The IoT Unicorn Podcast with Pete Bernard Microsoft Corporation

In this episode of The IoT Unicorn podcast, Wienke Giezeman, CEO & Co-founder of The Things Network, discusses his work with LoRaWAN and IoT solutions across the globe.

In this episode of The IoT Unicorn Podcast, Remco Ploeg of Altius discusses the challenges and opportunities of creating carbon neutral homes powered by Azure.
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Episode:
00:00 Pete:  Welcome to the IoT unicorn podcast. This is Pete Bernard from Microsoft. And this podcast is for anyone interested in the long-term technology trends in the IoT space and the journey from here to there. So let's get started. Thank you, Remco, I appreciate your time. Thanks for joining us here. So you're actually based in the Netherlands, and I'm here in Bellevue, Washington, and through the magic of... I'm actually using the Squadcast platform right now to connect and record this, but... Welcome to the IoT Unicorn.
 
00:16 Remco: Thank you, Pete, for having me.
 
00:18 Pete: Great, so you're based in the Netherlands, and I've been there a bunch of times. I used to go there actually, when I would go to Barcelona for NWC, there was always like a flight at the crack of dawn from Barcelona, and I would transfer in the Netherlands to get back to Seattle. And then one year, I kinda got smart and I said, you know, I'm gonna go to Amsterdam the night before, get a good night's sleep, and then I'll take the 10 AM Direct to Seattle. So I've spent a bunch of those kind of layover nights in Amsterdam, so it's an awesome, awesome place, but... Are you from there originally?
 
00:52 Remco: Yes, I'm from Rotterdam, so that's the other big city in the Netherlands so that's south of Amsterdam.
 
00:58 Pete: I see.
 
01:00 Remco: And I was a lot I think also on the same plane as yourself, so I had to do a lot... To Seattle with the direct flight in the morning. So... And also coming back with the flight early in the morning in Amsterdam again.
 
01:12 Pete: Yeah, yeah.
 
01:14 Remco: So I'm based at the moment in Utrecht, in the middle of the country.
 
01:18 Pete: Okay. So you've been at Altius for about a year or two, a couple of years?
 
01:25 Remco: Yeah, a little bit, a little bit more than a year. And the beginning of this year, there was an acquisition of Altius by Avanade...
 
01:34 Pete: Yes.
 
01:34 Remco: So, I'm joining formally Avanade from the first of January, the coming year 2021. But already, I think for 6 months, I'm working side by side with my Avanade colleagues.
 
01:45 Pete: And so I know you've been... I know another thing, I did a little research is you were... Altius was named Microsoft's AI Partner of the Year, so that's a big deal. So tell me more about that. What is Altius in AI? What is the... Do you consider Altius an AI company or more of an IoT company that's using AI or how would you describe it?
 
02:08 Remco: Yeah, so if you look at Altius, we are at the moment, with 400 people in the UK, Netherlands, and India. We've got a full focus on data and AI, so that's also our focus. So IoT is more or less, no side-job but we saw that...
 
02:21 Pete: A means to an end.
 
02:23 Remco: A means to an end, exactly. And then started when I joined Altius so that's one and a half years ago with also combining AI with IoT, 'cause I think that that's a great combination that we have there.
 
02:36 Pete: Yeah, for sure. A lot of times that we've had folks from Qualcomm and other... More telecom-related, I think we had BT on here recently, and it was like the 5G plus AI plus IoT or pick your network that certainly becomes kind of a game-changer for what you can do with a little bit of data, over a large number of sensors or a lot of data... [02:58] ____.
 
02:58 Remco: I think, already at the moment, even without 5G, 5G is of course already rolling out, we can already do a lot with IoT.
 
03:11 Pete: Yeah, so actually interesting on that topic. You talk about IoT, so how much do you think with AI and IoT are you seeing on the Cloud versus the Edge, and how much experience are you getting now, are you seeing in a more of an emergence of Edge AI in addition to the c

In this episode of The IoT Unicorn Podcast, independent civic engineer and former Chief Xbox Officer at Microsoft, Robbie Bach, discusses teamwork and leadership in the tech space.
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00:00 Pete Bernard: Welcome to the IoT unicorn podcast. This is Pete Bernard from Microsoft. And this podcast is for anyone interested in the long-term technology trends in the IoT space and the journey from here to there. So let's get started.
 
[music]
 
00:23 PB: On this episode of the IoT unicorn, I chat with Robbie Bach, former Microsoft executive. He was there for about 22 years, he was the chief Xbox officer and drove that program for a long, long time. We talk about Xbox, Xbox Revisited the new book he wrote, we also talk about some other projects like Zoom and Microsoft Kin or what we call Project Pink, and just in general leadership principles and techniques for leading through ambiguity with a ton of technology, especially in the IoT space. So great Robbie, thanks a lot for taking the time to join us here on the IoT unicorn. First off, kind of disclaimer, the topics typically are IoT-oriented, [chuckle] but we're gonna take a little diversion today, but I think it's still gonna be germane and... So anyway, I just wanted to thank you for taking the time to join us.
 
01:20 Robbie Bach: Happy to do it.
 
01:22 PB: Good, good. I don't know if there's a phone ringing there or something...
 
01:24 RB: Yeah, that's mine. [chuckle] We can start over if you like, that's a phone that I have no control over, it's actually the house phone ringing in my office.
 
01:34 PB: Oh, okay. That's alright. Don't worry about it we'll... It's part of a sincere authentic nature of the conversation, [chuckle] but I think one of the things... And I read your book, Xbox Revisited, which is cool, and I thought for today, one of the things that I thought was really germane was just talking about technology and leadership, or just leadership in general, and it was really fascinating to kinda read through your journey with leadership and the pluses and minuses and what you've learned about it. And I think in the IoT space, we're sort of like awash in technology. Before we started recording, I was explaining how I was futzing with my system and just too many pieces of tech, and a lot of companies, they have a tons of technology, there's no shortage, now we got 5G and LPWA and all these AI. But how do you take that ambiguous technologies swamp and actually provide some kind of leadership and guidance and structure or framework around thinking about things, so you can get things done and you can get organizations, especially big organizations, you can imagine, moving in the right direction. And I thought there was a lot in your book around Xbox Revisited that resonated with probably what a lot of companies are thinking about today, is like how do we navigate through some of the tech?
 
03:01 RB: The thing I always respond... I talk a lot about innovation, and I talk somewhat about that in Xbox Revisited, but I do a lot of it in the public speaking I do. And I talk about creativity and how do you come up with new ideas, and technology ends up being third on my list of things not first. And the things that come first are ironically, business model, because it turns out a huge portion of innovation actually happens in business models, and the second thing is experience and sort of how people interact with the technology, and then comes technology. And when something is technically lead, maybe it has a good sustainable business model and maybe it has a good experience, but maybe it doesn't, and that's why the first person to market with the technology doesn't always win. And my experience has been that a sustainable business with a great customer experience will beat somebody who has a great technology without a good experience, and so we tend to focus on those first two, first.
 
04:14 PB: Yeah, so when you... Probably

In this episode of The IoT Unicorn Podcast, Matt Chatterley and Tom Bennett of British Telecom discuss some of the benefits and challenges of implementing 5G.
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00:00 Pete Bernard: Welcome to the IoT Unicorn Podcast. This is Pete Bernard from Microsoft, and this podcast is for anyone interested in the long-term technology trends in the IoT space and the journey from here to there. So let's get started.
 
[music]
 
00:21 PB: On this upcoming episode of the IoT Unicorn I have a great conversation with Tom Bennett and Matt Chatterley, both of British Telecom. And they explain to me what the term hospital pass means, we talk about some great British beer and all things 5G, past, present and future, and not just for iPhones. So please join us.
 
00:44 PB: Thanks, Tom and Matt, I'm gonna... This is actually an interesting milestone for us, this is the first time I've had two guests at once on the IoT Unicorn, and I think when I originally was thinking back about having you guys on the show... I've had lots of conversations with each of you individually, and also some really good conversations together and I thought, "Well, let's just get everybody on the horn here and talk about some things around 5G and stuff like that" so I appreciate you guys both making the time all the way from the UK to pipe in here and join us on the Unicorn, so thank you very much.
 
01:19 Tom Bennett: Thank you for the invite, yeah.
 
01:21 PB: Sure, sure. So maybe before we get into lots of acronyms and Telco stuff, well, maybe just give us a little bit of a back story. Maybe Tom and Matt about sort of... We're talking about BT, British Telecom, so that's quite a storied institution, and I know that you had worked at EE before that and stuff, maybe just give us a little bit of background about how did each of you get here to this point in time.
 
[laughter]
 
01:47 TB: How far back are we allowed to go?
 
01:50 PB: Oh, you know.
 
01:50 TB: 25 years, maybe not. So yeah, I joined this thing called 2G, it was a small company that started, anyway, that was 25 years ago. Matt and I, we started a little bit of history of space to EE. So EE is the largest and best mobile operator in the UK and it was formed 10 years ago from the merger of what was then the third and fourth place operators, so it was Orange and T-Mobile. Now by forming that merger it created not just a company, but great assets, and in fact it is number one by customer number. It also had the opportunity to go on to be the best from a network perspective and we did that, we were... In fact, Matt and I started to meet yourself, Pete, was eight years ago when we launched 4G and we were a year, year and a half ahead of the competition in the UK.
 
02:44 PB: That's right.
 
02:44 TB: And the rest is history from there. We launched 4G first in the UK, launched our new brand, EE and the rollout was phenomenal. From there, we hit top 10 cities, and then right now, I think our 4G coverage is just pushing 85%, 86% of the geography of the country, not just people, geography of the country, and that's kind of phenomenal eight years after launch. In fact, our launch anniversary is this November. This first week in November we launched. And yeah, that's where we started and then obviously BT, which has no mobile assets, BT originally was just the fixed operator. I've looked at this new EE upstart with its phenomenal 4G network and said, "Yeah, we want some of that." And four years ago Matt? Four years ago they bought us.
 
03:39 Matt Chatterley: [03:39] ____.
 
03:41 TB: We all moved in to BT and really that was very much a both commercially strategic and technologically kind of architecturally strategic decision because...
 
03:52 PB: Wow, that's cool. Something happened.
 
03:53 TB: Because as you roll forward, I'm sure you know, really it's about running forward with the best 4G and now 5G network, and it's a converse plate, it's ho

In this episode of The IoT Unicorn Podcast, Sarah Maston, Senior Solution Architect at Microsoft, discusses the development of the animal conservation initiative, Project 15.
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00:00 Pete Bernard: Welcome to the IoT Unicorn podcast. This is Pete Bernard from Microsoft, and this podcast is for anyone interested in the long-term technology trends in the IoT space and the journey from here to there. So let's get started.
 
[music]
 
00:21 PB: On this episode of the IoT unicorn, we talk to a very interesting person doing very interesting things, and that's Sarah Maston of Microsoft. We talk about Boston University where we both went to school, a little bit about nutrition and nutrition technology, but we spend quite a bit of time talking about Project 15, which is an open platform effort that her and her colleagues have been championing. It's an anti-poaching platform that's been adopted by a number of NGOs around the world, and we talk about that and the technology behind it. So please join us.
 
[music]
 
00:58 PB: Sarah, thanks for joining us. We've had a lot of different guests on the show from silicon partners to telecom, internal Microsoft, I think you kind of fall into the category of very interesting Microsoft people that are doing very interesting things, so I'm gonna tee that up. Maybe you can give us a little bit of an intro yourself and sort of some background.
 
01:18 Sarah Maston: Sure, it's funny, when I look at my cats, I don't know that I'm that, they think I'm that interesting, but thank you. [chuckle] I'm really happy to be here. Where did I come from? So I actually have a really long history in the database space. I started out making data warehouses before that was a thing, that kinda grew, and so I started out as a medical programmer, actually, at a company called Meditech in Massachusetts.
 
01:56 PB: I see. Oh, where in Massachusetts, by the way?
 
02:00 SM: Ah, they were in Natick, but I lived in Arlington, I went to BU.
 
02:04 PB: So interesting, interesting... Oh, you went to BU? Oh, I went to BU also.
 
02:08 SM: I did, once upon a time. Oh, yay!
 
02:10 PB: I was a BA/MA BU grad, isn't that weird?
 
02:12 SM: Go Terriers!
 
02:12 PB: No, I was gonna say... Yeah, go Terriers. I was gonna say I had, my first job out of college was in West Natick.
 
02:19 SM: Oh, interesting.
 
02:19 PB: There was a little shop called The Bit Bucket computer store, and my professor from BU, my assembly language professor actually ran the company, The Bit Bucket, and we built computers, branded computers, and I was his first engineering hire, and it was in West Natick. I didn't stay there that long, 'cause it was kind of like a weird job, but yeah, The Bit Bucket, I remember West Natick... Yeah, Natick's a nice area. That's cool.
 
02:49 SM: So I was gonna say did they have a lot of Twinkies, 'cause I believe that the Twinkie fact... I don't know. I think it's in Natick...
 
02:57 PB: Oh, the Twinkie was there?
 
02:58 SM: I'm unclear.
 
03:00 PB: I think that was it, I know there's Necco Wafers too was out there.
 
03:01 SM: Oh, delicious, delicious.
 
03:01 PB: I'm not sure where that is, yeah.
 
03:03 SM: Yeah, no, I actually have a degree in psychology and women's studies from BU.
 
03:08 PB: Fantastic.
 
03:09 SM: So, a little bit...
 
03:10 PB: Fantastic, okay. Go Terriers, yeah. Okay.
 
03:13 SM: Okay.
 
03:14 PB: There you go.
 
03:15 SM: Back to this.
 
03:15 PB: We should have cleared that up in the pre, in the preamble before we started recording, but that's okay, now we know, so that's good.
 
03:21 SM: Thank you. Yeah, so I did a lot of data warehouses, and I put myself actually in Harvard's night school to kind of get out of data and start learning more Java-ey, getting into more programming stuff, because I had a really weird side hobby then as well, where I had been really sick in my late 20s,

In this episode of The IoT Unicorn Podcast, Rene Haas, President Intellectual Property Group at Arm, discusses the development of edge devices and the 5G wave.
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00:00 PETE BERNARD: Rene, thanks again for joining us here on the IoT Unicorn. I was trying to remember the last time actually we saw each other face-to-face. That's something that we do these days. I think it was Barcelona 2019 or something. It was a while ago. But again, thanks for joining us today.
00:23 RENE HAAS: You are welcome. I wasn't sure if it was CES of 2020, but...
00:28 PETE BERNARD: It could be.
00:28 RENE HAAS: Gosh, you might be right. Barcelona, 2019. My gosh, over 18 months ago.
00:32 PETE BERNARD: Yeah, that was a long time ago. Well, CES 2020 was our last... It was kind of the last hurrah for events, although going to Vegas always has its potential infection rates of all sorts of things going on there, but... Not in that case, but... Cool, yeah, no, it's good to see you again, and we've known each other for a little while and worked on some interesting projects, so it was great to have you on the show, and obviously very timely with the DevSummit coming up and some recent news that we'll talk about as well. But maybe you can give us and the listeners a little background on your journey to where you're at as President of Arm IP.
02:07 RENE HAAS: So my role at Arm is I run the IP products group. Our acronym is IPG, Intellectual Property Products Group, and that's the sales marketing development of all of our products, GPUs, CPUs, NPUs for the markets that we serve, the client market, infrastructure market, automotive autonomous and IoT. I am in the Bay Area now, but I've had a fun journey at Arm. I have spent seven years at Arm, but only a few years in the Bay Area. I was in Shanghai, China for two years, and I was in the UK for three, living in London, commuting to Cambridge. And I just came back to the Bay Area at the beginning of 2020, and...
02:50 PETE BERNARD: Are you an original California person or what's your... Where is your home base?
02:54 RENE HAAS: I'm originally from Upstate New York. Yeah, I'm, originally from Upstate New York.
02:58 PETE BERNARD: Wow, cool.
02:58 RENE HAAS: My dad was a Xerox guy, so I was a son of a Xerox guy working in... He was working in Rochester, New York, which is where I grew up. And then I came out to California in the mid-1990s, and I've been here ever since.
03:12 PETE BERNARD: I'm a New Jersey person myself, so that's something we have in common, the Tri-state area. Although Rochester is pretty far up state there.
03:21 RENE HAAS: Serious snow country.
03:22 PETE BERNARD: Serious, yes. Good, good. Excellent. So you've been at Arm for a while then, and you also spent a little bit of time at Nvidia.
03:31 RENE HAAS: I did, I did. I'm gonna pre-fetch probably your next set of questions, but before I spent...
03:37 PETE BERNARD: No pun intended.
03:38 RENE HAAS: Seven years at Arm I was with Nvidia for seven years doing a number of different roles there, but primarily in the notebook graphics space, GPUs, as well as Arm-based CPUs that went into all different types of laptops including the very first Surface that was running Windows 8 on Arm.
04:00 PETE BERNARD: Yes, those were the days. I had one of those. A lot of us up in Redmond had one of those. [chuckle] Unfortunately, not a lot of the other people had them. That was the problem. [chuckle] But, so cool. So now sort of full circle, just to touch upon that topic, Nvidia and Arm. For you, it's kind of break out the old badge, I guess...
04:20 RENE HAAS: Yeah. It's something that came live last Monday. Obviously, the rumors had been out for a number of weeks, so some people were surprised, but some people were not so surprised when it finally was announced to everyone actually last Sunday. It was supposed to be on Monday, and then we pulled it forward to Sunday. We're actually very excited about it at Arm, we thi