Transcript
Good afternoon and welcome to today's TND world webinar titled hybrid 4G 5G Fan Solutions Empowering Utility, Decarbonization and Grid Resilience, sponsored by Dell Technologies and NVIDIA. I'm Nicky Chandler, executive editor of T&D World with Endeavor Business Media. To begin, let me explain how you can participate in today's presentation. First, if you have any technical difficulties during the session, please submit to the questions window and our technical experts will help you out. Uh, we recommend disabling any pop up blocking software or extensions in your browser, as these can cause issues with the webinar player. Additionally, we do welcome your questions during the event today. Uh, and we'll answer as many questions as possible during the Q&A session that will follow the main presentation. Uh, but please feel free to send in your questions at any time. To do so, simply type your questions into the question window on the side of your screen and hit the submit button. Also, please be aware that the session today is being recorded and will be available on the TNA world website within the next 24 hours. Uh, you will be notified. Um. By email when that archive is available. Now I would like to introduce our speakers for today's discussion. Uh, John Rampart is an experienced technical sales professional with Dell and has a proven track record in business development across next generation IT networking, uh, networking technologies, uh, virtualization, SaaS C platforms and network monitoring solutions. He has a strong telecom and communications background spanning network networking, routing and switching, and network architecture. Um, Larry Beckedahl is responsible for advancing the strategy to build the grid of the future. Uh, Ryley McKinsey is the co-founder and chief executive officer of Canada based Expeto. And Rajesh Gadia leads telco and edge architecture at NVIDIA. I'm going to go ahead and turn it over to John. Uh, welcome, John. Uh, please go ahead. Great. Thank you very much. And, uh, welcome, everybody. And thank you today for joining the webinar or we're glad to have you here. It's going to be pretty exciting today. And we're really happy to have the guest speakers that we have. It's it's, um, it's a it's it's a nice to have a, an actual end customer joining us today in addition to our technology partners. So a little bit about the agenda today, the first three bullet items in the agenda overview of the utility, decarbonization and grid resilience challenges and solutions for extensive service areas and future wireless state architecture are going to be covered in the content discussed by Larry. Next will be coming, uh, with Speedo with Riley, and he's going to speak about the role of 4G and 5G and field area networks, as well as the benefits of hybrid approach. Then we're going to pivot to myself, and I'm going to give a short little overview of the Del and, uh, Speedo combined validated solution. And then I'll be turning it over to Mr. Rajesh for the converged infrastructure and accelerated edge in AI discussion. So with that, I'm going to pass it to Larry. Larry, it's all yours. Well. Good morning and thank you. Thank you John. I really appreciate the introduction. And we will start in on a few of the slides, I believe here, and we'll skip over pictures etc.. Um, but uh, really appreciate the opportunity to come and talk about telecom and the utility industry. It is really becoming such an important part of what we do every day. And, uh, how reliant we are that we are really paying a lot of attention to what's possible and thinking differently about, uh, communication systems in general. So I want to start with, uh, a little bit of a, you know, kind of the fundamentals. Uh, when we think of the utilities, we think of, uh, the communications systems, what you see on the left hand side, we call information technology or business network. And on the right hand side is the operational technology or the energy network and utilities operate those separately. Uh, in fact, we have a number of, of requirements, uh, that we have to meet. And if you see on the right side there, Newark, the North American Electric Reliability, uh, uh, Coordinating Council that that oversees the standards that we have to abide by. And, uh, anything that impacts the bulk electric system has to be managed and maintained, uh, with security in mind. And, uh, operability is the utmost. So what I would say is about the left hand side is just like virtually any business, whether you're in the banking industry and you're running, uh, ATMs or you're, um, any, any of us at home. You know, usually when you connect up, you want to have great service. You want to see the connection. And and, uh, when you hit the enter key, you want it to happen fast and come back to you. And in fact, you look at those speeds and you wonder, you know, what's that? Bandwidth. And do I have enough? And all those things come to mind. But if you look on the right hand side and you're thinking about an energy network system, what's different is the deterministic, which means from point A to point B, let's say from substation A to substation B, I need to know exactly when that information is going to arrive, because it might be my transfer trip scheme that it's operating. That means that I if I have a fault on the system and I need to get that equipment off and I need to, uh, release that fault, that means it's got to happen very, very quickly. Otherwise you have so much energy there that you're going to burn down and blow up a lot of equipment. So we say the latency has to be less than ten milliseconds. And if I were told, you know, the typical communication specialist over on the IT or the business network, that they had to maintain less than ten milliseconds on their communications and make sure that it's deterministic between point A and point B, they would look at you funny and say, why? Well, geez, we don't do that for anything else. Well, that's what makes us different when we think about utilities. And specific equipment has to meet that standard. That's what we're really going to talk a little bit about today. And then the other part of our business that we're changing that really we're adding a lot of devices. It used to be that, uh, um, our systems looked primarily at what were large scale devices, generators, transmission substations. Well, now we're adding a lot of devices that might be out in the field in locating neighborhoods. It might be in the home, and it might be customer equipment that we're talking about. Well, that's changing the world of what our needs are. So as we look at the next slide, we break it down into again, two categories what's wired hard wired and what's wireless. And these are kind of all standard, uh, um, equipment that a lot of utilities have used. You see, on the wired side, fiber is by far the most popular. And what we're doing today used to be all copper. You can see some of the old copper there leased lines, leased fiber as well as leased copper. And I would just say that the copper is definitely going away. And, uh, fiber is certainly where everybody is heading into the future. But on the right hand side, when we talk about the wireless side, um, you know, we've got commercial, uh, cellular, we have microwave, we have a field area network, or we refer to it as a fan. There's satellite possibilities since this actually happens to be our metering. So it's really a metering application. You might have different communications for that. And so as you're looking across these various technologies and how you're applying them, what frequencies are they at. Uh what's the special purpose. You know, a microwave was point to point, uh fairly short in its distance, but it couldn't be blocked by buildings. And so, you know, but that was the technology again, as we put SCADA systems in starting in the 70s. Um, we started, you know, using that. We didn't have fiber back then. Then fiber came along and started replacing some of the microwave, but kept a lot of the microwave as our backup. And so you can see these various categories of what should I hardwire and what should I use for wireless. And again, in the past we had big elements in the system that we would operate. Um, today we're using that equipment. We want to communicate with a lot of devices. So we slide to this next slide. And here's when I say a lot of devices, we try to break them up into different categories. How much does it impact the system. So you see on the far right side things that are greater than two megawatts. Those have been the traditional when we talk about generation etc.. But now we've got batteries, we've got solar panels that customers own. Lots of different things that do impact the grid in a big way. So we treat them slightly different than if I jumped over on the far left side and said, okay, we have the, uh, thermostat in your home. Do I really want a hard wire and have fiber to that thermostat? Well, I'd be nice, but can't afford it. Um, so what I'd like to be able to do is influence and those devices. If I send out a signal and your thermostat moves up or down three degrees and it takes 5 to 10 minutes, I'm good. Whereas on that right hand side, when you're looking at that two megawatt load, I want to be able to communicate with it directly, and I want to know that it's doing what it said it's going to do. And then we have a space in between what we're talking about on the wireless. Um, and those devices could be in homes, they could be chargers, they could be solar panels on rooftops, lots of different devices that we want to be able to communicate with. And we need a strong system, a wireless system that we know we have confidence in. So then you start to ask yourself, okay, well, what's out there, what's available. And so a field area network, you decide that you, uh, by spectrum. Well, how much spectrum did you buy? Makes a big difference. And for us, we just had a small band of, of spectrum, and we were planning on using it just for some of our distribution, reclosers, etc., that we wanted to communicate with, not millions of, of homes. Um, that was not our purpose for that system. Satellite. Um, again, hard to get to. Might be wildfire equipment that's up in weather stations, that sort of thing. It has its place, but very limited in terms of and the cost. You can see, you know, each of the categories there as we try to size up what's what's the right shirt size. And that's why you see the coats on the up above. What's the right application of communications for the devices that you're working with. And you see you go all the way over to the far right where we have we a large device that's kind of that two megawatt device that's out there that we want to communicate with directly. Um, you know, and even as we're showing there, um, the cost could be extensive. Well, can you afford that? Is that the right way to communicate with that particular device? But each utility has to think through how do I connect these devices? What's the best, most economical and safest way that I can communicate with that device? So we go back to our wired and wireless and we start to say to ourselves, okay, what are some of the systems? What are we moving to that is different? On the wired side, uh, the Mpls was one of those systems that we started to move to in the wireless or the wired side, but over on the wireless side, which we're really focusing our attention here today, we started to say, okay, there's commercial cellular out there. Yeah. And then there's also the system that, you know, field area network where we're buying a spectrum and we're operating. And do I go to a private LTE or do I operate a system that, um, maybe I can leverage somebody else and leverage what the commercial cellular can provide for, uh, bandwidth and passing of data, but maybe I can operate it slightly different. And so that's where we started the discussions with Expedia. Um, and our effort was one, if I build out the field area network and I turn it into a LTE private network. For us, Portland General Electric, it was going to cost about a half $1 billion in just capital to deploy the system. Well, then I've got ongoing O&M costs. How much is it going to cost me every year? And the staff that I'm going to have to put on to manage and maintain that system. And quite frankly, we have a lot of renewables, we have a lot of other capital demands across our system. And so that's why we started to look around and say, can we find a different option? And so, um, as I go through this next slide, you can kind of see where we've been. We've used all sorts of wireless, uh, information. We've we've connected to all kinds of devices and many, many different ways. And I would say that where we're going is we want to get to one platform for the most part, we'll still have some some one offs that are out there. But we wanted to create a platform where we could leverage, um, the public wireless, uh, and private wireless and keep it all together and communicate with devices and know that we'd have that confidence in the communication we wanted security, cyber security. If I flow through one of the cellular companies, I rely heavily on their security. Um, and I don't have insight into where that information is coming from necessarily. Whereas if I'm running my own, uh, private, uh, uh, hybrid wireless system, I know where it's coming from. I can actually control it to manage it to. Okay, I want all of the EVs charging to come through one channel, or I want all of the solar to come through a different channel, or I want all of, uh, different types of devices to come through different channels. I could manage that both from a security standpoint and from an operational standpoint. And so, uh, we've been working with Zerto and, uh, creating that environment and, uh, shifting over. So again, we're leveraging the, the technology, um, the cellular companies who have built out the systems and have done a really good job of that, and they maintain them in a really good way. We leverage that and allow ourselves to to build our own, um, hybrid wireless network on top of theirs and be able to connect up the equipment that we feel is appropriate at those levels. So with that, I'm going to stop. I'm going to hand it over to Ryley McKinsey from Expedia and let him tie in and bring to you a lot of the details about the system. Ryley. Yeah. Thanks very much, Larry. That's, uh. That's excellent. I appreciate that, uh, insights and experience from in the field. Uh. Nothing better. Um, let's skip through there. Uh, so from a utilities use case perspective, um, Expedia, one of the greatest differentiations is the ability to, as there is mentioned, to securely deploy not only IT assets but also the OT assets. And they deploy and utilities can deploy these the way that they want to deploy them. And within the systems that they already have, and not necessarily, um, rely on external uh, systems for that deployment. So we were quite, uh, quite excited to be working with, uh, with PGE, uh, in this endeavor. And we've created a platform which works in conjunction with the mobile network operators or the minnows, and it takes a lot of that goodness and the benefit from the macro mobile network, which we're all used to working with our handsets, etc., and tablets and then puts that control into the utilities hands. But and this transfer of capability from the mobile network operator is done in a way that's standards based. And what the matter is the mobile network operators are used to working within. So that standards based deployment model is very important. So we're not breaking anything within within the Moe world. And thus it creates a repeatable means by which the mobile network operators can scale their operations. But then also it enables the utility companies who deploy the Expeto platform to really embrace the idea of mobile networking, and not just necessarily a private network. As to Larry's point, which is a huge, uh, costly endeavor, but also also deploy in the areas where they can utilize a lot of that macro coverage. So it really so what we've found is that it gives them that it gives the utilities or the enterprises, the telephony services that they need to run their business at a very, very granular level. Uh, and, and it also enables the minnows or the mobile network operators a means by which to offer new services to their, to their customer base. So what we've got on the on the slide here is a couple of examples of the use cases that we've been seeing in the marketplace and that we've been working with at PGE on. When we first started our journey with PGE, there was a very large list, some 50 to 60 applications which were meaningful to their business. And then we were able to narrow that list down to the most impactful that we were going to be seeing value from. So it's very important that, you know, we could quickly develop these applications or PGE could develop these applications, test them, roll them out into markets. And if they didn't and if they don't see success on that, you know, tweak those and have a very iterative approach to to managing that. And with the platform benefits, it's it's very much the idea of a visualization of, you know, managing those different assets with the tools and the systems that they're used to in these cases. So I won't go individually through each one of these, but I think the I think the driver is on this case, the grid devices, it's very important to to look at these different grid devices as if I say just using an example of if I've got ten assets that are that I'm looking to deploy in on the over the network because it's not my network. To Larry's point, I'm not going to be, you know, the chief security officer in the organizations are not going to be as inclined to to be deploying these assets over a network that's not necessarily theirs or that's not theirs. So asset classification becomes very important. Um, and that's what we found with the security tools, with deploying assets over the Zerto platform. We can take these we can use existing tools, different, uh, you know, I, um, intrusion detection systems, intrusion prevention systems that our security teams or the security teams at PGE are used to, uh, monitoring and managing their networks. Now, they can deploy those different assets onto the platform because they get the secure they can they get the security that they need, uh, within those, within those devices. Video monitoring was another one. We look if we look at a lot of the of the cloud deployments or a lot of the applications in the cloud, we see a lot of great tool sets that are in in any of the hyperscalers that that are deployed or utilized. So we want to keep those. We want to put more of those deployments or more of those assets and applications into the hyperscaler environment. But again, we need to maintain that security and maintain that. So what we've done is we've taken a lot of that, a lot of the functionality outside. That was the innovation of the Expedia platform is taking that functionality outside of the the carrier, putting that into the Hyperscaler and, and depending irrespective of hyperscaler of choice, uh, and engage with those applications and see value through those, through those applications. So connected worker was another, uh, very valuable, um, application. And there it's very much a scenario of ensuring that we have consistent policies, uh, over and between the different applications that we're putting, uh, within the connected worker. I'll just switch over to the next slide. This is one of my one of my favorite slides on on this side is is a visual in the sense that the Zerto platform enables that 4G, 5G, mobile networking. So this is what we've seen in a lot of use cases to date. What the result of a of a private network is somewhat siloed. And that we found was a significant problem with the with the environments of mobile network operators today. And the value in the differentiation that we provide is that we can enable these hybrid networks to span both public networks and the vastness and the great and the great networks that are and the resilience within those networks, but offer a private experience now for not only utilities, but but other industries, verticals as well. And it's that hybrid model interfacing and applications going between each, you know, not having to change IP addressing or, you know, utilizing your own DNS resolvers and things of that nature. We can seamlessly go between clouds and between networks. And then the utility in this case PGE has full control, and they've got a flat vanilla architecture that that really spans the breadth of their networks. And it's it's not a different siloed now where previously working with a number of different carriers, um, that would result in different silos where the applications are being deployed. So customers now, because we're agnostic to the hyperscaler of choice, customers can use their own instances of the hyperscaler and utilize those tool sets. I was mentioning before, um, and what we've what we've heard in our experience, uh, working with a number of enterprises is that especially in cases where there's large deployments that may be across country or across the world, that I, as that enterprise, have spent a lot of resources and capital and money on my edge or how I define that edge, and I'm happy with that. I can utilize all the different tool sets, and I can, and I've got my teams that can manage and maintain those environments. So previously it was very difficult to connect to the mobile network. Operator I need that mobile network operator as a partner, but I don't want to retool my entire environment to satisfy a connection in the US or a connection in Canada, and then a connection in, in, in Germany or Australia, for example. So that flat vanilla architecture is hugely important from a consistency and a resilience perspective for the enterprise. So utility outcomes with Zerto, as we've seen here, is we've accelerated the decarbonization timelines when we can quickly deploy these applications and manage these manage these environments, improved worker safety and productivity, reduced outage time and increased customer satisfaction. So having time, the time to value seen in areas where I can actually make these changes in my network and see results very, very quickly versus having to go through other, uh, other areas and other systems to within, say, the mobile network operator, which typically can take a little bit more time in that environment. So what we do as expat or at Expedia, we're a platform as a service. We're a software company, so we don't have any hardware. We deploy on different hardware assets. And when it comes to the private deployments in field, we've got, again, t shirt sizes that we're very excited to be working with our partner in Dell. When it comes to the cloud based deployments. Again, these are these are deployed and in concert with each other. So again, we don't penalize our our enterprise customers for making decisions on a particular Hyperscaler we can work within any of those deployment environments. And one of the greatest features is the is the is the idea or the concept of making the macro environment a private deployment for the enterprise customers, and then having that exact same private and public hybrid environment available anywhere in the world and having that, having that seamless experience. Uh, so I'll hand it over to, uh, or we've got the, uh, survey question. That will be going through right now. And the survey question, what is your time frame for deploying a hybrid or traditional private wireless network solution? And we've got. Have deployed or currently deploying a private wireless network solution. Evaluating an options over the next 12 months. That would include a hybrid approach. Third option, open to exploring but don't have a timeline as as yet. And then the final point no plans to deploy a private wireless network. Yeah. Okay, so it looks like the poll is sent. And we've got a few folks it looks here that are open to exploring. No plans yet. So hence the, uh, hence the uh, webinar here. So that's good. Getting some information and some, some, uh, education on the matter. And then have deployed a couple of folks on that side. So very interesting, very interesting. Um, so thanks very much. And I'll hand it over to, uh, to John. Great. Thanks, Riley. Um, that was very, uh, very informative and very helpful. And so I'm going to take the next couple of minutes and I have three slides that I'm going to speak to. Um, the first slide that I want to talk about is the Del Aspetto partnership. Um, and to put a little background to some of that. Um, one of the reasons for Dell's interest in telecom is with the 5G standard. What that that has done is it virtualized a lot of these cellular functions that were previously done on dedicated boxes. Right. So that opened up a terrific opportunity for Dell, as mobile network operators look to upgrade their gear to five gear for us to play in that with our, um, you know, number one position in server and storage. And number two, we've actually made the commitment that Dell and we formed a specific business unit called Telecom System Business unit, often referred to as TSP internally, where we're actually committed and um, to to satisfying some of this growth that we're seeing in 5G across enterprises. And as well as the transition in mobile network operators. Um, we've even gone so far as to build out a dedicated lab in our Texas headquarters, where we call it the Open Telecom Lab. And that's giving us a tremendous opportunity to work with partners for interoperability and to make sure that the platforms that we're delivering to both enterprises and mobile network operators are all working together. And so we have that one little playground, so to speak, that allows us to go ahead and test and build out and expand with those platforms. So the one, you know, when we were looking for partners for a private 5G core to bring to enterprise, right? Espeto stuck out for a lot of the reasons that Riley highlighted in his discussion. Right. There's plenty of vendors out there that have a private 5G core, but expect differentiated themselves in their ability to, um, to to bridge that gap between private core deployments for an enterprise and the public, um, the public deployments by the nose. And that was a significant differentiator for us at Dell and made the selection process for our mobile core vendor selection, uh, very easy. Um, the next slide and then pairing that. So we have Dell with the infrastructure we have with the private 5G core running on the Dell infrastructure. And then lastly, the third component that that we need to put together, this private wireless network is a third party Ran provider. And the 5G standard, um, helped a lot in that in terms of standardizing a lot of those functions. Um, for, um, private wireless networks to be deployed by enterprises. Right. And then the even the, um, the federal government has, has helped them in a sense that they've actually opened up dedicated frequency spectrum that wasn't being used, uh, or that was partially being used in another area. They've made that available for private wireless networks. So the partnership with expedite the availability of spectrum, and then the openness of the 5G standard allowed Dell to is allowing Dell to actually play a large role in, in private wireless networks as we go forward. So. Next, I want to just give you a little overview of what the solution architecture that we have dealt with is. And I mentioned this earlier, is that with our hotel lab and with our entrance into the telecom space, Dell creates what we call validated solutions. And this is very important because it allows the solutions that we're bringing out to our enterprise customers, that we have them up and running in our lab, or validating them across multiple vendors for interoperability. And that that, I think, lends itself to our customers feeling comfortable and when engaging, what they wouldn't normally think of as Dell for telecom. Um, now we're now we're being a little bit viewed as a, you know, a, a player in the telecom space. So in this, uh, slide that we see here, this is a good graphic. And I'm not going to dig into the technical side of it too much. I want to speak to it from a high level. But if we look at that upper portion of the slide where we have the public radio and the CSP core, right. That's the component of the M.a.o network that Larry spoke to and his his, um, conversations. And on the bottom we see with the Dell infrastructure blocks there, um, the private network. Right. So that can be deployed on an enterprise. Um, it could be deployed in universities, could be deployed in many different verticals. But it's the, um, it's that ability from that brings to the table to bridge private and public that no one else brings to the market, that we're seeing a tremendous amount of interest in from our customer base. So the other thing that's I think, um, an attribute in the selection of Zerto was, is the fact that it's got an end to end solution, and their core is, is scalable. Um, and the simplicity to deploy is, uh, lends itself to deployment and enterprise networks. And in my last slide here, what I want to talk about here a little bit is about metrics. And I'm not going to go ahead and read all of these out to you. I think you can see that yourself as I'm speaking. But the thing that I'm seeing now and being a member of the telecom system business unit within Dell, and having the ability to engage and work with folks like Portland Gas and Electric and our technology partners like Zerto is, I think the time is now. In the past 12 months, I've seen a tremendous uptick in the interest from our enterprise customers. Um, and, and the interest in deploying and testing private cellular networks to solve real world business problems and produce business outcomes. So, you know, I think there was that I thought that poll that, uh, Riley had put out there was, uh, was was quite timely because now is the time and we're seeing a tremendous uptick in the interest of, uh, of private sector networks within the enterprises. And so with that, I'm going to pass the ball to, uh, Rajesh from NVIDIA. So, Rajesh. Yeah. Thank you. John. Hi. Good morning everybody. And, uh, it's a real pleasure to be here this morning at this webinar. Uh, and I'm super proud of our partnership with Dell. We have a long standing collaboration with Dell, and we work very closely in many areas, including telco, 5G and the utilities vertical. And we've also worked with PG and E as end users of some of our acceleration technology. Now, before I talk about telco, let me, um, first provide a high level overview of NVIDIA and our strategy. We are a full stack computing company. Of course we build silicon products such as, um, the CPUs, GPUs, NICs and GPUs and switch silicon. But for us to deliver the leadership performance for many of the applications, particularly AI driven applications that are becoming very prevalent, we build full stack solutions. So the magic is really in how the whole stack comes together to deliver efficient performance. We acquired Mellanox, um, a few years ago, which provides us the interconnect solutions as a fabric to interconnect our high performance GPUs. And then we have Cuda as the programing layer for developers to build parallel computing applications. And then on top of it, we have many SDKs, software development kits such as Nemo and Triton for training and inferencing applications. And there are more than 150 vertical industry focused SDKs that have been built that are at this point, adopted by over 4 million developers. So really think of NVIDIA as a full stack accelerating, uh, full stack computing company. Now, one of the things that we are all really excited about is the rise of generative AI and LM applications. I think you would have seen over the past 18 months, we have seen a lot of generative AI, um, that has seen significant interest in many industry verticals, including telcos, uh, telcos in particular have a wonderful asset. They have their distributed data centers, which have been talked about as edge data centers for a long time. And the advent of generative AI provides them a real opportunity. That killer application they have been looking for and some excellent monetization opportunity as well. Now, NVIDIA is working with telcos around the world to help them drive more AI adoption. So when we think about AI powered telcos, there are two areas. Think of it as two sides of a general ledger, right. So one side is how to use AI to save money through operational efficiencies. So better customer experience, improved network operation and other AI applications for their enterprise applications. So great example of AI driven operational efficiency is what AT&T has done recently in collaboration with NVIDIA on an application that's called Cuopt, that has helped them automate the process of addressing customer incidents and reduce the response time by over 100 times or over 100 x. Now, a similar application can be built for utility companies as well to deliver similar kind of efficiencies. This has not only allowed them to reduce the customer response time, but it's also allowed them to reduce costs. And then on the other side is how we make more money with new monetizable applications and services. So this is where NVIDIA's large and mature ecosystem, with vertically focused applications based on AI training and real time AI inferencing, can allow the telcos and enterprises to host AI services in their infrastructure. Now, in particular, um, the large language model based inferencing applications. They desire low latency and the telcos can service this need well with their connectivity and proximity to enterprise customers. So in summary, it's really save money through AI driven operational efficiencies and make money by enabling new applications, uh, in various industry verticals like utilities. So now let's talk about 5G. Um, this is a relatively new domain for us. Um, but we are actually investing significantly in 5G, both on the telco side and also for private networks. Our vision of 5G is really a fully software defined, high performance, completely cloud hosted and AI native platform. So we have a sizable investment, like I said, and focus in Openran. Openran was talked about earlier in this webinar, and we have a platform called NVIDIA Ariel that, uh, allows you to build an Openran platform. So this is our optimized platform that integrates with many of the ISV applications to build a full genome and O-ran compliant Du and CU that can be fully deployed in the cloud. So NVIDIA's Ariel platform is the only platform that is fully software defined. It does not use any kind of fixed function acceleration, and as a result, it's fully configurable, uh, from a software perspective and can support, uh, anywhere from 44 ah, to massive Mimo, 32 to 32, 32 to 32 ah or millimeter wave all on the same platform. Um, and Ariel can also be used, like I said, for both telco ran and operator 5G networks and also for private 5G or enterprise 5G networks. Now, one of the things that we have really pioneered is the ability to run both the 5G, uh, Ran and AI applications such as generative AI and LM applications and MEC applications. Right? So, um, edge computing applications all on the same Programable platform. And this is what we call ran in the cloud. And this is super important because as all of you know, the 5G networks typically, or networks in general run at a low utilization now during the off peak hours, evening and night, the utilization. It's very low, even less than 30%. And so the. To utilize this unused compute capacity for running AI inferencing or AI training alongside. On this page. As the world evolves to 5G advanced and eventually to 60, I is expected to be used natively to deliver better performance and spectral efficiency, and a better user experience for to provide an excellent AI native platform for optimizing wireless algorithms with AI. Um, now at Computex back in June this year, Jensen, our CEO, announced a completely new architecture called Grace-hopper in Grace-hopper in actual deployments. Now in commercial deployments. Um, and this is a really game changing architecture, not just for AI applications, but also for 5G, including private networks. In fact, um, so in Japan is planning to deploy more than 100 data centers across Japan based on the modular. Support platforms. So a natural question that perhaps everyone's wondering is so excited about Grace-hopper and what's different now? The industry has come to realize that many modern applications, they need heterogeneous compute to deliver performance and efficiency. And this is why GPUs have become so popular. So any application that needs data level parallelism and thread level parallelism such as AI, 5G, um, HPC, they all benefit tremendously from GPU. And now GPUs, uh, are being used across um enterprises in the cloud, across. Many industries, GPUs sitting across PCI express incur a lot of inefficiency. What is needed is a tighter integration of CPU and GPU with a high performance interconnect and efficient memory system, and this is exactly what copper architecture delivers. It is a 72 core arm CPU. Um, copper, which is a latest generation GPU, and they are connected with a high bandwidth coherent interconnect that we call NVLink C-to-c. And in this architecture, the memory is fully coherent. So GPU can access all of the CPU memory and vice versa. Also, the platform uses LP D.R.. So it's this the low power memory, which significantly reduces the energy consumption. So as a result, in the SoftBank configuration, uh, we've been able to double the performance, uh, for 5G, uh, in addition to improving the performance pretty significantly as well. So to conclude, our vision is an accelerated data center that can run a 5G network and AI and LM applications in a fully software defined multi-tenant cloud infrastructure. This could be a private cloud. It could be a public cloud. And this is applicable for both telcos and enterprises. So enterprises, as you guys know, are embracing more AI applications and can run their private 5G network on this accelerated infrastructure. NVIDIA, like I was saying earlier, has a large ecosystem of vertically focused AI applications, including the utilities vertical. We now have an implementation of 5G open ran as well, and this has just been deployed in production networks such as NTT DoCoMo, as was recently announced at MWC Las Vegas last month. So the call to action really is if you'd like to discuss Openran for telcos or enterprise 5G in a cloud hosted accelerated infrastructure with GPU acceleration, please talk to us and we would love to discuss further with you. With that, I'll pause and I'll pass on to Nicki some Q&A. Thank you so much, Rajesh. That's. That was a great presentation by all of you. Um, and a very interesting topic. A lot of new stuff there to think about. Um, we do have some questions, uh, that are already in here, so we'll jump right in. Um, but just to remind the audience, you can still ask questions at any time. Just type them into your, um, question. Uh, I guess it's a little box there, and then you can hit submit, and we'll get to answering those as soon as we can. Uh, so first of all. Uh, this is a question for, uh, Larry at PGE. Uh, in your hybrid development or deployment, uh, how did you approach operational support? And, uh, second part of that is where there are challenges keeping pace with ppg's use case implementations. So great question. And I guess as I think back and, and as we've been working through this, um, yes, you we set aside the headaches of managing antennas and communication to and from those antennas. For the most part. Now it's about network. And, uh, you know, how are you setting up the networks and how are you monitoring those networks to make sure that they're operating correctly at all times and making sure that, uh, um, the right things are being plugged in, uh, together. And so it is a, a change in mindset. Um, you do have union, um, issues that you will bump into depending on what your makeup of your workforce is. And so you've got to think through strategically as to who does what and, and uh, position how that, that can be managed, uh, going forward. So it's a little bit less on the hardware if you want to think of it that way. And field workers versus who's actually sitting and managing and monitoring a network and a NOC, um, which has become much, much more important. So definite challenges there. Nothing. Nothing comes easy. I guess if it was easy, uh, you know, this would have all been done, uh, years ago. So, uh, but what's really exciting here, if you think about it, you know, uh, behind that hospital, you've got Dell, you've got NVIDIA, uh, some of the leading folks in technology world today that are really making a difference. So, so yes, hard transition, but it's well worth it. Uh, yeah. Thank you so much, Larry. Uh, and does anyone else want to add on to that? Jeff. That was specifically for Larry. So, um, so the next one is really, uh, top of mind, I think, with any, um, technology like this and application. Uh, but what type of platform do you use to have adequate cybersecurity in the OT? And it, um, I don't know if anybody wants to kind of jump in on that, but, um, that's, uh. Yeah, that's always a question. Yeah, I'll take that, Nikki, if you don't mind. And then if others want to add, uh, these, uh, feel free to jump in. Um, so we view the, um, the addition of a private wireless network as an extension of layer one, right. For those that are used to networking. Right. And one of the attractive elements of a private wireless network is that it does very easily, um, connect up to existing lands right from enterprise businesses. So from that perspective, as it relates to security, um, we're, you know, you can still apply your same security approaches that you have in your enterprise business to secure your network and the addition of the private wireless network running on the Dell infrastructure with the NVIDIA components and the Zerto components. Um, those can be secured in the same traditional sense that you do today with your with your land networks. So. Good to go. To add a little bit like, um, um, yeah. So, uh, I think John provided a pretty good, um, uh, insight, uh, from, um, NVIDIA perspective, actually, you know, when you think about, um, the, the, the need to sort of like, uh, secure all the transactions that are coming in from various endpoints, um, and anything that goes on the internet. Right. So you have technologies such as VPNs, um, firewalls, um, and um, uh, some of our um, NICs and data processing units actually have, um, acceleration for whether it is SSL, TLS, uh, whether it's a layer seven, um, web acceleration firewall, web application firewall. Um, so these can be um, very easily implemented with, uh, acceleration on the platform. And uh, I think we when we think about, uh, wireless networking, when we think about, uh, increasingly I, uh, security is paramount. Right. And so that's something that we actually put a lot of, uh, emphasis and focus as we engage with, uh, our ecosystem to make sure that all data, whether it's in transit, whether it's, um, in use on the platform or whether it's actually stored on the platform, um, all data is secure, um, with a zero trust environment. Okay. Yeah. Thank you. That's great. Um. What? Uh, here's the next one. Uh, what future deployments or advancement advancements do you anticipate in this technology? Uh, how might they further benefit utilities or utility companies? Let me, uh, start with, uh, a couple of comments and then love to hear from others to jump in this as well. But we are, you know, moving into a space. Um, and I'm going to use the example of, uh, how do we localize every device that is going to be put into a home in the future, will have intelligence in it. And so how do you communicate with that intelligence? And what does that look like from a transactional perspective? Um, I think there's an awful lot that can be done at the meter level. Um, that interfaces then with inverters and all kinds of other devices. Um, so when it comes to that communication, is is this the right answer? Um, software defined wide area networks, um, have been used for a lot of different other different products. And so, uh, we're probably going to see an intermix that comes in here a little bit on that direction. Um, but to be able to define, you know, the parameters, what information is going to get sent back to a control center, what's going to stay out and, and, uh, the neighborhood and, and be, if you will, self directed and self-healing, uh, autonomous on its own. Um, lots of questions there that we're starting to, uh, explore and wonder. And, uh, so I think these communication networks are going to become more and more important into that space. Now, if you have folks like NVIDIA and Dell making it faster, easier, more efficient, we can put a lot more into that space. Um, I guess it just gives us lots and lots of opportunities. Makes sense. Riley, did you say? Did you want to comment as well? Yeah. No, absolutely. I think the, you know, one of the, one of the advantages of when you have to Larry's point about that, that software defined Wan or that software defined, uh, elements within the network. You can if you bring in a lot more IT methodology into the development and the deployment of those of those systems. So, you know, that's a very different mind shift from the telco view of the world versus the IT view of the world. So that's where I think that we see, you know, and especially in industries or verticals like utilities, when you can just you have an application, you can bring in applications, throw it at the wall, see what sticks. And then with limited cost or limited risk on, on that side. So I think that it really does open up a greater ecosystem of application developers or systems or, or um, uh, elements to be put onto the network in a safe environment. So when I can deploy applications and put that into a zone where I've got, you know, increased security, uh, elements with that, my, my security profile is, is different in that it makes it much more palatable to be deploying very quickly. Makes sense. Okay. Uh, here's one. Uh, Larry, uh, assuming that you're now in production with a number of hybrid network use cases. Uh, how about how long was your proof of concept before moving into production? Oh, I will just say we've been at it. Uh oh. Riley, this is probably year 3 or 4. Um, but I'm trying to remember where in Covid land, uh, we started. Um, but, uh, it's it's not overnight. I will say that it takes a little bit of time. And obviously when you're, uh, in those first stages, um, you know, you're building your confidence and understanding what can be done. Uh, we as a company, also trying to transition, thinking about innovation differently. Uh, how do we put innovation into a process? Um, really comes into play, uh, because you've got to be able to make decisions quickly, uh, with those vendors and trying to move the ball quickly. And utilities we've been notorious for, uh, stirring and working on these things for many, many years. Um, and so it does take a what I'll call a concerted process to make sure you stay on track and that, uh, you execute on, on the product and you come to a point on some things you would say, no, um, that's, that's not going to work for us on that particular element. So we need something else. We'll choose a different, uh, shirt size, uh, uh, possibly to work on that particular item. So, um, it doesn't happen overnight. It is a really good question. Uh, appreciate, uh, uh, the ask of it and know that this is part of that hard work. Riley, did you want to add to that? As far as that goes? Yeah. No, I think that, uh. Yeah. And, uh, I get the utility spaces as, as Larry mentioned is, uh, is, uh, notorious for for taking some time on that side. I think that, um, the biggest I think one of the biggest challenges, uh, at that time was very much, you know, build out the, the platform, uh, first and then the, the first one took a lot of time. The second one third, one fourth one fifth one. Those ones take, uh, massively reduced, uh, time frame for, for deployment. So let's get that system in place than it is, uh, it is a much a much faster process. Okay. Yeah. Uh, let me go ahead and ask this next one here. Uh, how does the partnership between the technology providers and the utilities, uh, play a role in the successful deployment of these solutions? Imagine there's some give and take on that. But anybody want to jump on on that one? Sure. I'll start with a short response. Um, I think some of the things, at least from the Del side. Right. And having our technology partners like Zerto and NVIDIA and things like, and our ecosystem of technology partners, the um, having for del having our, our own open telecom lab is a tremendous asset in our toolbox that allows us to take, um, use cases and test those and build those out in a, in almost a, the equivalent of a real world environment or in our, within our own lab. And I think that helps to translate to build a confidence level when those are actually, you know, deployed out into the field. So I think having having the ability to, to do things within a lab environment first that mimics real world is uh, is tremendously helpful. Yeah, definitely. You know, maybe a comment and, and it seems, uh, you know, there's a definite reputation that utilities are slow. Um, don't move all that quickly. Uh, technology companies move, move fast. I would say, you know, once you've had the dialog and understand each other and, uh, what each of the partners can do, um, that moves along quickly and, uh, um, it I think many times we've been afraid, um, and I'll just go back. I've been in the industry a little bit longer than probably most, um, but in the 80s and as we moved into the 90s, utilities got out of, uh, what is innovation? And, uh, we went to just being, um, efficient, uh, downsizing. We thought everything was going to be deregulated. So, uh, the system is just going to run on its own for the most part. And what we're discovering now is that the innovation and the needs now are tremendous to try to bring on, uh, renewables to decarbonize and operate the system. And so, um, you know, partnering up, what I would say is that utilities and these technology companies, um, you know, we need to look at each other and say, we can partner up, we can do this together and not be afraid of it. And, uh, uh, you know, ask the hard questions of each other. And, uh, I think what you find is that, uh, both utilities and, and the technology companies can move quickly if given the same, uh, targets and same vision and goal set forth. Yeah. That that's that makes sense. Um, I do think that we have one time for one more question. Um, and this is something that I was interested in as well. But, um, how do these solutions, um, address the challenges of environmental sustainability and reducing carbon emissions in the utility sector? I know that was in the title. So I wondered if you guys, if any of you would like to address that here before we wrap up. I'll say just really quickly that if we're going to meet our decarbonization and save the planet, um, I mentioned all the devices are going to need to have the intelligence in them, and we're going to have to operate the system with all those devices with that intelligence such that, um, again, we're not sacrificing comfort. Um, and at the same time, we're getting the most efficient use. I think you heard NVIDIA talking about their chips and how much more efficient they are and how many transactions they get. And, uh, hard to believe, but you could go into a data center now and put the new chips in and gain a whole lot of efficiency. Well, that's better utilization of the commodity, the limited commodities that we have. And so, um, all of us are going to be driving that. I just I believe that if we are going to meet, we need all these options, we need all that technology if we're going to meet our our decarbonization goals. Need everything. Yeah, it's going to be a challenge, but we're up for it. I think, um, I, we've run out of time. Uh, so for those questions that we didn't have time to answer, uh, we'll be getting back to you via email. Um, and that does conclude today's presentation on behalf of T&E world. I'd like to thank, uh, the speakers for their presentations today, Dell Technologies and NVIDIA for sponsoring the webinar. And of course, all of you for joining. Have a great rest of your day. Awesome. Thank you.
