Educational Odyssey: From M2M to IoT and Beyond with Jasbir Singh Dhaliwal

Embark on a transformative journey with our special guest Jasbir Singh Dhaliwal, straight from the tech heart of New Delhi, as we traverse the evolution of IoT from its infancy in M2M to today's revolutionary home automation and smart farming technologies.

Jasbir, an industry veteran at IBM with a treasure trove of experiences, paints a vivid picture of his transition from embedded systems to the expansive world of cloud technology. Tune in to hear his vivid tales of tackling the challenges that accompany the creation of cutting-edge embedded platforms, and join us in marveling at the lessons unearthed from groundbreaking projects that set the stage for the IoT revolution.

This episode is a treasure chest of insights, featuring a deep dive into the architectural patterns that underpin IoT applications across diverse sectors, from tracking assets to revolutionizing healthcare.

Jasbir offers a sneak peek into his literary endeavor, shedding light on the core principles that transcend the ever-changing tech landscape. Recognizing the relentless pace of the technology industry, I share my own anecdotes from IBM's pioneering contributions to high-performance computing and AI, reinforcing our shared advocacy for continuous learning. Whether you're a tech aficionado or a curious learner, this episode promises to expand your horizons and spark your innovative spirit in the fascinating world of IoT.

You can find Jasbir's book on Amazon here as a Kindle or Paperback version - https://www.amazon.com/IoT-Architectural-Patterns-Practice-manufacturing-ebook/dp/B0B49ZXLDP

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

Transcript

Pete: 1:02

Jasbir, Thanks for joining us here on the Ed Selsior Show. I'll let you introduce yourself and give your origin story here in a second, but I'll just give the listeners a little background. I think you reached out to me I don't know. It was like six months ago or so and you had written a really interesting book about IoT, and I think that started our conversation. There's the whole topic of learning, of keeping educated on all the latest things happening in IoT, and edge computing is just a fascinating topic, so it's great to have you here on the show. Why don't you give yourself an introduction and let everyone know who you're at.

Jasbir: 1:38

Sure thanks, pete. Thanks for having me here. You're right, right, so we had that conversation six months back and we have kept in touch and we have a regular communication, but it's the only thing that now, after six months, we are having this podcast. But, as they say, better late than never, so it's my privilege and honor to be here. Thanks for having me here.

Pete: 2:04

And where are you dialing in from today?

Jasbir: 2:07

I'm dialing in from India, New Delhi.

Pete: 2:10

Fantastic.

Jasbir: 2:12

Yeah, so it's almost night, 9 o'clock here. The night All right, and the summer has just started.

Pete: 2:22

Getting a little warm, not too warm yet.

Jasbir: 2:25

Too warm. Too warm in the afternoon. Mornings and evenings are pleasant, still pleasant.

Pete: 2:32

Good. So give us a little more. How did you get to writing this book and, kind of, I know you're at IBM right now. Give us a little kind of the origin story here.

Jasbir: 2:43

Yeah, so I'm working into this IoT domain for almost nine years now. So, in fact, I started this journey with IoT when it was not even called IoT. They used to call it M2M, if you remember, right, right, machine to machine, machine to machine. Yeah, so I remember the days right when, kind of you know, our marketing team came and said that no, no, no, we need to talk IoT, not M2M, because that's what is selling in the market.

Pete: 3:16

Sure.

Jasbir: 3:17

And I remember, right, taking those presentations, ppts, and doing search and replace, you know, M2M2 IoT yeah, those were the days, right. So I started with a home automation project. Okay, way back in 2000, I'd say it was 13, roughly, or 14, 13, 14 timeframe. So we developed one product called Home Automation Gateway Okay, only thing is it was too ahead of its time. Okay, market was probably not ready for that. It didn't do well commercially, but it gives a lot of learning about what is this space, right, what it entails? Okay, what type of different communication technologies are there? Bluetooth Wi-Fi? Okay, it entails. Okay, what type of, you know, different communication technologies are there bluetooth wi-fi?

Jasbir: 4:09

okay, and you know kind of a basic you know stuff on a fundamental stuff, how this iot thing works, m2m thing works right, what can be the challenges there. And you know, since it was kind of a embedded device, right, so we had to kind of develop everything on a small you know footprint on an embedded device. At that point of time it was not connected to cloud, okay. So we had to do all the analytics, all the user interface, everything on that platform itself.

Jasbir: 4:41

So that was my and of my starting point in M2M slash IoT and that got me really hooked. This is something which needs to be explored and the reason I got interested here because I had that initial background in embedded domain. When I started my career almost 22 or 23 years back, I used to write firmwares or embedded devices system, car navigation systems yeah, all those embedded devices, right, printers. So I had that you know good understanding of all how this embedded side works, what are the constraints and what type of challenges we typically face in this domain, which you would appreciate is quite different from the normal programming, the desktop programming, for example. So I had that background and when I did this home automation project, I thought this is kind of a good platform for me because I can leverage that learning initial learning from ready domain here, right, right, and also, fortunately, what happened? That almost during that time frame I was also introduced into this cloud world.

Jasbir: 5:59

Okay, so this IoT and cloud journey almost happened at the same time. Then I realized this is the right place for me to begin, because I have a good understanding of this device side embedded field and also I can add to it the cloud knowledge and I can be kind of a very good you know, probably contributor into this domain and, fortunately for me, my prior organization supported me as HCL technologies, where I spend a lot of my yeah, yeah yeah it's a big, big company in India and also in the US also.

Jasbir: 6:40

So and company supported me and a lot of projects which came my way were IoT only. For example, after this home automation project, we did one project in smart agriculture space Okay, interesting For one of our Canadian customers, okay. So they wanted to kind of move their on-prem solution to cloud, so that was their requirement.

Pete: 7:08

They call that a lift and shift. That's what they call. That lift and shift, you move your on-prem to the cloud.

Jasbir: 7:14

Correct, correct yeah, so we had given them both the options. Lift and shift was one of the options and there was the complete architecture on the cloud. Yeah, right, so they preferred the latter option because of you know, more benefits there. It took more time, but they were okay with it. So that was the second project in IoT space, another. Then we also did some conditional monitoring projects in IoT. Okay, specifically in pharmaceutical space, where the requirement was that we were supposed to monitor temperature and pressure of environmental chambers where the vaccines and medicines were kept.

Jasbir: 8:01

So that was third project. And then fourth project was asset tracking project. We used RFID tags to track assets. You know, assets, Any type of assets can be, for example, IT assets, laptops, desktops okay, For example. We kind of developed this platform for asset tracking and we customized it for multiple customers. So, for example, one customer and one use case which we handled using this platform was for an MRO customer, the organization which typically repairs the airplanes. So for that and they asked for that, they wanted to track their tools which they use for repair using our solution.

Pete: 8:54

So that was also quite a successful collaboration and they were quite good, yeah, so you had a number of these, you know, and we'll talk about them, kind of canonical use cases, I guess. Going back, by the way, embedded, yeah, so we used to call it embedded way way back. So I was an engineer at Phoenix Technologies so for BIOS and that was, you know, some of the stuff you had talked about a firmware engineering, right, and then we evolved the terminology to M2M and then to IoT and now kind of edge computing. But at the end of the day, it's things talking to other things and talking to the cloud.

Pete: 9:32

But it sounds like you've encountered, and this is kind of where maybe like to understand sort of where your efforts came from around the book. But it's, you know, around these canonical use cases that I think a lot of us in the IoT space see over and over again right Asset tracking, smart agriculture, you know, healthcare there's these sort of patterns. You know that you see over and over again that customers want to use to solve business problems, right. So that's kind of what you've been sort of. That's what you've been sort of focusing on.

Jasbir: 10:07

That's correct. That's correct and, as you rightly pointed out, since I worked in multiple domains and use cases, so a thought came to my mind that you know, since I'm kind of fortunate enough to work across multiple domains and use cases, I was able to find a lot of commonalities between those solutions.

Jasbir: 10:28

So that was the trigger point why I thought that I should write a book on architectural patterns, because I saw that, although on the face of it they appear very different use cases in different domains, but under the hood a lot of things were common. So that was the trigger point for writing this book Architectural Patterns for Developing IoT Solutions. That was one big motivation. Another thing was that when I searched in the market that if something similar is available, it was not there. Okay, right, right, yeah. So either you know kind of books for going too deep into the technologies, okay, kind of a very, very specific technologies which made it very difficult for slightly semi-technical, non-technical people to understand. They were not able to understand because they were too much technical. Another aspect I realized that you know the technologies, right, they keep on changing. Okay, so there is no point in kind of you know talking too much about technology because anyway it's going to change.

Jasbir: 11:40

Why not to talk about the fundamental principles and techniques, right, which are not going to change? Why not to talk about the fundamental principles and techniques, right, which are not going to change with time? Okay, so that, and again I kind of did a search, I did a googling, and then I searched on amazon also if something of that nature is available or not. Okay, then I realized even that is not available. So that kind of triggered me that no, no, it's the right time.

Pete: 12:04

I think I have an idea and then, uh, not, not many people are thinking on those lines, so it's the right time to jump on and start writing the book yeah, well, I think the idea, the idea of going, you know, kind of abstracting it a little bit to patterns and because I think a lot of business, you know there is an education gap here, like when I've met with, you know, leadership from fortune 500 companies um, they don't have the knowledge and education.

Pete: 12:33

They get sold a lot of stuff, they get told a lot of stuff by sales teams but they don't really understand like all the possible patterns and things and they can, once you explain the patterns, then they can sort of map it to their own business. You know which they know better than anyone else. So I think it's interesting that you took that approach to say let's just take a look at the abstract patterns and architectures and then as people read the book, whether they're super technical or not as technical, they can sort of think about how does this apply to me or my business? Right, and that's sort of the fundamental thing. If you start with, I have these problems in my business that I need to solve. How can this technology help me? And look at it from a more pattern perspective. I think that is a good fundamental grounding than just sort of buying some tech and trying some stuff out right.

Jasbir: 13:17

That's correct. That's correct. So the idea, as you rightly pointed out, the idea is that, in case you have some idea and you want to implement it, this book will definitely help you. In addition, even for generating the ideas, this book is a good reference. It talks a lot about techniques for innovative solutions also.

Jasbir: 13:37

I gave some examples of very innovative use cases also, and it's not only purely theoretical architecture patterns.

Jasbir: 13:45

We also then have a separate section where we have shown that all those architecture patterns can be combined to create fully functional use cases and just to show the efficacy of those patterns, that they are complete and they can be used to implement any use case. For that matter and it's not that only we have kind of taken use cases we have gone across multiple domains. Four domains that we cover here are smart agriculture, manufacturing, retail and consumer. We've taken specific examples from those domains and shown that all those patterns can be used to create solutions, right. So that's the second part of it, and the third part is also interesting. The third part we talk about, you know, we go slightly more concrete, showing that what are the differences when we start developing IoT solution vis-a-vis developing other software solutions, for example, or generic solutions. So, for example I'll just give you one example so analytics, if we apply it to IoT, are different than the analytics which are generally there, for example, you need to have specific considerations there Similarly from a security standpoint.

Jasbir: 15:05

Right, security in IoT is quite different from security, let's say, in the desktop world, for example, so also there's a separate section dedicated for that. Okay, so what are the specific consideration we should have while developing analytics security? And you know, not to forget about sensor and actuator selection. Okay, what are the considerations we should be having while selecting those sensors and actuators?

Jasbir: 15:31

right which forms, you know kind of a foundational, you know issues or foundational challenge people face while developing iot solutions how to compare different sensors, you how to compare different actuators. And the last section right last section is also quite interesting where we go beyond IoT. So there we talk about how IoT can be combined with other technologies, emerging technologies, to create even richer and stronger use cases, how IoT can be combined with Web3? How IoT can be combined with 3D printing, for example. What about IoT combining with large language models, chat, gpt, what about combining social media with IoT? So that's the very interesting section, and then I wrap it up with my you know learnings over the years do's and don'ts. Okay, what, what you know points person should remember, you know, while developing IoT solutions.

Pete: 16:33

So that's how the high level.

Jasbir: 16:36

what is the book is covering?

Pete: 16:38

Yeah, no, it's really cool and certainly we'll put in the show notes a link to it on on Amazon. I think it's. Like you know, one of the things I thought was fascinating and I I keep seeing this as a gap, or at least I would say it's an opportunity in the industry is around education.

Jasbir: 16:54

And.

Pete: 16:55

I think if you're not committed even if you've been doing this for decades if you're not committed to learning new things on a daily or weekly basis, you know you're not doing yourself a favor. And you know, for myself, I spend a big chunk of my week reading and listening and learning new things. I was just at the NVIDIA conference and I've been kind of, and I had a show recently on around robotics and I've been really digging into that platform and what's happening there just to learn. You know state of the art and where things are heading and who's doing what, and so I think that it's like you know, this kind of education mindset is really critical for folks. I mean, as you mentioned, the tech changes all the time.

Pete: 17:36

So you know, and the new tech, you know, there was just a conference around generative AI on the edge. You know, using transformer based model architectures in resource constrained devices, for example, is a huge new area that people should be learning about. That set of things to do. You know, get a cup of coffee, get educated, do work. You're going to be behind or you're going to be missing. You know the opportunities out there to serve your customers better, so is that something that you kind of have kind of thought about in terms of like, where education fits into everyone's kind of professional existence.

Jasbir: 18:21

That's correct. You're very you. You very accurately put that point. So in our industry we call it a software industry or IT industry learning is a continuous process Even if you don't learn for one week.

Jasbir: 18:33

You are behind the curve Because the tech changes so fast. So that was definitely in the back of my mind. But, more importantly, I wanted to create something which has a sustainable value over that period of time definitely back off my mind. But you know, more importantly, I wanted to create something which has not a sustainable value over that period of time. Okay, I didn't want it.

Jasbir: 18:47

Some create something which is out of date, maybe after six months or one year, okay, so that was the reason it took, you know, slightly more time. In fact, it took almost two years for for me to complete this book okay because I wanted to create something which is long-lasting At least, you know, three, four years. It should be, you know, relevant or valid. And one more point you know it's not only for the kind of tech professionals. So even people who are in the academics, people who are into engineering colleges, who are learning IoT, they found it really useful.

Jasbir: 19:24

And we're getting a lot of appreciation from those people also, and Book is doing pretty well both in the academic circle as well in the corporate circles.

Pete: 19:35

Yeah, it's like I mean, I do a lot of mentoring, do a lot of work with kind of early in career and college level students, and there's always a need for fresh perspectives and coursework.

Pete: 19:48

You know, at that level as well, right, so I could see this. You know, not only helping, you know folks that are just kind of in it as professionals today in the industry, but people that are learning about the space, and those students seem to be getting younger and younger. I'm getting older and older, I'm not sure which, but even at the high school level, right, I mean, like basic, you know engineering practices and you know learning how to look at problems and problem solving. You know, I think this is another area where, like where your book is focused on, like let's take a look at the problems and what are the patterns and architecture to solve problems. That's pretty foundational, I would say, even in the high school level of curriculum. So it'd be great to see this kind of permeate, you know, down into that kind of world as well, as what's where it currently is, whereas it's the you know more at the professional level, right, yeah, and I was talking to one of my people in my college from where I passed out.

Jasbir: 20:47

So the students are telling me that they've gone through that book and what they found is really interesting is that it captures the actual practical knowledge. So normally they are exposed to very theoretical things, very less of a practical insights. But this book, they are saying, is a right balance between theory and practice. So it captures kind of those and also the mention also and also the overall fundamental principles and techniques.

Pete: 21:15

Yeah, yeah. There's also a lot of online stuff I don't know if you've thought about like the Courseras and the Khan Academies and there's so many platforms out there for education. You know this kind of material too is pretty important for people to kind of get a good grounding on. So you know, that's another avenue and I would encourage folks listening if you have not signed up for a Coursera or whatever so many free classes out there that you can get educated on, and this kind of material too, I think plays well into that space.

Jasbir: 21:49

Definitely that's a good idea.

Pete: 21:52

Yeah. So tell me a little bit, let's pivot a little bit. So you're at IBM right now.

Jasbir: 22:01

Slightly more than two years now.

Pete: 22:03

Two, wow, that's interesting. So ibm's been going through a lot of changes. I when I interact, when I think about ibm.

Pete: 22:09

Of course everyone knows the story about ibm and thomas watson and the cash registers and the whole thing, uh, and the mainframes and the pc, and we can go on and on, but we don't need to go back that far. And these days too, they're also doing a lot of supercomputer, kind of on-prem supercomputer stuff for, like, finops and financial institutions. A lot of people don't realize a lot of financial institutions use IBM on-prem in their own data centers, kind of their own little cloud, to do very high performance transactions. And they're doing a lot in AI space and it's pretty fascinating. So in terms of but you're focused on more of the IoT and solutions part of IBM, or how does that organize or how do you plug into IBM?

Jasbir: 22:55

That's correct. So, as you said, right. So IBM is doing pretty good work in quantum computing, space supercomputers right. And, as you said, they have a very good footprint in the financial domain as well. But, as you mentioned, my role is into the IoT team, support the customers into their IoT journey, into their transformation journey, advise them, guide them and kind of create architectures for them to begin with and it's not only architecture, I'm also involved in end-to-end development also. So until the solution is actually deployed, I'm typically involved there as well.

Pete: 23:39

Yeah, okay cool. So that's interesting. And do you focus solely on kind of the india market or do you do you travel, do you get to go to interesting places?

Jasbir: 23:51

sometimes with customers.

Pete: 23:52

The customers take you to interesting places.

Jasbir: 23:53

That's what I find so uh, yeah, yeah. So we do both right. We do domestic projects also and we take other projects also, for example, be it Germany, right, us, uk. So we are not restricted in that sense right interesting.

Pete: 24:11

Yeah, I know it's uh whenever you they call it kind of customer facing role. So you know, as an engineer, you can be uh kind of more internally facing and develop product, which is cool and you know, very righteous, or you can be customer facing, which is, you know, helping customers use the tech. You know, deploy the technology.

Pete: 24:31

Sometimes, that's part of a sales organization. Sometimes that's part of a still part of an R&D organization. I mean, any good product team needs to have the voice of the customer in the product development process right so that they understand exactly who they're building for and what's important to them. But it's interesting that you're in a customer facing role. I always felt like the customer partner facing stuff was an interesting dynamic because if you get into solely into like a product team that's very inward and like focusing on getting their code designed and checked in, you can get into a little bit of a vacuum and a bubble. But it sounds like you're really vested in the customer experience and the problems they're trying to solve right. So do you work with the product development teams as well and sort of help provide a lot of the voice of the customer into that process?

Jasbir: 25:18

Correct. So I do interact with customers and as a solution architect or a principal architect role, I talk to customers, understand their requirements. Pain points and create a solution which kind of elevates those issues. And also, obviously I need to interact with their development team also. It's kind of to ensure that they are understanding the requirements, they understand the architecture, deciding between different approaches, technical approaches that's also part of the role there. From a product management standpoint, we do have different people who take care of that function, I see.

Pete: 26:01

Cool. It's interesting. What's next, now that you have the book out there, you know, is there another book? I mean, what's the? Is there a movie like what's happening? That's the next project for you. Now you got this thing out the door yeah.

Jasbir: 26:16

So so I'm still kind of, you know, talking about that book. I am promoting that book because I feel that it has a lot of potential. Once it reaches its potential, its target audience, then I'll start thinking of the next project, because for me, quantity is not that much important. A good content, that is much more important. And I personally feel that I have created a good content which would be of use to both corporate, professional, as well as people who are just learning IoT. So, as a focus is to kind of bring the message to them Okay, help them right and guide them. And you know, in case they have any questions, queries, I am always kind of happy to help them in their journey, whether they're just starting their journey or they are kind of in between their journey.

Jasbir: 27:11

I kind of know it's my passion. As I said in the beginning, it's my passion, so I'm always there for supporting them. Yeah.

Pete: 27:18

Yeah, fantastic, fantastic Sounds good. Well, jasbir, it's good to finally connect in real time, you know, in this kind of video audio way, since we've been sort of iterating by, you know, linkedin message and other things for the past six months. So it's great to have you on the show and learn more about the book. Any closing thoughts or words of wisdom for the audience other than go check out the book? Obviously, words of wisdom for the audience other than go check out the book?

Jasbir: 27:47

obviously no, it has been my pleasure. Patty, thanks for inviting me. It was a wonderful conversation and from a message standpoint, I would say that IoT is the next big thing and it's a very unique proposition because we are combining real and virtual worlds Right. Typically we don't find that into normal solution development Okay. Right, so IoT is very unique and that makes this even more interesting. So people who are just thinking of kind of starting a journey there, who want to take this course, my suggestion is go for it yeah, go for it yeah that sounds like a good closing statement.

Pete: 28:31

Go for it, awesome. Well, jasbir sounds good and we'll talk soon, sure, thank you, sure thanks for joining us today on the Edge Sales Store Show. Please subscribe and stay tuned for more and check us out online about how you can scale your HPQ business. © BF-WATCH TV 2021.