapiens capital And he and his companies have been involved in many of the success stories in the internet infrastructure sector Further down we have Peter Gross who is the VP of mission critical systems for blue energy but Has been a pioneer in data center deny design and Going way back to EYP and HP and Peter has always been had his sort of finger on the pulse of what's going on with data center design And at the end we have Rob Barlow who is the CEO of wire IE And an entrepreneur whose whose companies have been major players in the Canadian telecommunications scene So welcome everyone I thought I'd start off by just kind of getting a big picture view from each of you on the internet of things Where from your vantage point? Are you seeing? the impact of the internet of things and what are some of the Opportunities and challenges that that you're seeing rise from that. So Tony get started. Oh sure So I guess my answer to that would be on two levels personal and professional I'll start with the dryer side first or professionally Yeah It's it's it's obviously a large opportunity for for owner operators one actually not operates, but owners like like us as you all know GI has historically been involved in the data center operations business by Investing in a number of operators On our side, you know, we're landlords and so we see this movement of the growth of the internet of things As something very bullish for For our investments in in our industry And so, you know, I think I think that's a that's a very big plus And I think you're really going to see a sea change in terms of the level of demand Versus what it's been historically So that's professional. That's a dry side. Here's the exciting side Personally though, right? I mean, I don't know about you all but I mean, how many of you have like a home security system Think anybody have that they might have like one that's actually wireless and you can check it out on your phone Do you have that right? That's so that's about like half the people in this room, right? So every one of those things relies on a sensor that goes through a hub that is connected to your home that will eventually connect to the cloud, right? I've got 18 of those in my house. I'm just like sort of scratching the service here And so I find I find the growth of that side of the industry very very exciting I mean just think about the number of homes the number of devices You know, we can talk about stats later, but it just the the growth that you actually see as a consumer Is is very very is very rapid In very broad and so I think I think the opportunity is there and it's it's it's very exciting Jonathan how about you? So I brought some statistics here with me. So as of 2015 25 billion objects are connected to the internet of things and that averages out and this is just in in the The states 3.47 connected devices per person in five years from now It's going to double 50 billion objects 6.58 connected devices So, you know those those devices include nest thermostats lighting garage door locks appliances cameras security cameras The the the explosion of the internet of things is super exciting from a data center perspective because all of that stuff has to sit Physically in a hardened facility not only from a power-and-space standpoint, but also from a network perspective So it's it's driving connected data centers with multiple networks and also localization of that data So it's it's instead of kind of the the the old school West East Central kind of region now it's getting down to Distributed a model where every single city is going to have some sort of data center connected to the internet of things So I mean we're we're in a we're in an industrial revolution right now. It's a very exciting time so maybe the thing to do is To talk a little bit maybe this way we can turn this into a chain conversation and I'll kind of pick up some of that So what does that mean going forward? It means that data centers do need to change That's part of the topic of what we need to talk about It means that your access networks are going to have to change how you kind of groom local traffic at you know Maybe a community level at a plant level whatever it is that you're putting devices on and sensors and trying to collect more data You know in a community for cars you know some of you probably went to the event last night and These cars are turning out one Detroit manufacturer thinks about 25 gigs a day of data And so times out by the number of cars and as these cars get smarter. What does that mean as well? So it is it is an incredible opportunity and all of these things We're going to put sensors on everything that basically as old has it uses electricity But at the end of the day if you think about that that's kind of what it is I mean lightning systems your fridge your Your washer dryers and things like that and these are things that originally Even came up as concepts when energy was deregulated in 94 at least in the US The other thing that we should turn our attention to which you know Richard mentioned are these challenges I'm going to throw one out there, which is the security issue It's you know one of the the biggest issues everybody is aware of you've got people getting hacked Target getting hacked through a thermostat and how do you prevent that right? These are every time you turn on a device every time you deliver an IP every time there's a piece of silicon and a Radio inside a small board or an OBSD, you know on a board device inside of a car It's an opportunity for someone to to infiltrate so these are things that you know, we're going to get to but our Will slow down the growth or need to be solved in order for IOT to become truly the the promised land IOT is really not Not new has been around for a long time. What's new? It's the magnitude. I work for a company that Manufactured fuel cells and we have several thousand sensors in a machine like these sending data continuously, so Just to give you a sense of the the magnitude and what what the challenges are If we were to have only hundred sensors in a year will get Approximately four petabytes of data. I mean that's it's health is enormous. So when we're talking about 2020 maybe 1.6 zettabytes zettabytes is for I'm sure that you all know these zettabytes is 10 to the 2021 I like this Statistic if you're taking if you're to take a $1 bill You could you could connect between the earth and the sun One one $1 bill on top of each other a million times a million times That's that's one zettabyte and we're gonna have 1.6 zettabytes in 20 years. So that I'll just list quickly the challenges because this is this is where what we're facing today when it comes to to the explosion of Internet of things network, you know today today's network are not adequate Software defied the defied network are the next step. Obviously The transition for 4g to 5g 4g is really not not suited for internet of things We need much faster different software and 5g 5g will probably address that the sensors how do we how do we have all these sensors that are able to to survive for ten years What kind of Consumptions how how long does it those baddies who last that's going to be another big things latency what is VR or IoT latency is very important and that has a lot to do with a transition from 4g to 5g Storage in storage is a big deal These drives are not getting Any more reliable they're big solid state It's improved the latency very low. What's the answer? I don't know maybe optical disks 300 gigabytes Maybe go to a thousand that might be the solution and finally, you know, as you said security is a big concern Big data That relationship between IOT and big data and obviously the data centers the data center is going to see fundamental transition changes small unattended Distributed the data centers Totally different architecture When you say unattended the whole of a sudden now we need to be concerned about the physical security There are it's it's a whole new world there and it's going to be very exciting Yes, so what why are you is that or organization that's You know our business is to implement internet of things systems It's a multi carrier discipline multi technology Discipline there's a lot of changes that have to go on It's it's a different Mindset, I mean and it's happening quickly Erickson has predicted that in the next two years. There's going to be More internet of things devices out there connected than there are cell phones today and two years from now It's pretty fast and if you look at some of the statistics around What 25 gigabytes means for for a connected car? That's the same as 12 HD movies an hour so There's a lot for us Because we've implemented these things We find that you know the consume consumer side has its challenges But we also have the industrial internet of things that has a lot of value. So really excited about that But it's really You know requires discipline to manage multiple stakeholders You've got technology manufacturers who really just want to put endpoints out there and then you've got network operators who really have a network that they really don't want to upgrade and Then you have all the You know moves as and changes and how do we manage this data? And how do we report on it real time? So the challenges are complex. It's very valuable though The more data we have the more valuable it is to do our economies to How we do business and how we go around our day daily lives. So I'm why are you we're really excited about it It's we're on the edge. It's not it's not a key buzzword now. It's actually projects are being implemented and And Yeah, it's great So there's a lot of business opportunities to talk about but to kind of set that up I wanted to pick up on something that Peter mentioned and we heard discussed in the first panel of the morning where About virtual reality and how you take some of these very large files and workloads and Distribute them with the kind of latency they require so how is the data center industry going to change in terms of Where we build them and how we build them Obviously, there's a real estate component of this location is always going to matter and There because there's capital investment. There's matching the the sort of form factor to the the business so What do you guys see ahead in in terms of The Sort of edge piece of it and where we see data centers being built and how do we get there Simon you want to kick off your your taking? Yeah, there's well there we we historically Actually some of like the companies that you know, Tony Tony's firm has bought and managed to work kind of the early data centers. They were carrier hotels and you know, we went from there to More purpose-built facilities for it then people went, you know, super big a little bit outside the city because it was cheaper and they needed the power and Within the last couple of years the model of concentrating in the cities has come back a bit Maybe somewhat smaller facilities, but certainly very metro focused so that you could get to the access networks at the end And get to the eyeballs This iot move is probably going to push the data center further to the edge We we were trying to get we spent a lot of years as Data center companies trying to get people to get out of their it closets But the reality is that if you're running a plant Right You probably need some sort of infrastructure on site in order to collect that data and it will backhaul into You know something on a metro level or on a larger level But it is going to get pushed out to the edge. There's even been talk of Your cell phone becoming a data center. I'm not sure exactly how that would work But the idea that it is a server is not too strange And and certainly I think these other ideas of putting data centers inside of buildings and having that even as a service If you're in a class a office building as an example So I I do think that you know, we've already gone as far out as we can because we're putting data centers in Iceland Right, you can't go too much further than that Eventually, I guess maybe someone will try and do it on the moon But the only thing we can do is is go the other direction which is push it closer to the consumers Or if it's an industrial application, you know to an endpoint where the Machines are Tony you're in the real estate What's your take? Well, you know, I think it's interesting because The the trend that that simon identified Is actually not too different from some of the things that we're seeing in maybe Some of the other real estate food groups Many of which you experience in your daily lives. So, you know, what is this trend? This trend is is lower latency Get to the to the end user what they want when they want meaning faster, right? And so if if you look at an analogy one might actually look at industrial real estate, right In who currently is pushing the bounds of industrial real estate? It's it's actually amazon, right amazon And you know, I've spent a number of years in industrial real estate. So I could sort of point this out to you Yeah, the the the supply chain Logistics sector has moved from, you know, very large distributed warehouses To smaller warehouses that are actually in metropolitan areas meeting closer to the customer so that You can click something on amazon and get it same day, right? And so I think it's it's fascinating that you know, you're talking about another sector real estate We're basically the same thing is happening. It's it's just not merchandise that you're consuming. It's it's bits and bites, right? But but it's a very similar phenomenon where you know, it's it's it's all about speed and latency and delivering things on time So peter pick up on that. How do how do you just to add to that? You know, we're talking about the edge data centers and you know, there are many Definition of at the center having to do is location size in terms of kilowatts or megawatts But the ones the definition, which I like the best and it's those beyond the international of things Definition I like the best is one that says that an edge data center is data center that supplies provides at least 80 percent of the content to at least 50 percent of the broadband user in the area So you think a small data center in Milwaukee How do you provide 80 percent of the content? And actually the answer is fairly simple. Um, all you need to do is to have netflix Google which is youtube and akamai Between the three of them they account for 75 percent of the traffic Netflix at night. It's over 40 percent of the traffic. I mean the numbers are are amazing And then if you add amazon And apple and microsoft and a few other You go easily from 75 to 80 percent But you know, there are many reasons for for the proliferation of edge data centers You know these numbers are coming from Edge connect That says that the ability to cache information at the edge data center as opposed to to bring it A thousand miles Via backbone Will save a company over five years over a hundred million dollars a hundred million dollars saves in In traffic fees over a backbone simply by by caching the right kind of information at the edge data center So Rob, maybe you could pick up on you know, peter's talked about some of the economics And what are the business opportunities that come out of that and uh, how do you try to approach those? Yeah, so When I hear edge data centers, I'm Obviously thinking of underserved markets too, right? So And I'm thinking about Planning and an industrial internet of things network, which is different than a consume consumer driven one Which has been basically like? You know throwing your internet of things pepper shaker out there And then trying to do something with it So really it all comes down to from the industrial internet of things it comes down to really You know having a different life cycle for planning and architecture around data And then you look at the constraints that you have so power is a big constraint You're and also how that is how does that data actually being used? Uh amongst the edge To deter determine what actually goes back on the typically unreliable pipe back to some metropolitan location um, so there's lots of Opportunity and the industrial internet of things to kind of control and manage and provide the engineering discipline to actually built these things around data and solving problems That save a lot of money for mission critical business applications And then if you look at consumer It's really about now. I've got all these as an example wearables out there and all of a sudden an earthquake happens And now I can probably use that but then there's up then then you've got a reactionary design problem because Now we've got privacy issues We've got security now like you know when the whole security things even Bigger than we think because one device can be used as the platform to leak for a problem to many more So it's exponential So there's two there's two different things we've got going on We got one which is consumer driven You know How do we kind of manage the data that's already out there? And then you have industrial internet Of things which is how do we plan to make private networks secure? and Save money So jonathan i'm interested in your take on the same question century link Obviously has a lot of Enterprises it works with what what are the opportunities that you see here to build products and services around internet things So from a business perspective The the iot brings a ton of opportunities. You know, we've seen kind of a deregulation from You know equinex kind of had the the monopoly on peering and because of iot Now you have core site and you have dor you have one little shire you have century link you have cyrus one So you have this distributed model that's pushing the content closer to the customers from from an eyeball perspective And then you're also shortening geography because there's no way to you know, there's no way to Improve latency without shortening geography. So that's that's another nice feature set These data centers are getting pushed closer to the consumers The carriers are providing big big circuits hundred gig circuits century link network Just tested successfully two and a half terabits yesterday with infanera. So The network providers are keeping up with the with the increase of consumption from a from a bandwidth perspective So this is this is this is just revolutionary It's nice to see kind of uh, as opposed to competition It's I've used as a co-optition where everybody's kind of working together to serve business and residential customers um jointly so one of the questions is the the pace of adoption and we have sort of some applications for this Emerging now we've looked at the home security systems that tonic talks about When what what's each of you curious about your take on When we'll see internet of things start to really move along to the point where it's changing the way that The data center industry kind of works with them. What's the what's the the rollout look like tonic? Oh, well Yeah, I would say it's changing things right now. So, you know, it's it's not what a matter of when it's just really now and how much I think off of that same ericsson survey that you and I probably tried to study furiously, you know The last few minutes before this panel Yeah, I think uh, there was a there was a Kager rate that was cited as something like 23 percent growth over the next six or seven years in iot And so I mean if you just think about that that's just staggering the amount of traffic That needs to be moved, right? And that's Frankly, I think all right. What is that based on is that just based on a linear projection or is that actually based on exponential? Because if you think about home security systems and cars and your wired, you know Your wireless fridge and all these other things big data and all that Um, you know, you could certainly see a scenario where the growth could be much much larger than that even some people are forecasting So what does that mean? That means? Um More space will be needed, right or better technology will be needed to actually house that You know, how's the those bits and bytes that are moving through that same building? Do you think yeah, I mean definitely more more data centers, um more network providers More cloud providers that are living in data centers I think there's a misnomer that clouds kind of taken over Co-location and data centers, but the cloud lives in the data center So, um, you know, I think that you're going to see csp's cloud service providers push Their content closer to the uh to the local data center So I think there's going to be a lot of more co-operation between data center operators network service providers and cloud service providers to um Really satisfy the needs of business and residential customers in all the different industries medical government Etc. So, uh, we again, we're I mean I can't emphasize this We're in we're in an exciting time from a data center standpoint and a network perspective You know the the connected data center the dark fiver options and data centers are are are pivotal So we've got a few minutes left. Um, do we have any questions from the audience? So my my question. Well, I I know that uh, That there are some numbers they got reviewed the downwards, right? I know cisco has not changed their numbers yet, but uh, but I just every time I think about the internet of things I look at You know all all the different areas and how you know, you have Bringing these different vertical stacks and many of those folks are not talking like let's say You know and and you want to address some overarching issue and come up with a spec or standard So I want to hear from each one of you. Where do you think Could be a starting point where we may actually drive convergence between like let's say an iot solution for a building, right where you have Johnson's controls, etc and cisco and all these companies. They don't normally touch each other Who puts your head this would this be a nitri-poly thing a naïve thing? Or it could be some other organization. I will hear all these standards groups like zb, whatever Who do you think will drive this? So for the folks on the internet, the question is about standards and where they come from and how they develop Who'd like to tackle that? Rob, I could do the first response. So um, there is a big issue without standards, um, and Internet of things has that issue The edge devices. I don't think there is a standard. We've got multiple manufacturers building technology and They all have different ideas on how how those are going to have like, you know, we've seen it We've heard heard heard about it, you know hard coding passwords stuff like that. That's a standards issue But if I look at the network operator, which is my space Um, there's a great standards body called the metro ethernet form and a lot of these, um, you know Technologies and big data flow over ethernet technology So the metro ethernet form, um has standards. We also have You know software delivery frameworks and network virtualization standards So I would say that's you always have to go where someone puts up their hand first and I'd say The metro ethernet form is the probably the way to go for now for us So just I mean a couple things I triply will need to be involved No doubt and eventually some of these standards will actually become standards right now. They're People are proposing different things, but um, just on the communication side as a follow-up like, uh, lora The lower alliance I think is pretty important The reason is, you know, a lot of the a lot of iot is going to be wireless and Is it all going to run over the cell network? We've heard that 4g may not be right and guess what there's people are, you know, watching netflix on 4g So there are a lot of competing applications. So one of the things that lora will do is it'll give iot its own channel Doesn't doesn't that sound like a good idea right so that all of a sudden there's another piece of spectrum open so that all the machines can talk on the same set of frequencies and Maybe the failover is lte or something like that or ethernet or something something else But I think those things getting traction is incredibly important and the likes of sisco and others, you know, will need to play ball as well Yeah on the private on the private sector, I don't know if you heard that it's a company called a bit They are building a platform that will enable various network devices To talk to each other in a encrypted form It's a it's a startup. It's fairly new the the main focus right now. It's data center where there are multiple platforms On the both on the power and cooling side, but the intent is to expand into buildings and Further down, but but that's one of one of the avenues Anything else Well, the one thing that we Did someone else want to LIT bit LIT bit Scott notepoom who used to run data centers for Yahoo and worked at apple has put that together And they're trying to build a platform that can help tie internet of things together Can we do better on data center frontier? At this point the one thing we never want to do is be standing between the the people in lunch So at this point, I'd like to thank our panel for Engaging conversation And please feel feel free to come up and talk to them and learn more about their business