 Live from the JSA Podcast Studio, presenting Data Movers, showcasing the leaders behind the headlines in the telecom and data center infrastructure industry. Welcome everybody to our podcast series, Data Movers. I'm your host, Jamie Scott-Okataya, CEO and founder of JSA. And along with me, my very favorite and famous co-host, Mr. Evan Christel, the top B2B social media influencer. Good morning, Evan. Thank you. I don't know about famous, maybe Twitter famous, but I'll take it. Thanks so much. Hey everyone, thanks for joining Data Movers, where we sit down with the most influential men and women of today's leading telco and data center world, supporting the network, infrastructure of this crazy new normal. But first, Jamie, let's chat. You work at a pretty nine to five job, right? I'm being sarcastic. Yeah. Well, it depends. Time zones, yeah. There's always nine to five going on. It's always five o'clock somewhere. But I was just reading in Portugal, they have instituted a new work from home law that says employers can't call or text their employees after hours, so after five o'clock. What do you think about this new regulation coming in over in Europe? Yeah, I think it's a game changer and it really shows how folks are trying to sort out that work-life balance post-COVID. This pandemic has taught us that working from home doesn't mean you can work 24-7 and still be healthy. And I think there's a lot of repercussions that have happened when there's so much pressure all the time 24-7, mental illness is up, stress, divorce rates. I mean, maybe there is this need for balance. I don't know if it should be government-regulated. Doesn't that start with the individual? I don't know. But... Lots to unpack there. I mean, I hope they don't tell us not to tweet after five p.m. Because that would be difficult. But... And what do you do with your company in different time zones? I guess it's the boss that can't be texting or calling the employee, is that right? Yeah, so it's really targeted at the employer. But you're an employer. You hire and manage lots of people, lots of men and women who are working from home, balancing family lives and caregiving and childcare. What's your policy in terms of reaching out to employees, let's say, after hours? That if they receive... If you are sending an email after five p.m., six p.m., East Coast time, don't expect a response. I think it's until the next morning. And we actually, our time zone differences, allow us to really work it for our clients. Because some of us here on the West Coast, we'll get through our emails at the end of the day. But we don't expect that response from our East Coast colleagues, for example, until their morning, and then we wake up and it's done. So there's a way to work the time zone. I love it. Well, speaking of messaging and mobile and Datacom and IoT and mobility, our next guest is going to be a pretty interesting interview. Yeah, absolutely. We are so thrilled to introduce you guys. As you know, here on Data Movers, we really try to get deep into the background stories, the career highs and lows, the unique perspectives on the future of our industry from our innovative guests. And so today I'm really excited to bring on Max Silver. He's the Vice President of Mobility and IoT of MedTel. Hi, Jamie, hi, Evan. Thank you guys for having me. I'm excited to be here. I was actually just searching the real estate market in Portugal as you guys were having that conversation. For some reason there's a 20% surge in house pricing over the last couple of weeks. I'm sure it has nothing to do with that regulation, but really interesting information. I didn't know that. Yeah, you know what? I wouldn't doubt it. I mean, for those of us who are really serious about trying to find those balances and seek out boundaries with our employers, Portugal might be a great place to move. So, Max, to start off, thank you so much that you're here. I know it's such a crazy, busy time of year. Our own Mr. Evan at the airport. I'm just sitting around the globe here. And so for you to take this time out of your amazing career, we appreciate you being here. Tell us a little bit about your career background and how it led you to telecom and IoT space. Yeah, so interesting story. I feel like everyone, by the way, in this industry has some kind of interesting story of how they ended up there. It's not like they got up one morning and said, this is going to be my career path. Same goes for me. I actually studied business investments and economics. And when I was graduating business school, my aspiration was really to go into investment banking or to become a trader on the New York Stock Exchange. Those are my two kind of primary focuses, what I wanted to do. That was very popular about 100 years ago when I graduated from school. But I always had a knack for programming. I always grew up with computers. It was always a great interest of mine. And around the time I graduated, the job market was not great. It was the opposite of what it is right now. And I got this very strange offer from a telephone company called GTE SpaceNet, or the SpaceNet division of GTE back in the day. This was pre-telecom deregulation. And they gave me this offer for what I thought was unbelievable. They said, assistant country manager for GTE space. I was like, you want me to be the assistant country manager for the United States? That's unbelievable. And then I learned shortly after that it was actually not for the United States. It was for Ecuador, which was very fascinating. The only problem, well, there were a couple of problems. Number one, I knew nothing about satellite communication, which was the entire business of GTE space, not selling satellite access, mainly to government run phone companies around the world. The other is I didn't speak a word of Spanish and they wanted me to go and live in Ecuador. So that was kind of my entrance into this space, into satellites. I was trained up and certified for satellite communication. I then had to take over local operations. I spent two years in Latin America. I'm fluent in Spanish now. I can negotiate contracts in Spanish. So not at all what I expected, kind of coming out of school, looking at Wall Street and the financial areas in the Boston area. But it's been an interesting ride. I wouldn't have it any other way. And it kind of just continued from there. Oh, that shows your grit and grace to say yes to that offer and be like, drop me in Ecuador. I will learn the language. I will learn the industry. That's an amazing story. Yeah, I love that story as well. And fast forward to now, you've been at Metel head of IoT and Mobility for the last almost 10 years. Funny story, I was at Metel's headquarters once for a meeting about 15 years ago. And I remember it being a very crowded office in Uptown Manhattan. You had like everyone there, the executives, the contact center, that it was so fun. But flash forward, you guys have grown a bit since then. And it's so exciting to close the loop and to chat with you guys again. And speaking of closing the loop, there's some topics we'd love to dive deep into today, particularly around automation. It's such a timely topic with the supply chain crisis we're in with the workforce crisis we're in and automation has kind of come to the forefront. Maybe you can share some insights into your work on the smart warehouse service you've developed and just generally on the impact of automation on your business and deploying IoT at scale. Yeah, for sure. So I feel like automation is almost the silent industrial revolution that's happened, while everyone's been kind of focused elsewhere. Automation is really removes a lot of the complexity out of the delivery process. It removes cost from the entire process from kind of push the buy now button all the way through delivery. And I feel like it really is the primary driver for just about any industry that's out there and any industry that we interact with, which is pretty much across the board and every vertical. We started really our business, our mobile business, like you said, around 10 years ago when I joined Mattel. And the concept was really just to replicate what we had been doing on the wire line side for wireless, really providing that complete cradle to grave service for customers. And we learned very quickly that the biggest bottleneck in the process was the warehousing and then the delivery of devices. So we started our own smart warehousing facilities. We have several of them now around the country. And the whole concept is really get to about 98% automation from the moment one of our customers clicks to buy, for example, an iPhone 13 on our website or sends us an API command from their internal ticketing systems, whether it's like a service now or a workday. From that moment, 98% of the process should be able to be automated where the device has taken off a shelf. It's staged and kitted with screen protectors and cases. It's automatically ready to enroll over the air. So all an end user when they get the device has to do is hit the power button and all that should be done in that in that succinct process beginning to end because that's how you eliminate error. That's how you improve the overall efficiency and the user experience. And really what that's allowed us to do kind of in layman's term is any customer of Met-Cal that places an order by 3pm Eastern that orders actually ship that same day completely staged and kitted. So that's what if I have to define what a smart warehouse and what automation can do for a business, I think that's the best example I can use that's relatable to most of my customers. Yeah, and it's not just good for companies and efficiencies, but it's absolutely great for the consumer these days. We don't want friction. We don't want to talk to people. We just want to get what we want purchased and have a shipping confirmation note. So this end to end is really the way the consumers are driving this marketplace. It's interesting that you use the correlation of people don't like to talk to anyone because we also see that because we deal with the consumption of voice text and data over devices. And we see this like constant shift of voice traffic goes way, way down and data traffic goes way, way up because people just want to interact with an experience. They don't necessarily want to interact with another person. Right, right. And switching over, you were talking iPhones, it makes me want to talk 5G. I know 5G is a topic that dominates a lot of conversations these days, but as a leader in our space, where do you think we are on this journey? What are some of the, I don't know, misconceptions out there about 5G right now? Yeah, unfortunately, a lot of misconceptions on 5G and we haven't, as an industry, done a good job of educating folks, mainly because we are in business and a lot of the marketing and the TV commercials and advertising you see out there is just to promote that this is going to change your life. I think we're very early in the 5G journey to be very honest with you. The current version of 5G we have available in our market is still not really considered 5G by international standards, by ITU standards. We're still in release 15. The next release, release 16, is when we really start to talk about the benefits of changing the user experience, of being able to run an entire business in the cloud and being able to access and under a millisecond data and low latency and high speeds. We're really not there. We talk a lot about how we're going to be there, but the two main elements, of course, are still getting 5G availability at that sub six level at that release 16 level, where you really high speed low latency available everywhere, because 5G doesn't travel really well, unlike LTE, doesn't penetrate buildings unlike LTE. So there's still a lot of build out to do. And the other end of it is the devices themselves. There just isn't an available 5G release 16 chipset based solution out there. So whatever, whether you're talking about smartphones or you're talking about widgets or sensors, in most cases what you need to empower that at the edge isn't even manufactured yet. So I think we'll fill a year or two years out before we can have a real conversation about, hey, we revolutionized this industry out in the field. I'm not talking about a manufacturing plan where you can kind of keep it condensed, but out in the field, we still have a little ways to go before we're really there with 5G. Yeah, and it's sort of revolution versus evolution. Many people don't actually realize that the internet of things was coined in 1999 by Kevin Ashton at working at Procter & Gamble. So he was working in supply chain at the time and fast forward to all these years later, we're still launching and rolling out the internet of things in real practical deployments, but it is exciting and there's real ROI and real value being delivered today. So what do you see over the next year or two in terms of IoT take up and deployment? So I think from an OEM perspective, manufacturers are producing new products with 5G. So the consumer will gain benefits from it. There will be adoption just because, hey, if you're buying an iPhone 13, you're getting yourself a 5G device whether you want it or not. So there's some element of that. How much of a value will be adopted? I think that's really driven more by overall infrastructure and applications. The question I always ask most industries when they say, hey, should we switch out our 3000 iPhone XRs to iPhone 13s as a time to kind of make that swap out. And I ask them basic questions of, what do you hope to accomplish with 5G? How is that going to really improve the overall experience? Is it just about being able to do more video calls for your field staff? Is it for some kind of application that you're running? Most of what's out there right now can actually be serviced by LTE or LTE plus. So 5G at its current form, I don't think is as revolutionary. I definitely see it becoming there though. Once you get into real ITU standard release 16 of 5G, you're really talking about delivering a complete service over the air where nothing needs to be hosted locally. And I think that's really where it starts to get very powerful for both consumers as well as businesses. And that just brings us to the topic of cybersecurity. I think it's very much top of mind. In these days, how can our organizations improve their readiness and strengthen their security to really prepare for this next phase of digital transformation in 5G? I think that's probably the most important conversation happening in any industry right now. The reality is you can harden your infrastructure with cybersecurity solutions and software and zero trust in all the elements and all the building blocks as best you can. I mean, ultimately the first thing to note is if a nation state is trying to break into your infrastructure, they're going to be successful. You kind of have to just live with that. But that's really, we're really more focused on keeping criminals out than we are keeping nation states. And the way to really do that beyond the initial hardening of your security is methodology. It's what you introduce into the infrastructure. And a lot of what we do at Metel when we deliver mobile devices and edge devices over a mobile connection out into the field is we think about how is that data gonna travel back and having that methodology of either putting solutions like mobile device management on every mobile device so that it can't be controlled and secured remotely. So I'm not leaving it in the hands of the employee or the team member. So hey, remember you gotta download this software update or any of those components. You really have to manage that centrally as an organization and have that methodology. And I'll give you a good example. One of my customers is actually a big healthcare network and they came out with a new rule, a new internal rule where every day they introduce new connections into the environment. They've got a IOT manufacturer that has a reusable cooling container for transporting antidotes or any kind of experimental lab work that they're in the midst of a project. And that requires a 5G connection but also needs to touch their network. And then they have someone else who's kind of tracking for transportation purposes where their vehicles are. And they basically came to me and said, what we really want is we want all these different entities to just buy the connectivity from you, have that travel through the infrastructure we have in place with firewalls and zero trust and then hand it back off to the healthcare network. And that's one way to solve that problem as part of an ongoing methodology. But unless you do that, it's only, it's not a matter of if it's a matter of when some edge device with a connection is going to allow penetration into the network. So it's developing the methodology, developing the rules and then living by them, making sure nothing changes and nothing gets introduced into the environment that can introduce that cybersecurity threat. Yeah, I think you're right. Methodology is a powerful word these days, ma'am, when used well. I love that example of cold change and healthcare but I even heard a more interesting example of a cold chain using IoT, getting sushi to the desert in Las Vegas. So how do you get sushi? Of course, fresh fish transported from Japan for the high rollers all the way in Las Vegas and they use an IoT cold chain to monitor the temperature from the fishing vessel through transportation, through trucks and to the diners plate. So yeah, it's wild what we're doing with the Internet of Things these days. Speaking of which, we have a new buzzword to talk about. Everyone sort of SaaS software as a service and infrastructure as a service and platform as a service, everything's as a service but we have a new one called mobility as a service. Tell us about this new buzzword and how Metel is involved. Yeah, so I think all through the pandemic one of the biggest challenges we had within large enterprise and organizations of every vertical is just their ability to manage devices out in the field where previously we'd be shipping whether it's tablets or smartphones or widgets or routers, we'd be shipping them to central locations and then you'd have IT managers, configure and then distribute devices out into the field. And the same goes for whether employees would leave an organization or join the organization with a pandemic, obviously those IT managers were in the same kind of the same environment we all were, we were all at home. So they didn't wanna get delivery of 2000 smartphones to their house to start configuring and the end users didn't really want an IT manager touching their devices before they went back to their homes for use. So we developed this concept that really deals with one of the most notable problems out in industry and I've seen this by the way for years going and visiting companies throughout the United States and throughout the world. I usually ask basic questions like what do you do when an employee leaves with the mobile device and everyone would kind of roll their eyes and say, oh, that's a problem. I say, well, what do you do when you hire a new employee? How do you configure a device? And they all kind of roll their eyes and say, oh yeah, that's a problem too. And then they always say, hey, do you wanna see the room? And I'm kind of looking at them like, what room? They go, follow me. And they take me, there's a room by the way in every company you've ever been to and the room is somewhere in the back of the IT department and it's got stacks and stacks of mobile devices with sticky notes on them. And every sticky note says something, oh, this device won't boot up, this one won't hold a charge, this one's got a crack screen. And they said, this is our problem as an organization. So we developed this program called Mobility as a Service where we really handle everything for customers, cradle of grave. From the second they place an order or send us an API for an order from their internal system, we provision a device, we put a screen protector in a case on it, we bundle all the necessary accessories, we ship it, like I said, same day if we get the order by 3 p.m., it's pre-configured to enroll over the air for the user. So the user usually these days, users have been getting these devices in their homes because they're home-based, they hit the power button, it configures itself over the air with all the applications they need and credentials they need for that organization. And then if they break the device, we'll emergency overnight them a replacement and take back the broken device for repair, deleting all obviously confidential data and that essentially becomes a program or a service. So there's no more back rooms filled with stacks of phones with sticky notes. It's also making less of an environmental impact which is something we learned which we didn't kind of think of straight out of the gate but now you've got phones that typically were just very expensive bricks or bookends are now actually getting reused or reutilized for 95% of their components back out in the field and they're not landing in some landfill somewhere. So it's environmentally friendly. It's typically much cheaper to manage a mobile environment for an organization, both for services and for the hardware component. And it allows us to keep people basically working or having a working device even when those occurrences happen when they accidentally walk from their home office to their kitchen and the phone drops out of their sweatpants and you would be shocked how often that happens right around October when iPhone introduces a new model. But that's really what the program's meant to do. I was thinking my former employer, Telex probably had a room just for all the times that I broke so many blackberries and I'm running myself. Yes, I've been to the Telex room. They're actually a former of ours and I've been to that room. So yes, the Telex had a room and it had the phones with the sticky notes piled up and it's everyone's problem and it doesn't matter if you're in trucking or healthcare or manufacturing, you have the same problem and this is a great way to solve the problem. The nice thing, even when we're replacing devices that are broken, there's no additional cost to the organization because we're using the value left in those devices after two years, almost kind of like a car lease, that residual value to pay for all these other components of service that companies need anyway. So it's kind of a win-win for everyone in this scenario. And there's a sort of recycling built in. There's definitely a recycling aspect because even if the device is no longer usable for that organization, there's still that residual value that it's still gonna get repaired and then use somewhere in the aftermarket, obviously in a very secure way with all the data eliminated from the device. Sure, yeah. All right, so changing the topic quickly, but I laughed, I giggled when I read the title of your podcast, you have to tell me a little bit here. So you started your own podcast and it is called Techie and the Blonde? Tell us. Yes. Yeah, so funny story, like I'm sure most podcasts that start are funny stories. So for years, my wife and I have kind of chuckled about the fact that when I asked her, what were you trained as, like what do you do? And she has a very concise answer. I'm a registered nurse. She spent years in emergency medicine. She used to tell me my job is I meet you typically in the worst day of your life. That's what I do for a living. And then I help kind of put you back to a state where you can kind of leave an emergency room. I help give you the care and give you everything you need to kind of get you back to normal, to some kind of normal state. And then people will say, well, what do you do, Max? And I'm kind of like, today, yesterday, what could you be more specific? And that's a very common, I think, thing for anyone in technology or telecom or infrastructure. It's very confusing. There's lots of acronyms. There's lots of technology, like we just talked about IoT and 5G. But people are like, yeah, it sounds interesting, but I have no idea what you're talking about. So my wife had this great idea. It was the pandemic. We were like, let's do something fun. So we started a podcast called Techie and the Blonde because everyone always calls me the techie. I always say I'm kind of like tech support for everyone. And my wife happens to be blonde. So we just said, well, that would kind of be a cute name. And it's really just to simplify everything we just talked about. And by the way, some of the people that work even in technology listen to it because for them, they're like, everyone thinks I'm supposed to know everything about 5G or low level satellites or low orbit satellites. I don't know any of this. I just, I kind of see something or I read an article. So I want to learn more. So we try to make it very light. We try to make it very interesting. We try to explain it in a way that I think people understand what the benefit is to them. And ultimately we try to make it really funny and we share a ton of personal information so you can learn literally everything about me just by listening to it and then seeing, and we also post relevant pictures for each episode from stories we bring up during the episode on our website, techieandtheblonde.com. So it's been a lot of fun. And honestly, it's like, it's the most fun we have. It's almost like a date night when we do a podcast episode. So that's, it's good fun. Jamie and I were gonna, Jamie and I were gonna steal that title, but unfortunately she's not blond. So we had to. I think you are though, right? So maybe you can be blonde. You can be blonde there, Evan. I'm pretty sure. But the, I am so tuning in because just the fact that this is something that even your wife did during the pandemic and you're sharing and you're making it simple. I mean, I learned so much when you were just answering my 5G question a few minutes ago. So you do, you have a way of making it all make sense. And boy, do we need that right now. So which brings us to, let's get you on the rapid fire question section. We'll put you in the hot seat a little bit more. This is where we just run a few rapid fire fun facts questions. You just answered with the first thing that comes to mind. So all right, it's Chris's time. What is an upcoming purchase you were thinking about? So I'm thinking about whether to buy the Samsung Fold 3 or the Microsoft Duo 2. So I'm doing a lot of research around that right now. You should talk to my husband. I'll just say that. Give me a number after this. Absolutely. I suggest neither. Go with the iPhone 13 Pro Max. You can't be confused, but. But I was in New York City recently and it's great to see the city coming back. But as a tourist, you never quite know where to go, what to do, what's the little best kept secret in New York? A little gem you would suggest visiting as a tourist. So for me, everything's almost surrounded by meals and eating. So I'd definitely say if you like steaks, still Peter Luger in Brooklyn is probably the best steak I've ever had. So I go there. Yeah, that's a good one. That is definitely a good one. All right, so talking to New York, Giants or Jets? Giants, obviously. It's a blessing in disguise, so I have to say. My kids grew up, I was fortunate enough to be around during two Super Bowls and my kids grew up and they're like, why aren't we Giants fans? They never win, but yeah, Giants. No one supports the Jets, unless your name is Gary Vaynerchuk, no one supports the Jets, but I won't get too controversial here. I have about a dozen hours to kill. What's a good Netflix series I should binge? So the last full series I watched, which I thought was amazing was Schitt's Creek. So I highly recommend that was, I didn't think I was gonna like it at all. And of course, like most things, my wife was kind of like, let's just sit down and watch it. And it's amazing if you haven't watched it. Yeah, and I heard the undertone here that the wife knows best is what I got from that. So again, another reason I'm watching Techie in the Bond. Oh yeah, I learned that early on in our, I think now 17 year marriage. So yes, wife goes for sure. And besides data movers and Techie in the Bond, what is the latest podcast you actually downloaded? The last one actually was Data Movers. And I'll tell you specifically which one that I liked was the one where you had Dr. Julie Albright. Just because it's so significant to what I do. And the challenge is I deal with not only an industry with my kids when it comes to mobile devices. And I just, I really enjoyed that. I thought you had some great talking points and some great advice. I love her. Honestly, I reread her book. And she's a beautiful author. She's so descriptive, beautiful command of the language. But also the topic is so relevant. So now she's like, they're doing advertising on the sidewalks because we're walking around on our devices and texting. And all we do is see sidewalk. Now we're not lifting our heads up and seeing the streets. And imagine New York City Times Square and there's advertising on the sidewalks. We talk about methodology for cybersecurity. I tell methodology for the home. Like I have to have rules for my kids. Like this is dinner time. There are no mobile devices. Or this is the time that you have to focus on something that's more activity-based versus looking at your mobile device. And I'm in that business. So it's so relevant. I feel like it's kind of like a culture shift we're going through right now. I have a 17-month old. And I'm trying to not give her bad habits because I know Cocoa Mellon on her YouTube, on her tablet for kids. I'll like anything. She's reading the tablet. You sort of use it as like the last, last, you know, oh my gosh, we're in a restaurant. She's having a meltdown. Cocoa Mellon! And we're like, get the tablet out! Break glass, break glass. Get the iPad as quickly as possible. But it breaks our not during dinner time roll. And so we're just like, let's just not do restaurants for another 10 years. You know? That's the problem. With COVID, it sounds like we'll be there anyway. But in any case, I'll try to end on a more positive note. Thank you so much, Max, for joining us. I'm so intrigued to hear all of the success and news from Metel, that company I met 15 years ago has really had, you know, amazing success in branching into mobility and IoT and other enterprise applications. So onwards and upwards, congratulations. Thank you. And thank you guys for having me. This was a ton of fun. Thank you. It was, I loved this episode. Thank you so much for your time, Max, and your energy. And hey, listeners, if you enjoyed today's data movers podcast as much as I absolutely did, go ahead and check us out at jsa.net slash podcast for upcoming data mover episodes releasing every other week on Wednesday mornings. And of course, also check out techieandtheblonde.com. And follow us all on Twitter, J Scado and Evan Kirstel. Thanks everyone. And as always guys, stay safe and happy networking.