Finding the Signal in the Noise of Edge Tech with Leonard Lee of neXtCurve

Join us for an insightful exchange with our special guest, Leonard Lee, Founder of neXtCurve with a trove of knowledge from his three-decade-long adventure in the tech consulting industry. Leonard takes us on a fascinating journey from his early days in tech consulting to his current role in technology, media, and telecoms. The conversation takes an interesting path as we examine the art of filtering out the noise in the rapidly changing tech landscape and prioritizing the transformative topics.

Ever wondered how to distinguish the beneficial from the redundant in an over-hyped  tech world? Leonard shares practical strategies, emphasizing the importance of understanding the entire technology stack from semiconductors to applications. We then traverse to the transformative nature of merging technologies to create something fresh, and why considering the customer's value proposition is always critical for any technology.

Our discussion takes a harmonious turn as we gear towards Leonard's passion for guitars and Pete's recent gig in Sequim, WA. But that's not all - we also explore the shift from cloud-centric computing to edge computing, stirring up a brainstorm on the complexities of new compute capabilities, the emergence of FinOps, and the potential of simulation and emulation of edge systems in the cloud (but not digital twins!).

Leonard wraps up by giving us an international perspective on edge computing and how these advancements have opened up scaling opportunities for businesses. Let's rock and roll!

Want to scale your edge compute business and learn more? Subscribe here and visit us at https://edgecelsior.com.

Transcript

Pete Bernard: 0:13

When you ask people what Edge Compute is, you get a range of answers Cloud Compute in DevOps, with devices and sensors, the semiconductors outside the data center, including connectivity, ai and a security strategy. It's a stew of technologies that's powering our vehicles, our buildings, our factories and more. It's also filled with fascinating people that are passionate about their tech, their story and their world. I'm your host, pete Bernard, and the Edge Celsius show makes sense of what Edge Compute is, who's doing it and how it can transform your business and you. So let's get started. So this only records audio, by the way, so this video is just for oh, really, yeah, this is for our interactive purpose Interactive.

Leonard Lee: 1:15

okay.

Pete Bernard: 1:18

I guess that's why the audio quality is even more important.

Leonard Lee: 1:21

Yeah probably yeah, okay, Alright sounds good, cool, yeah.

Pete Bernard: 1:30

So, Leonard Lee, let's get started. And I was actually recording a show earlier today and I forgot to introduce who the person was for about 30 minutes into the discussion, so I thought Might be good to just start with that and then we can go from there.

Leonard Lee: 1:46

Well, you know, I mean, I did my hair, I put on a black, yeah you look great, by the way.

Pete Bernard: 1:51

Next, everyone should envision you looking great. That would be good.

Leonard Lee: 1:54

Yeah, I'm going to back in the background.

Pete Bernard: 1:58

Yeah, I know I see that you got a Mac right there.

Leonard Lee: 2:00

I landed my bricks right here, yeah that's cool, cool.

Pete Bernard: 2:06

so, leonard, I mean thanks for making the time. I was maybe give a little background to yourself, but I was also going to say thanks for the time because you seem to be in like four or five places at the same time these days. So, yeah, it certainly feels like it.

Leonard Lee: 2:22

Definitely the previous two months, which were really hectic. I think I had like what? Seven, eight. Actually, there was a number of events that I didn't even really write about, that I was into, and there's a ton of analyst briefings that I also attend. So, yes, leonard Lee, I'm the executive analyst at Next Curve. It's a firm that I started five years ago, going on six, can you believe it? And so I'm an independent analyst and consultant for the broader TMT, uber, an interconnected industry. They call it a mega industry of technology, media and telecoms, and so, yeah, very fortunate to have a firm that is persisting in what is actually quite a challenging industry, right, which is the analyst, independent analyst industry, if you can even call it that.

Pete Bernard: 3:30

Yeah, yeah, I can imagine I was going to say I mean, one of the things we can talk about is how do you prioritize what to talk about? Because there's so much going on between semiconductors in AI and 5G and edge computing and the yada, yada, yada and like on any given day. So what is it like for you? Like, how do you do that? How do you prioritize? You mentioned all these different shows and analyst briefings.

Leonard Lee: 3:53

Yeah, yeah, Well, you know it's interesting, it's like going to well, you know, just first off, your audience probably doesn't even know who the hell I am. So I'm a little bit further into that.

Leonard Lee: 4:06

Not wait for 30 minutes until we answer the question of who the hell is Leonard Lee but yeah so I've been in this consulting tech industry analyst game for 30 years and so I've been doing for a while. You know, towards the latter part of my career, I was getting into a lot of the industry research as well as strategy consulting that, I think, characterizes the work that I do with Nexcurve, but prior to that, I was in technology consulting as well as all the digital transformation stuff that everyone loves to talk about yeah, 20 years. So, you know, in terms of the technology, I have an intimate knowledge and feel for it, just because I actually had to, you know, manage large teams and myself implement these technologies and helping enterprises, large organizations, right? Do all this funky digital transformation stuff that we just love to talk about, right, pete, it's endless, yeah. So, yeah, that's who I am and you're based in Southern Cal.

Pete Bernard: 5:28

You're a Southern Cal person? San Diego?

Leonard Lee: 5:32

Muggy, Florida-like in San Diego. Yes, I know.

Pete Bernard: 5:39

It's about 80 degrees and nice. We're having this little window of really nice weather in the Pacific Northwest, which I am eternally grateful for because yeah, you don't have to go too far on the news to see a bunch of places. I don't want to be, that's for sure. So, yeah, it's been crazy weather out here, but yeah, no, the San Diego is a beautiful place, as everyone knows. Yeah, have you been there most of your life? Down in San Diego, the Southern Cal area?

Leonard Lee: 6:06

Yeah, for 25 years. Yeah, a long time, right. I went to school here, I graduated from UCSD and that was a long time ago. I don't want to date myself any more than I already have, but yeah, I've been here for a long time and now I think I'm ready to address your first question, pete oh yes, so how do you prioritize all of the incredible stuff that's happening?

Pete Bernard: 6:42

I saw you did a post yesterday. I listened to the Qualcomm earnings call last night. We can talk about it. Yeah, I can't just imagine how do you kind of budget your time?

Leonard Lee: 6:52

Yeah, well, you know I mean Pete. It all boils down to Experience. I mean I always, when people ask me that question, I said man, come on, guys, I've been doing this for 30 years. You know I have 30 years of experience. You have experience. You have a blueprint Through that experience of how to look at things right.

Leonard Lee: 7:15

And you know I think one of the things that has made you know my career when people, when I tell people about my consulting career and my career and and industry research, people go, wow, you did a lot of stuff. And so, yes, I've done a lot of stuff. I work with a lot of different companies across different industries. You know dealing with a wide range of technologies and you know and delivering a lot of different types of solutions, right, Whether it through custom app development or.

Speaker 3: 7:50

ERP CRM.

Leonard Lee: 7:52

You know, thinking that we got so excited about in the early 2000s, which was e-commerce, and it's just all this huge, this long, thick, juicy continuum of tech evolution. You know, living through that stuff, you develop a blueprint Right how to look at things and prioritize things. So, you know, think about it as like kind of like training and AI. Yes, that's right, you know, it just takes 30 years to basically, you know, fine-tune and optimize all the weight In that neural network that's called the brain. And you know, eventually you start to. I think you just develop a sixth sense of what to look for. And again, you know, I think you know, with all the fascination of generative AI, I think what's even more fascinating, I think, is the human brain and how quickly we can adapt to how things are evolving In something like the, the TMT industry or the tech media, because media is moving really quickly as well. Sure, telco people will argue it's not moving that fast, but you know what?

Leonard Lee: 9:10

from a technology perspective, it's. It's amazing, right? You mentioned Qualcomm, all the stuff on the RF end of things which a lot of people don't understand, don't really look at it. It's just incredible innovation. All that trend. It's just incredible innovation all that translates into some amazing impacts that Wireless has in the way that we look at computing, right but even.

Leonard Lee: 9:38

Underneath that, when you look at what's happening with silicon and semiconductors, the innovations there are enabling all kinds of crazy stuff. So you know like people talk about 6g and oh, hey, we're gonna use chair Hertz isn't like well, maybe, maybe not really depends on silicon. You know on, because you know when you start to deal with things like Tara Hertz, you're talking about ridiculous filter and sample rates and Okay, is it really gonna make?

Leonard Lee: 10:08

sense and a lot of that is, and so you just really have to consider, consider the entire stack from really Semiconductors all the way on up to these applications that people talk about that are Hypothetically gonna change and revolutionize the world, right. And so yeah, over time you develop that kind of that kind of lens that helps you prioritize and, but I think more importantly, you have a structured work with that shapes, that lens, right? Yeah, yeah, I think it's like discernment.

Pete Bernard: 10:46

You know, I think you build discernment over time where you can sort of separate the wheat from the Chaff or whatever the metaphor is. It's like oh, that actually that's the thing, like that's it gonna be an impactful thing. And sometimes it's the. You know, I always love it when I see a combination of technologies come together To create something new. Right, that's kind of the magic is like oh, there's that over there, and then is that over there. When those things Combine, it creates a whole bunch of new capabilities and stuff. That's pretty cool. When you can see that too, I guess that does. That's part of the experience too.

Leonard Lee: 11:15

Well, you know, I mean and that's that's A lot of what you've done with some of the contributions you've made to next curve. Right, you're looking at 5g as computing. How are things evolving in those two fronts and what's that new stuff that could potentially form that can create new potentials and opportunities for us to do Us to do even more cool things than what we do today? Yeah, yeah.

Pete Bernard: 11:46

No, it's like you know peanut butter and chocolate. You know sometimes that that combination is pretty good. So, uh, yeah, yeah, no, it's, it's um, it's kind of uh, I agree with you, it's, it's about discernment, and you get that. It's almost like, yeah, we're doing our own sort of pattern recognition of, uh, exactly that looks like, and sometimes you know that also can help companies.

Pete Bernard: 12:04

if you see something that maybe you can smell it's a little overhyped, it's like, hey, you know yeah let's poke on that a little bit and see what the actual Value prop is to the customer and to the company.

Leonard Lee: 12:14

Well, you know, there there's a reason why crap stinks, right and, um, if you have a, you know, you don't, you know quite honestly, you don't have to have that finely attuned Nose to sniff it out. But, um, you know, there's a lot of perfume, yeah.

Pete Bernard: 12:38

These days you know, the. The tech world is addicted to hype cycles. You know we have to be in a hype cycle about something, and and then, of course, people jump in and, uh, you know, create all kinds of incredible future scenarios that scare people or excite people or both, and uh, exactly, and that tries, you know. Vc money and marketing money and All kinds of weird money and stuff.

Leonard Lee: 13:00

So yeah, well, and that's a different stack that you, that you use to shape your, your perspective as well. Right, because you're absolutely right, these hype cycles are really interesting and, um, you know, I'm pretty well known for my point of view on hype and the cycle itself and, uh, you know, um, I think a lot of the folks that I work with, companies that I work with, um, they know my stance as well. Uh, and so I, I don't see hype is really necessary, being necessary. Uh, it's just an outcome, right, of what what you know is clearly misunderstanding.

Pete Bernard: 13:55

Yeah, no, I agree, I think people get a little bit educated and then they sort of run with it and uh, then they're way off, way off base from reality. Well, they become aware of it.

Leonard Lee: 14:04

I don't know if they're actually educated about it, because, um, what you do is you see a lot of folks uh, look at an emerging technology, or get a sense of, uh, uh, an emerging technology, and then they start to extrapolate, yeah, uh, and envision what the potential can be. Um, but it's often times those types of hyperboles that are crafted, that are are largely, if not almost always, uh devoid of actual, um, recognition of the state of the technology and what it's forward.

Leonard Lee: 14:47

the roadmap is for that technology, and so we. I mean, there's so many examples of of technologies that have gone through that hype cycle, and I'll tell you right now Generative AI is one of them. You know, no doubt, there's no doubt.

Pete Bernard: 15:06

I was looking behind me for my book Nicholas Negroponte. I remember this book. He wrote Carbine Digital Many years ago and he said there's a quote in there saying you know, we tend to overestimate in the short run and underestimate in the long run. Yeah, yeah. The impact of these things, right? So yeah, we get like with Generative AI and things like. We get with these big stories and hype cycles about what's happening tomorrow, but then we on the other side sometimes we don't really understand the longer term impact of some of these things.

Pete Bernard: 15:35

You know it's happening farther down the road right. We kind of tend to undersell it a little bit in the long term and oversell in the short term.

Leonard Lee: 15:40

Right. And then this is what I find oftentimes happens Early on the cycle the folks who are quote unquote visionaries will use that axiom to basically, in a way, shame the naysayers and say hey look, you're not open-minded enough. But actually what happens is that over time, as people get disappointed with the technology because they've been seething these, you know, sort of unreasonable and exuberant expectations they overshoot on the downside.

Leonard Lee: 16:21

So they become extremely disappointed by it not tuning into what the actual technology is capable of and where value applications reside, even during the hype part. You know what I call the hump of nonsense. During that phase they don't tune into it. But I mean so, for instance, large language models, definitely. You know some. You know really interesting, potentially valuable applications, but here's the problem they typically are not as sexy as what's being sold into the hump of nonsense.

Leonard Lee: 17:00

That's creating the hump of nonsense. So you know, actually the people who underestimate the long-term benefits or impact of the technology right are the same people who did the hype. They're the ones poised to be most disappointed by what they sold in the front end of this.

Pete Bernard: 17:23

Yeah that's right. Yeah, they've created the proverbial hockey stick of the hockey stick of growth.

Leonard Lee: 17:30

Yeah, yeah, and so you know, and that's the purpose of Next Curve is like hey, why don't we just like cut through the hump of nonsense or just shovel that stuff right to the side of the road, and just you know? Let's be sensible about what we can do with technologies and being grounded in how we can translate, you know, the technology, its evolution into valuable applications, rather than subscribing to things that are exaggerated, that you can't deliver. And then you know these applications that you simply can't deliver on because the technology is not in the state of supporting those hypothetical applications.

Leonard Lee: 18:12

It's like let's just be reasonable about this and you know and that's. But again, you know, and one of the reasons why I think, one of the things that I think has helped a lot in my background is because I've basically been a career solution architect you know, literally it's your job to look at emerging technologies, vet them and then figure out where they fit into portfolio and then how does it deliver value to the business?

Leonard Lee: 18:45

and that whole art and I do really call it art because architects are very underappreciated in this world you know it's been valuable. I think you give a really great set of skills and all the architects out there are gonna agree with me there you go, yeah, of course.

Pete Bernard: 19:05

No, there's always. You know, any good science has a little bit of art to it as well. There's always a good combination there and you know the creativity part of it. I mean, that's another thing. I always feel like the creativity part of the tech world is always undersold and there's a lot of creative folks out there and you know you have to be creative in figuring out how these things would really, you know, fit together and do a little bit of envisioning. But and then the way people are communicating I mean you know you do a lot of communicating, a lot of writing and speaking, and there's an art to that. There's an art to taking this kind of complex stuff and kind of landing it with meaning, and that's an art too. And when I used to interview folks for my team at Microsoft, we, I would always ask them I said give me an example of something creative that you do. I don't mean like creative with a spreadsheet, like actually creative.

Pete Bernard: 19:55

Like you know, do you sing or paint or play a guitar or whatever? Oh yeah, and you know it's kind of unusual People would be like what you know. So you know, being creative like that is like an important part of getting the job done is being a creative person, and you know I'm a little biased, because both of my daughters are very creative liberal arts people. One's a painter and one's a songwriter.

Leonard Lee: 20:18

And musician right and they're.

Pete Bernard: 20:21

You know I'm a musician, we should talk about that. But the creative elements, I think moving forward, being a creative person, I think is going to be a super important attribute, especially even in the tech world, right.

Leonard Lee: 20:31

Yeah, but I think we don't want to put too much pressure on people on the creativity front. I think, it'll be good for certain folks and other folks they'll be good at something else. That's right. I mean it's like innovation, right. And it's like, hey, we need to innovate. It's like, well, no, you also need to execute. Yes, that's true, You're really good at executing and doing, you know, just mulling over and being detail-oriented, getting it done. Yeah, right, Because creative folks they. You need latitude.

Pete Bernard: 21:05

Yeah, that's true, you need a little bit of that. You know what I'm saying. They don't always get a lot of stuff done, right?

Leonard Lee: 21:10

Generative latitude.

Speaker 3: 21:14

No, it's a balance like that. You need teams.

Pete Bernard: 21:16

I'm working with someone and this company I'm working with and it's a strategy process and you know I tell them it's only about 5% strategy, but 95% is going to be executing on the thing, which is not glamorous but it's the most important part. And if you can't execute on it and really land the details and grind through it, then you know your strategy is kind of a waste of time.

Pete Bernard: 21:38

Yeah yeah, so yeah, there's a balance out there Getting the stuff done, but also, you know, sometime being creative about how to get things done too.

Speaker 3: 21:46

So yeah, it's interesting, interesting.

Pete Bernard: 21:49

Yeah, speaking of guitar. By the way, we should have a little sidebar on that. I see a guitar behind you and we're not here.

Leonard Lee: 21:54

Yeah yeah.

Pete Bernard: 21:55

You can see some guitars behind you.

Leonard Lee: 21:57

I have a bunch. I have like a whole wall of guitars over there. Yeah, okay.

Pete Bernard: 22:02

What's your favorite these days in terms of guitars? Guitars.

Leonard Lee: 22:07

Well, there's a company that was called, or is called, carvin. They split off their spun off the guitar part of their business and it's now called Kiesel, which I didn't know. That's the original family name of the company, the folks who started Carvin no-transcript. You know they make amazing guitars and you know it was weird. I was gonna buy a PRS Paul Reed.

Pete Bernard: 22:40

Smith yeah sure.

Leonard Lee: 22:42

But then I thought, hey, why don't I just like Order a custom guitar? I'll just go and check out the keysel and you know I. You know, before Alan Haldsworth passed away I had a chance to meet. Just found him at hanging out at a blues bar. Wow, in Tustin of all places, you know, and he's just sitting there. You know, I'm noodling around with my Steinberger and he walks up and he puts his ear to the headstock and I'm looking at this dude, I'm going Like who is this?

Speaker 3: 23:22

guy.

Leonard Lee: 23:24

And he goes, keep playing. And he looked up I want, holy, this is Alan Haldsworth, right, and he let me play a prototype that he was designing with this this. You know, up and coming Luthier, up in Hollywood and he goes here, you Try this out, check it out, hmm. And so I got a good, a good feel for the stuff that he was developing, right, these guitars that he was developing what he'd liked, and we talked for hours actually, and I'm surprised he spent that much time with me, but that's what this guitar that I I ordered feels just like the thing that I the prototype guitar that Alan had let me play on stage actually and yeah, amazing story.

Leonard Lee: 24:17

I I can't even believe I I'd lived those moments, but yeah, I'm Great guitar and great, so anyone out there once yeah, easel, and they're very well priced for a custom guitar.

Pete Bernard: 24:31

Hmm, okay, I'll have to check it out. I'm playing a. I'm mostly a fender person, so I have a standard strats. I got the Mustangs, all that stuff, but I recently not recently, fairly recently got a de Angelico kind of semi hollow body, yeah, which I really like because it sounds a lot different. You know then, yeah, I was across all that different tone and stuff, so I really like that.

Pete Bernard: 24:53

Yeah, it's like a nice black de Angelico, and then I have behind me I think I have my Martin mahogany, martin Wow guy back there and actually the stress back there too, yeah, so, oh, yeah, no, it's a great. I've been playing since I was, you know, early teenager and it's always fun and actually played with my band at a gig and squim, which is a little in the San Juan Ones up here. A couple weekends ago we had a nice. It was like a neighborhood Festival that they have every year up there, that's awesome.

Pete Bernard: 25:29

And we played like three sets and, yeah, beautiful outdoor show and you know, cranked it all up and it was a lot of fun.

Leonard Lee: 25:38

So yeah, dude, I saw a couple of videos. Man, you're pretty good, thank you. Yeah, you guys jam, it's great.

Pete Bernard: 25:46

Pretty good. Yeah, no, it's been it's. It's fun. It's fun to find people to play with too, and yeah. Yeah, so yeah, I always encourage folks if they can do kind of a musical thing, it's just a good. It's just a good way of exercising your brain a little bit differently. Yeah and yeah, and the tech out there, it's all about the gear, right. So you get the, the guitars and the boxes and all the, all the gear. It's always about the gear.

Leonard Lee: 26:10

So let's tonight. We can go on forever about that. I mean, you know I'm a gearhead when it comes to Guitar equipment and everything else.

Pete Bernard: 26:21

So it's kind of a bottomless.

Leonard Lee: 26:23

Come on.

Pete Bernard: 26:26

Yeah.

Leonard Lee: 26:29

I mean, we go on and on about gear.

Speaker 3: 26:31

It's just like tack.

Leonard Lee: 26:32

Actually it's really weird that you bring that up and then you know I've told folks at Qualcomm it's weird. Or if it's a lot like you know audio, you know when you go to Nam show and you look at all the equipment they have it and then you look at the stuff that, like, the telco guys are using or you know the mobile wireless Guys are using in their network and it's like wait a minute. There's a lot of similarities, you know.

Leonard Lee: 26:57

Grading the air you know, at the end of the day, basically right yeah, sending waves through the air. So yeah it's kind of cool.

Pete Bernard: 27:05

It's really really cool. Yeah, that's good. So what else has been kind of catching your fancy these days? I mean, obviously there's the AI stuff. Is it what? Let's start? Maybe there's something besides AI that's kind of on your mind these days. That's been a hot topic.

Leonard Lee: 27:21

Yeah, I mean, you know, I've been like I've been writing about ed quote-unquote edge for a long time, right?

Speaker 3: 27:30

and.

Leonard Lee: 27:32

You know the cellular 5g, 6g, blah, blah, blah stuff. And what I think is really interesting is how now and Pat, I would say the last two years, maybe year and a half there's a lot of talk about edge computing and hybrid loud. Yes and a lot not.

Leonard Lee: 27:53

And you know we're seeing this, this material shift in how we think about computing, because it was so cloud-centric With the pen, really swung that way yeah yeah, and then now it's just it really is starting to go the other way, and so I think that that's one of the things that I that I've been actually doing a lot more work, but referring to the work that I've done prior, the research notes and I've Published, and and so a lot of that has become very relevant today for a lot of folks. So it's, it's kind of cool, you know, it would be a to Leverage stuff that you throw four or five years ago, yeah, yeah, well, sometimes like the tech is catching up right.

Pete Bernard: 28:48

So now the semiconductor more powerful, the networks are faster, yeah so you know the I kind of call it like the deconstruction you know of the compute fabric. Right, we had this big pendulum right, yeah. Thing that everyone moved your workloads to the cloud. You know we're good.

Pete Bernard: 29:03

Yeah, yeah and then it was like well, actually we could actually run them on-prem too in some form. And we actually run them like nearby, not on-prem, but like close. And you know, it's actually this cascade of compute capabilities now that are possible, depending on your latency, sovereignty, cost issues. There's a lot of different ways to sort of visit. The taxonomies now are much more complicated and and flexible, because the tech can now support you can do some amazing, you know, compute on the edge. I mean, I know Qualcomm was talking about generating AI on the edge and which you know is a whole other thing, but but it's just giving, I think, companies and developers a lot more flexibility, yeah, how they develop and deploy tech, and so that's kind of you know it's, it's, it's been, it's sort of becoming more real now, like yeah, and going back to I was mentioning before, and for the architects it becomes like a you know, a new buffet you know, you're not going to.

Leonard Lee: 30:07

Let's say, you know the old buffet is all of a sudden there's all these new cuisines that are introduced into the, into all the trays.

Pete Bernard: 30:17

You have more sections.

Leonard Lee: 30:18

You know we're like a Mexican section, chinese section, tie, you know you have like pizza.

Pete Bernard: 30:27

Lot more stuff to choose from. Yes, exactly which you know is good, but also, I think, from you know, I know, working with a lot of the Fortune 500 companies it's almost almost too much. It's only too much. Too much tech yeah, too many different ways it could be stitched together and, you know, helping companies sort of find that right recipe. Yeah, is it's complicated.

Leonard Lee: 30:49

Yeah, but you know there's a lot of new tools that are coming out. I mean, you know they talk about fin ops a lot nowadays. This is like the old-school, you know clad I cannot and transparency stuff from like a while back. Right, it wasn't a big deal because at the time just everybody was just kind of spending money on cloud, didn't really care about how much the stuff really costs and managing the costs. And then now it's become a thing and so, but it's not what your cloud spend, but where is the best place to place that workload? Or should we migrate that app? What do we need to do? And so this whole question of the optimal place to place things has become a lot more complicated, right. But I think we're gonna see a lot of tools start to surface and a lot of this has origination or origins in like pretty old CMP or cloud management platform, brokerage kind of application type stuff. Right, that's where it really comes from.

Speaker 3: 32:09

So it's not net new.

Leonard Lee: 32:10

It's just that these things that people were working on a while back are now starting to be valuable tools right.

Leonard Lee: 32:21

Or maybe not so much, but then a lot of the and I think a lot of it has to do with this bigger question of now that cloud seems to be everywhere meaning now these edge clouds and it's much more distributed, like you said. Hey, maybe these tools could be useful in helping us manage our portfolio and our strategy is much better, and so I think there's like I mean sort of like a lot of the orchestration capabilities for workload.

Pete Bernard: 32:54

Orchestration is becoming much more prevalent now, as I was looking at.

Leonard Lee: 33:00

Getting much better. Yeah, I mean there's focus on it. I don't think.

Pete Bernard: 33:05

Yeah, people are trying to make it work and it'll get there. But and of course, as you go lighter and lighter, as you get a little trickier and trickier, but, but no, it's pretty cool to see that. And then the other thing that I saw, too, is I've seen a lot more emphasis on like simulation and emulation. So how do you take a complex system like this and simulate it so you can figure out the right taxonomy and workload? I'd love to see I haven't seen it yet, but I'd love to see some kind of system that also brings some of that fin ops into it as well, when you can start to level your costs and your latencies and your oh man.

Pete Bernard: 33:38

That would be pretty cool to see from like hyperscaler to like near edge to on-prem and like I'll tweak it here and do this, I don't know, are you about to say digital twin?

Speaker 3: 33:49

I just have this funny feeling Right on the edge.

Leonard Lee: 33:53

Just dying to say digital twin.

Pete Bernard: 33:56

Right on the edge of digital twin.

Pete Bernard: 34:00

No, it's some cool stuff, that putting that stuff together. Yeah, it feels like it's getting there, it's getting really close and, like you said, there's a lot more. You know it was one thing to kind of get it working. And then you try to really optimize it and you know you're really realizing where your spend is and you're like, well, maybe I can be a little smarter now and sort of optimize and tune that deployment to make it a little more cost effective, Instead of moving everything to the cloud and just doing it up there and you get this huge bill. Maybe there's a way to have a little more control and financial control too and optimization there too.

Leonard Lee: 34:32

Yeah, and it's super tricky, right. I mean, you need a lot of data points and it's always changing. Again, going back to what I mentioned before cloud brokerage, right, because cost performance it always changes and it's different for workload instance type. It's like there's a lot of, and so people are. I think largely most IT organizations are just starting to learn this stuff, but it was fun to kind of cut my teeth on this stuff working with some, you know, really brilliant quite honestly brilliant CIOs who were sort of cloud naysayers. Warrant bought into this cloud first thing, which ended up being the worst thing any CIO could do. They were more of like a cloud smart. It's like let me figure out. Okay, this is familiar, I know what's happening here with the evolution of, you know, it service delivery platforms and technologies, but let's figure out how the economics work out. And so guys, were they hired guys to work these problems out? And so when you look at their cloud strategies, they were already doing what VMware's CEO was touting on stage smart cloud, right, right, right.

Leonard Lee: 36:06

Being smart about it not being cloud first. It's like it's the age old discipline that every architect should embrace is do what is right and make sense. Literally, for the moment, yeah, because things always change, right, you always have to evolve the way that you're managing, you're viewing your portfolio, it's you know how do you do the right thing and then having the tools to help you make the right decisions and put things in the right places. But it's about to get even more complicated, with all the edge cloud stuff, cloud native all the way, literally onto on a device you know, yeah, no, that's gonna be exciting.

Pete Bernard: 36:58

It's gonna be exciting, I think. The other intersection that I thought was pretty cool, talking about intersecting technologies, is I've been looking at this intersection of a lot of kind of the environmental factors like electricity and water and stuff like that and then compute.

Leonard Lee: 37:14

Yes, stuff, yeah, and there's like a train wreck.

Pete Bernard: 37:17

It's like a collision course between you know environmental resources, powering these incredible. You know intense AI workloads, right and like. I don't think people have really grok to the fact that this stuff isn't free, like when you go generate images on Bolly and stuff.

Speaker 3: 37:33

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Pete Bernard: 37:33

You're burning. You're burning trees or something like that. I don't know what the metaphor is, but I don't think people get that yet and I think someday at some point maybe the EPA will make you label your software to say you're now burning five trees. You know for doing this thing, yeah, but yeah, it's a fascinating intersection.

Leonard Lee: 37:50

Well, it's already happening. It's like I kind of you know, this was a few months back, you know I kind of pushed this idea of sustainable AI. I might have actually been the first person to create the hat on LinkedIn.

Leonard Lee: 38:10

But, yeah, nobody was talking about how expensive it is to actually, you know, basically process a token large language model application. You know, it's like, look, this stuff is not cheap and it's also not the best way to do a lot of things, you know. Like you know, I jokingly have posted on LinkedIn. I was like, look, if you want to know what OnePlus One is, don't ask chat, GPT, use a free calculator. Yes, Much more efficient, and you know, the point being AI is not good for everything, right, Actually, the calculator is much better at figuring out what.

Pete Bernard: 38:57

OnePlus One is much more energy efficient than asking chat GPT, especially a solar powered calculator, even better yeah.

Leonard Lee: 39:06

Oh, my God Dude.

Pete Bernard: 39:08

Dude there you go.

Leonard Lee: 39:10

Yeah, I mean, talk about energy harvesting dude.

Pete Bernard: 39:13

You're like there you go.

Leonard Lee: 39:16

Yeah, you got it man.

Pete Bernard: 39:17

Yeah, no, it's A lot of people are doing that.

Leonard Lee: 39:19

You know they're doing that with the brand you know, ericsson. They're showcasing. Hey look, you know we can power a DU, a distributed unit and a radio with solar power.

Speaker 3: 39:34

Yeah, yeah, well, it's a deal.

Pete Bernard: 39:37

Yeah, I mean all the investment in grids. I think I saw something, I heard something. It was like $275 trillion being invested in power grid over the next 10 years, or something.

Leonard Lee: 39:47

Power grids are on the world. I try to make micro grids of the thing you know, trying to buy a lot.

Pete Bernard: 39:51

I mean I think there's going to be private power grids. That's going to be the next kind of digital divide is you know, are you on the public grid or do you have your own grid? Because you know companies will be want to have their own power, that that's predictable and always available, and so will some folks too. I'm sure the Kardashians will have a hydrogen power unit stuck on the side of their house in the next episode or something, and that's where it's all heading. But yeah, no, it's an interesting thing. I think it's not in people's conscious yet, but, like you said, sustainable AI, that's a thing. So we'll see.

Leonard Lee: 40:23

I mean, if anything, it's going to be the primary factor that prioritizes, prioritizes a generative AI, you know, because at the moment it's just heavily subsidized, right? Oh yeah, it feels like it's free. It's copilot, this and copilot that and whatever.

Pete Bernard: 40:40

And you know, not, not free, not free. In fact, the question of monetization is a big question mark. No one really knows.

Leonard Lee: 40:48

I don't care what one says, they don't Well. I think, Microsoft said 30 bucks a month per user.

Pete Bernard: 40:57

That was there. Well, that's what they think, whether or not they can actually get it is another.

Leonard Lee: 41:03

But nobody. Nobody really knows what the value of this stuff is. At the end of the day is just you will know the cost and then you know, you'll see that and see that's where people will be able to get it, and then you'll see that and see that's where people will start to understand oh, this is what we're dealing with. Hmm, hmm, okay, not quite what we thought, and then you know reality. Quote what we started with right Happens Exactly.

Pete Bernard: 41:39

Yeah, no, but it's, it's been, it's been fun. I appreciate you coming on the show here and having me talking about the stuff, the edge compute stuff and the sustainable AI stuff. I think that's those are hot topics and and also a little insight as to how you, how do you sort your mind for those of us that are sort of soaked in it. Yeah, how do you prioritize? Yes, it's discernment, I guess, maybe that's the day discernment yeah.

Speaker 3: 42:08

And and thanks for having me. I think you're on to something.

Leonard Lee: 42:11

I think you're the focus that you've had Especially lately on the 5g edge. A lot of the edge stuff that you're doing is really great, cool. Thank you, best of luck with all that Appreciate it. You bring really great perspectives to audiences, hopefully all around the world.

Pete Bernard: 42:31

I hope so. Yeah, hopefully international, and we'll have to get together and play some guitar at some point.

Leonard Lee: 42:36

Oh, definitely we have to have you on IoT coffee talk.

Speaker 3: 42:39

Yeah, sure We'll see whether or not latency matters.

Pete Bernard: 42:42

Oh, yes, there you go.

Leonard Lee: 42:45

Yeah, we'll figure it out All right, sir, take care.

Speaker 3: 42:49

Thanks All right, thank you.

Pete Bernard: 42:54

Thanks for joining us today on the edge Celsius show. Please subscribe and stay tuned for more and check us out online about how you can scale your edge compute business.

Speaker 3: 43:44

Thank you, thank you.