Welcome to the June 2023 edition of neXt Curve Insights. This monthly newsletter is a compilation of articles, media, and news that have been curated by the research team at neXt Curve with contributions from partner analysts as well as business and technology leaders.
The goal of neXt Curve Insights is to provide our readers with a regular cadence of coverage of the industry and tech trends and events that matter with the intent of fostering constructive discussion and debate on the future of technology, innovation, and the continuous reinvention of enterprise, industry, society, and our lives.
I hope that you find this edition informative and inspiring.
Leonard Lee, Executive Analyst of neXt Curve
Top Posts
Check out the top social media posts on LinkedIn by neXt Curve analysts, associates, and partners. Follow neXt Curve and Leonard Lee on LinkedIn and be part of the conversation. Click on the image to view the post.
OK, #5G has had a difficult couple of years. I often hear that it doesn’t matter, and it has made no difference.
Maybe, we are just in the trough of disillusionment. Now we are overshooting our disappointment and disregard for what the technology and #5g network modernization can do. This can be just as bad as the hype. The risk – missed opportunities.
No, you can’t get this on LTE.
I had to apologize to Nolan Moore ruining #metaverse for him here at #sensorsconverge, but I was able to console him by telling him that #XR is cool and will be a thing if the XR industry doesn’t get distracted by nonsense. I think Nolan felt better.
I had the chance to meet up with Vishal Shah, GM of #XR and #Metaverse at Lenovo at Qualcomm’s inaugural DX (Digital Transformation) Summit to catch up on the commercial release of the ThinkReality #VRX headset which is a pass through MR device primarily targeted for the enterprise and industrial applications.
HPE GreenLake growth is telling, and it is interesting to see how the big cloud players are investing more in their relationships with enterprise vendors to expand their relevance across the hybrid cloud and ultimate the edge.
A couple of months ago, the kind folks at Samsung Electronics sent me their latest and greatest smartphone and laptop for 2023. Yes, the Galaxy S23 Ultra and the Book3 Ultra! I was particularly interested in the cross-device integrations that they have been working on.
Earlier this year in Barcelona just ahead of #mwc2023, I had a chance to preview Motorola Mobility’s new line of #razr foldable smartphones that borrow from the iconic flip form factor of this historic brand. Sergio Buniac and his team did an impressive job with this line up.
Thanks to the Samsung Networks team for inviting me to Dallas to teach everyone how to drive. They were supposed to invite me to listen to the great presentation they will have tomorrow but instead had me show them how Tiger Woods does it.
Top Headlines
These are the hot headlines in the tech and industry media that neXt Curve has curated for your consideration and attention. Executive analyst, Leonard Lee, provides a brief analysis of each story. Contact, Leonard at leonard.lee@next-curve.com for a briefing on the details of his take (clients only).
Headliner
Summary
Analysis
MediaTek Partners with NVIDIA to Transform Automobiles With AI and Accelerated Computing
by Danny Shapiro at Nvidia
May 28, 2023
The partnership was announced this week at a COMPUTEX press conference with MediaTek CEO Rick Tsai and NVIDIA founder and CEO Jensen Huang.
MediaTek will develop automotive SoCs and integrate the NVIDIA GPU chiplet, featuring NVIDIA AI and graphics intellectual property, into the design architecture. The chiplets are connected by an ultra-fast and coherent chiplet interconnect technology.
In addition, MediaTek will run the NVIDIA DRIVE OS, DRIVE IX, CUDA and TensorRT software technologies on these new automotive SoCs to enable connected infotainment and in-cabin convenience and safety functions. This partnership makes more in-vehicle infotainment options available to automakers on the NVIDIA DRIVE platform.”
This is an interesting strategy on the part of Nvidia to broaden the presence of its Drive OS and intelligent automotive software stack among emerging nouveau automotive chipmakers such as MediaTek who can now mix and match Nvidia GPU IP into their SoC designs for ADAS and infotainment.
The partnership gives MediaTek a boost in software as well as a mature GPU-based accelerator stack it needs to elevate its game to compete with Qualcomm and, ironically, Nvidia’s competing system in automotive.
Qualcomm acquired ADAS specialist Arriver in 2022 to round out its stack portfolio to form company’s industry leading framework for automotive that they dub Snapdragon Digital Chassis.
The Nvidia partnership puts MediaTek closer in Qualcomm’s rear view and could boost Nvidia’s auto tech footprint.
Intel’s foundry revamp sets off alarm bells for Samsung, TSMC
by Jeong-Soo Hwang and Ik-Hwan Kim of The Korea Economic Daily
June 22, 2023
“Intel Corp.’s announcement to restructure its manufacturing business to become a leading foundry player is setting the stage for a bigger showdown with current market leaders Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. (TSMC) and Samsung Electronics Co.
While TSMC and Samsung, the world’s two largest contract chipmakers, are trying to dismiss Intel’s plan to become the top foundry by 2030 as being “ambitious,” the move underscores an intensified rivalry and potentially lower margins among the three, analysts said.
David Zinsner, Intel’s chief financial officer, said during an investor call on Wednesday that the US chipmaker’s internal business units will now have a customer-supplier relationship.
Under the plan, the largest US chipmaker’s foundry unit, known as Intel Foundry Services (IFS), will treat its internal product businesses like any other customer, charging them market-based pricing for chip manufacturing.
Intel’s renewed interest in foundry comes as the US government wants to regain semiconductor supremacy by shifting the chip business hub back to the US from Asia.
Based on that model, Intel hopes to leapfrog Samsung as the world’s second-largest foundry next year with its manufacturing revenue of more than $20 billion, the CFO said.
While Intel’s vision for the No. 2 foundry spot pales when compared to market leader TSMC’s estimated 2024 sales of $85 billion, the US chipmaker aims to rise to the top by 2030.”
Short of a spin-off, a restructuring of the likes that Intel announced was in the cards especially against the backdrop of billions in CHIPS Act and European Chips Act subsidies that Intel was always poised to benefit from as well as its imperative to make a competitive foundry business from its IDM 2.0 strategy.
This restructuring from a financial reporting perspective shines a bright light on IFS (Intel Foundry Services) and Intel’s progress making good on its commitments in supporting the legislative goals of the U.S. and European governments.
IFS will largely benefit from U.S. and European subsidies, and the margin benefits of the recent adjustments to the useful life of fab equipment will appear less diluted as it would be today allocated across product groups.
From a commercial perspective, the restructuring brings visibility to the size of Intel’s foundry business, which has been underrepresented. Chip industry analyses have generally defined and sized the foundry segment as pure-play foundry such as TSMC and hybrid-IDM such as Samsung.
It is yet to be seen how this move shifts the perception of prospective non-internal customers of IFS as a neutral foundry partner as many compete with Intel at the product level.
Convenient if Intel ever decides to spin-off IDM all together, which could be a good hedge for the company in a fast-changing industry landscape.
“The GSMA expanded membership to its Open Gateway initiative by adding China Mobile, China Telecom and China Unicom, taking support to 29 mobile operators globally.
China Mobile, China Telecom and China Unicom collectively handle 1.7 billion mobile connections, suggesting the Open Gateway initiative is gathering pace.
The initiative provides a framework of common network APIs to enable developers and cloud service providers to collaborate with mobile operators to accelerate development of digital services and apps.
The industry-wide programme was unveiled at MWC23 Barcelona and is designed to provide universal access to operator networks for developers.”
Despite the divisive geopolitical dynamics that rule the day, the mobile wireless world still embraces the inclusiveness that has made 5G the single global technology standard for mobile wireless comms.
It’s clear that the Chinese telecom majors see the importance of continued participation in global initiatives for setting industry and technology standards.
The Chinese operators are best poised to make large scale use of network APIs given their pervasive 5G standalone (SA) build outs.
This puts Chinese operators in a position to take early advantages of the Open Gateway within and between national and regional networks while fostering a community of 5G-savvy developers and innovators.
“A small group of telecom executives and regulators from all over the world are meeting in Geneva this week to see if they can pull off a minor miracle. Their goal: to find a common understanding of 6G in the same way they helped develop the foundation of a global 5G standard almost a decade ago.
That’s clearly a tall order. For years, the US and China have been moving, seemingly inexorably, toward a clash over culture and trade. The situation has imperiled China’s Huawei, which remains the world’s biggest vendor of networking equipment by a wide margin, and is now forcing countries around the world to basically pick sides.
The situation has given weight to the concept of the splinternet, wherein core tenets of a shared and interoperable Internet are no longer available around the world. Indeed, some major names in the US financial sector are already planning for a future that is trending away from globalization rather than toward it.”
The operative word in Mike Dano’s article is “consensus”. The setting of global mobile wireless standards is an outcome of consensus established through the procedures of the 3GPP.
Without consent by all participating standards defining organizations (SDOs), the global standard will no longer prevail.
The question is how China would fare in a future of de-globalized technologies and standards or a “splinternet”?
Given the gravity of the Chinese market and the continued relevance (dare we say leadership) of its ICT vendors, de-globalization presents a unique opportunity for China to assert its own vision, technologies and IP, and standards in regions that it influences and is favored.
Alternatively, it could be a significant ceding of current global technological and market leadership that the U.S. and its ICT industry currently enjoys.
Deutsche Telekom adds Helium network to IoT platform
by Monica Alleven of Fierce Wireless
June 28, 2023
“Deutsche Telekom built IoT Creators as a platform to support various IoT networks, and it’s now adding the Helium IoT network to the equation.
Specifically, IoT Creators will offer an integrated Helium LoRaWAN Network Server (LNS) in its platform to encourage users to onboard and manage devices on the Helium Network.
According to the companies, the IoT Creators platform brings flexibility to sensor deployers by allowing smart devices to be wireless agnostic; devices can leverage both LoRaWAN and cellular networks depending on the user’s needs. Using the managed iotcreators.com LNS, users can get access to one interface to manage devices that can run across LoRaWAN, NB-IoT and LTE-M.
“The Helium Network has become a key connectivity option for IoT developers and solution providers,” said Afzal Mangal, founder of IoT Creators at Deutsche Telekom, in a statement. “Our collaboration with Helium is another step to proactively integrate various technologies so that customers can obtain an end-to-end service from a single source.””
Wildly hyped two-years ago, the Helium network has suffered what many crypto projects have suffered, dramatic collapse. In the run up to the peaking of its cryptocurrency (HNT) in November of 2021 to $54.88/HNT, the Helium network grew just shy of a million Helium hotspots in meteoric fashion. Since, the network has failed to broach the million-hotspot mark and HNT has fallen more than 98 percent from its all-time high.
While the DT announcement sounds promising, Helium (rebranded Nova Labs), has struck a roaming deal with T-Mobile for a delayed mobile wireless service called Helium Mobile.
The “network” continues to struggle building business despite a number of pivots in brand and wireless network services.
A deal with DT will likely not help fix Helium’s intrinsic problem, its cryptoeconomic model based on proof-of-stake (PoS). A recent migration to Solana has not helped HNT or Solana. Helium will be continuing its search for viability.
Chart of the Month
Huawei has become the poster child of the U.S. government’s ongoing campaign to curtail the advancement of China Tech being the primary target of semiconductor and tech trade sanctions and restrictions directed at China’s broader ICT industry.
After shedding their mid-and basic-tier Honor consumer electronics brand to a Chinese investment group in late 2020, Huawei has managed to not implode. In fact, the company has demonstrated remarkable resiliency returning to modest growth after losing more than 50 percent of its massive Consumer BG revenue with the divestiture of Honor.
Despite turmoil that would decimate most businesses, Huawei has managed to expand its enterprise business consistently from 2019 to 2022 from 81.6 billion CNY to 133.2 billion CNY despite a global pandemic, chip bans that have limited their access to leading edge processors and memory, and an deluge of U.S.-led campaigns to limit Huawei’s presence as well as that of its Chinese vendor peers in allied markets.
It is no secret that Huawei has been diversifying its business and repositioning itself as a “business solution” company that brings integrated IT/CT solutions and engineering services that accelerate “digital transformation” across industries.
We may be witnessing a remarkable story of reinvention as Huawei continues to run the gauntlet of survival.
For more insights and analysis, schedule an analyst briefing with Leonard Lee.
reThink Insights
Check out the articles and the research notes that neXt Curve published this month as well as press quotes by the media on topics related to our research agenda.
- Apple Vision Pro: Disrupting beyond the headset? (June 12, 2023) by Leonard Lee featured in Fierce Electronics
- Arm-Qualcomm Lawsuit Could Muddle US Chip Design Leadership (June 13, 2023) by Leonard Lee featured in Bloomberg Law
- IMS 2023 Event Summary (June 21 by Earl J. Lum featured in neXt Curve
- The Edge is a Team Sport (June 26) by Pete Bernard featured in neXt Curve
Go to our neXt Curve reThink research portal for more content and insights associated with our research agenda.
Samsung Galaxy Book3 + S23 Ultra
Two months ago, the kind folks at Samsung were nice enough to let me check out their Galaxy Book3 Ultra premium laptop and the company’s flagship Galaxy S23 Ultra smartphone. I had a chance to check these devices out earlier in the year at Galaxy Unpacked in San Francisco where they were unveiled.
Here’s the thing, both devices are very nice, beautiful even, and of solid, quality build which is typical of most premium PC laptops and smartphones these days. I’m not going to go into the dirty details about the specs, performance, and nitpicks on aesthetics. There are plenty of articles out there that will nitpick on the details about the camera and the multitude of design change minutiae.
My focus and interest in using both the Galaxy S23 Ultra and the Book3 Ultra were to experience how well these devices work together in delivering a seamless experience through Samsung’s growing portfolio of Connected Experience features.
At Galaxy Unpacked in San Francisco, I had the chance to get a feel for some of the newer Connected Experience features. To be clear, this is not a new effort on the part of Samsung. Samsung Flow was first introduced back in 2014. Oddly, over the last few years it has been pushed toward the back burner of the company’s device ecosystem value case to consumers and prospective switchers from the Apple camp.
Maybe I shouldn’t be surprised given that some research firms and pundits have suggested that cross-device experiences and collaboration features are not top considerations in a consumer’s buying decision.
I tend to disagree. In my own surveys and interviews with users, I have found that cross-device integration and integration are foundational reasons to stick with an “ecosystem” and a source of frustration and envy when they are absent. Consider how much Apple emphasizes their Continuity and collaboration features, most recently, at WWDC 2023. Need I say more?
The reality – we live with multiple devices in our lives, most prominently, the smartphone and the PC. Over the years, the many efforts by Intel, Microsoft, Google, and others to bring seamless cross-platform features to Android + Windows users continue to be characterized by complexity, clunkiness, fragmentation, and bloat.
A common design for cross-device experiences and collaboration does not exist across the Windows/Google ecosystem which Apple has achieved at a differentiating level that contributes to “it just works.” Samsung and a small handful of other players who are a fast-following exception, most recently Lenovo with Think 2 Think.
My Thoughts on the Galaxy S23 Ultra
Let’s start with the Galaxy S23. It’s a beautiful premium smartphone with a fantastic camera (200 MP wide-angle rear-facing camera) with more features than most amateurs can appreciate, dazzling 6.8″ Edge Quad HD+ (3088 x 1440) display, sporting an elegant One UI graphical interface.
Yet, One UI is more than just a graphical interface that is a Samsung branded skin on top of Android. It is a portal for Samsung services and applications such as Samsung Health, Samsung Wallet, Bixby, SmartThings, Samsung Wear, and more.
One UI also is the software layer that surfaces Samsung’s portfolio of Connected Experience features such as Flow, Multi Control, Quick Share, Smart View, Video Call Transfer, Second Screen, and much more.
The set up and administration of Connected Experience features is a bit awkward. Some features require that you download Samsung and non-Samsung apps that range from Samsung Flow to Microsoft’s Phone Link. There are numerous, redundant provisioning steps to get all of the features enabled and configured to your liking.
For switchers from the Apple tribe, this is going to feel disconnected and emblematic of the fragmentation that Android/Windows users suffer, and that Samsung is seeking to resolve.
My Thoughts on the Galaxy Book3 Ultra
The Galaxy Book3 Ultra is a great looking machine with a 16″ 3K AMOLED screen with sleek design. Aluminum body, with premium feel, and just slightly thicker than the new 16″ MacBook Pro.
I was really excited by the trackpad which is very large and 39 percent larger than the previous model. I did experience some annoying lag and drift. Hopefully these irksome issues can be fixed with a software update. Truth be told, the trackpad was a bit too large. Samsung might consider reducing the size in the next go as Apple has on its MacBooks in recent generations. There is such a thing as too big.
Yes, no touchscreen. Not a big deal for me, but if you are one of the rare folks I have actually witnessed use the touchscreen, the Book3 might not be for you. Consider the new Book3 Pro 360, an impressive 2-in-1.
What about the battery life? It fell well short of the aspirational 17 hours when running videos on YouTube. I got about 8 hours. Normal productivity use clocked in at an average of 11 hours. More than enough for a full day’s work on the road for this power user.
While the set up and administration of Connected Experience features could otherwise be confusing and arduous, Samsung consolidates everything into the Galaxy Book Experience control center that serves as a portal for provisioning and managing Samsung branded features including the cross-device experience.
Unfortunately, Samsung seems to have less influence in shaping the user experience in Windows compared to the strong brand language that is One UI. The PC experience is notably more fragmented with too many options to do the same thing.
So, what was the Connected Experience like?
With the latest versions of their software, Samsung continues to make refinements and extensions toward delivering seamless cross-device experiences across Samsung’s portfolio.
Once you go through the numerous steps to get Connected Experience features setup, they work pretty well and provide an Apple-like continuity of experience. I’m a fan of Multi Control which allows you to use your Galaxy Book3 to control and transfer files and pictures in a drag n’ drop fashion between it and your Galaxy smartphone. It is an essential feature for mobile creators who want to bridge media capture on their S23 Ultra with creative production on their Book3 Ultra in a seamless cross-device workflow.
I feel that Samsung software engineers and UX designs have done a great job of bringing together the fragmented field of Samsung and non-Samsung continuity features into a branded experience that stands out from what most other Windows/Android OEMs are able to deliver.
The next important step for Samsung’s Connected Experience is simplification. Easier said than done as much of the integration needs to happen below the glass contending with redundant alternatives. Undoubtedly, Samsung will continue to have challenges impressing its vision for a seamless cross-device experience against competing ecosystem interests. There are many issues lending to an intrinsically fragmented experience that is difficult to overcome,… and is something Apple does not suffer.
That being said, Samsung is one of a small handful OEMs that are able to transcend the hardware and define seamless branded user experiences and integration across their device portfolios.
Hopefully Samsung continues to advance its leadership and vision in what could be the thing that matters more than the camera and foldable displays in an era of declining PC and Android smartphone sales.
For more insights and analysis, schedule an analyst briefing with Leonard Lee.
RedCap - Not Just for IoT
When marketing a technology, the use of the terms “reduced” and “light” are not great unless you are trying to market low-calorie soft drinks. Such is the case with RedCap or 5G NR-Light, a highly anticipated feature of 3GPP’s Release 17.
What is RedCap? It amounts to a 5G upgrade of LTE Cat-4 and Cat-1bis supporting up to 150 Mbps on the downlink and 50 Mbps on the uplink, coincidentally above the NTIA (National Telecommunications and Information Association) minimum threshold of 100 Mbps down and 20 Mbps up for broadband service for qualifying BEAD (Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployments) program deployments.
Speaking of broadband for all, an interesting potential application for RedCap is for exactly that, what would be considered minimum broadband especially for hard (extremely costly) to connect and low-cost fixed wireless access (FWA).
Consider India. Jio recently announced that they would be connecting over 100 million households with their AirFiber 5G FWA service. They won’t likely be able to achieve this goal without an extremely low-cost CPE (Customer Premise Equipment). The “typical” FWA CPE runs 200 to 300 USD which is not a viable cost in most emerging markets with low broadband penetration rates.
Earlier this year, Qualcomm floated the concept of what they call “Mass Tier Broadband” leveraging RedCap. The idea is to provide consumers with lower cost CPE as well as cellular PCs and tablets that connect to a modernized 5G network using LTE bands. RedCap and supported equipment could prove a boon for operators who want to tap new broadband markets but also to serve the previously under and unserved communities.
Bridging the digital divides globally with RedCap. Something to keep an eye on. More to come on this from neXt Curve.
For more insights and analysis, schedule an analyst briefing with Leonard Lee.
The Open RAN Squid Game
Almost two years ago, I made the early contrarian observation that the Open RAN Movement would soon go through a period of reckoning. Claims of Open RAN technological readiness and operational benefit hit a fever pitch at that time. We, on the other hand, observed a growing and significant disconnect between Open RAN rhetoric and ground truths from our research and discussions with operators, semiconductor companies, and key Open RAN players themselves.
Since we have only seen a sobering validation of neXt Curve’s on the state of the Open RAN movement and technologies, and our recommendation to many Open RAN vendors two years ago.
“Get a fully integrated and optimized stack to the market ASAP, and don’t focus so much on interoperability. Focus on integration.” – Leonard Lee, neXt Curve
Instead, we have seen the Open RAN Movement overpromise on technological advantage and operational benefit. Moreover, excitement over the RIC (RAN Intelligent Controller) and SMO (Service Management & Orchestration) come too late to interest operators who have long since committed to “traditional” vendors for their 5G RANs.
Alas, the window of opportunity is closing for Open RAN in this phase of industry investment in the 5G era. Leading operators most notably the big three in the U.S. and Dish, have ramp down their infrastructure spend as they grapple with the challenge of “5G monetization”.
Outside of Dish and 1&1 in Germany, there are few if any metro Open RAN rollouts of note or to be anticipated even in India, which might have been a second wind market for the Movement.
Surprisingly (or not so surprisingly), Indian operators have not embraced Open RAN for their 5G modernization much to the chagrin of the Movement and Indian vendors and systems integrators. The majority of RAN contracts have been going to incumbent players such as Nokia and Ericsson, and Samsung backfilling Huawei and ZTE with their vRAN 3.0.
In the next few quarters, I expect that we will continue to see Open RAN Squid Game continue to play out. The big question for the Movement is what’s next? Does it continue on the current path hoping that emerging markets will provide tipping point for Open RAN or that there will be a technological breakthrough that will reset 5G investment for Open RAN retrofit? Or, does the Movement come to the long-overdue realization that it’s not about the vendors. It was about the operators.
That would be a major course correction that might be a little too late for many Open RAN players facing the next rounds of the Open RAN Squid Game.
For more insights and analysis, schedule an analyst briefing with Leonard Lee.
Media Highlights
This month, neXt Curve participated in the following internally produced and third-party media events. More media content featured by or featuring neXt Curve is available on our reThink YouTube channel and our media center.
How Edge Computing Can Solve GenAI Security, Privacy Concerns
In episode 20 of The Cutting Edge Podcast, Leonard Lee discusses generative artificial intelligence (AI) and specifically what edge computing can do for generative AI (gen AI) applications.
Hybrid is Becoming the Dominant Workload Model to Support AI Apps
In episode 21 of The Cutting Edge Podcast, Leonard Lee discusses hybrid artificial intelligence (AI). He defines hybrid AI and explains why organizations will spread AI workloads across the edge.
Discussion on Apple's Vision Pro & it's impact on the XR industry
Leonard Lee of neXt Curve is a guest on Tantra Analyst’s Tantra’s Mantra Podcast to chat share perspectives on Apple’s Vision Pro and spatial computing with leading tech analyst, Prakash Sangam following Apple’s WWDC 2023 event.
The essentiality of 5G modernization with Vardit Kuznik of Amdocs
neXt Curve interviews Vardit Kuznik Bitan, VP of Marketing and Strategy at Amdocs on the topic 5G modernization and its importance in enabling the transformation and reinvention of the business of telecommunications at MWC 2023.
Apple WWDC 2023 and Vision Pro with Mark Vena
Leonard Lee is joined by Mark Vena of SmartTech Research to share their key impressions from Apple’s WWDC 2023 event and provide an analysis of the big head fake, Vision Pro. What does it mean for consumers and the XR industry?
Apple's Vision Pro + Privacy with Debbie Reynolds
Apple pioneered AR on smartphones with the introduction of AR Kit and 3D sensing iPhones more than five years ago. But what does the era of spatial computing mean for consumer privacy and enterprise confidentiality?
The Present and Future of Industry 4.0 with Jack Gold
Jack Gold of J.Gold Associates LLC, and Leonard Lee discuss the meaning and relevance of Industry 4.0 after years of what seems a vision yet realized. What is holding things back or are we further along than we think?
What is Safe AI? Navigating the Risks of the AI Unknown
Debbie Reynolds and Leonard Lee delve into the topic of safe AI and go as far as outline what a framework would look like. Safe AI will become a thing that organizations and consumers will want to start thinking of.
Top 5 Innovation in Location Intelligence for Telecommunications
Leonard Lee moderates a panel of Lightbox experts for an in-depth look at the latest solutions and strategies for gaining valuable insights and making the most of location data.
Event Highlights
This month, neXt Curve participated in the following virtual and in-person industry and technical events. For our full schedule of industry events refer to our event calendar. We also encourage you to follow neXt Curve’s LinkedIn company page.
Honeywell HBT HUG 2023
Date: June 4 to 6, 2023
Location: Orlando, FL
Event Summary & Takes
neXt Curve was invited to Orlando for Honeywell’s Building Technologies Users Group conference to get an update on the latest the company is offering in smart and connected building solutions. This event provided us with the chance to meet with end users of Honeywell HBT products and services realizing value in their business operations.
We were honored to be one of a very small (two) number of analyst and media organizations invited to attend this special Honeywell user group event focused on building technologies which encompasses commercial buildings, smart cities, and data centers. Yes, data centers.
Our schedule was packed, and we had the chance to attend sessions, get a tour of Honeywell’s HBT Innovation Center, as well as attend exclusive briefings with Honeywell executives including:
- Billal Hammoud, President and CEO of HBT
- Manish Sharma, VP & GM of Sustainable Building Technologies at Honeywell
- Sergio Castillejos, CCO of Honeywell Building Technologies
- Udaya Shrivastava, CTO of Honeywell Building Technologies
- Sadiq Syed, VP General Manager, Connected Buildings
- Laura Laltrello, VP of Projects, HBT
- Greg Turner, Senior Director of Engineering
- Axel Reichert, General Manager, Power & Demand Management, Honeywell Building Technologies
- Nikki Mehta, Director, Energy & Sustainability, Honeywell Building Technologies
- Matthew Britt, General Manager, Smart and Sustainable Cities, HBT
Yes, it was a very packed schedule for us, and we had the chance to learn about new features and offerings across building automation, safety, security, workforce management, facility/fleet management, quantum building solutions, generative AI, and sustainability.
We also had a chance to follow up on some of the Forge for buildings announcements from Honeywell’s Investor Day in NYC just a couple of weeks ago.
Here are our key takes from Honeywell User Group HBT 2023.
- It is still difficult to get building owners, tenants, and operators to care about cybersecurity despite the expanding and worsening threat landscape. Maybe buildings need a cybersecurity rating much like sustainability or ESG ratings.
- Thanks to the Infrastructure Bill, cities in the U.S. have the best chance they ever had to become smarter. According to Matthew Britt, planning is happening, and the funding is there. Honeywell is advising municipalities on safety, sustainability, security, resilience and more.
- Key Forge for Buildings strategy is to foster smarter building operations across Honeywell’s diverse installed base of customers across diverse building environments and portfolios.
- The keys to enabling modernization across the portfolio of HBT customers seems to be Forge and Tridium. Modernization is the foundation for digital transformation. System/device accessibility -> visibility/observability, measurability -> analytics -> intelligent automation & operations.
- Hybrid cloud is increasingly and important product strategy for HBT to support a wide range of deployment preferences and requirements.
- Quantinuum was spun out of Honeywell and is one of the lesser-known players in this super interesting area of tech. The quantum Y2Q threat is due to the realization of Shor’s algorithm at a sufficient scale and capability to factor keys faster than classical computers. Quantum Origin is offering quantum security/encryption solutions to create unpredictable keys to protect critical data and content today ahead of our quantum future.
- While the hopes and expectations for generative AI are high, realities of developing and applying AI applications across a smart building system is much more difficult. Most if not all operating environments have large data gaps. Assuming that a LLM will be able to derive valuable insight is premature and naive and highly dependent on quality and completeness of data. What if the model hallucinates between the data gaps? Can your operations run and optimize itself off of synthetic data? That being said, there seems to be some interesting possibilities for LLMs in some narrow applications such as the contextualization of unstructured data that Honeywell is exploring.
- OT is zero trust though not necessarily secure according to IT standards. Cybersecurity is about extending that environment, hence zero trust disciplines and practices, to the cloud, not the other way around.
Related Media & Press Releases
- Honeywell User Group Event site (link)
- LinkedIn: neXt Curve at Honeywell Connect HBT 2023 (link)
- LinkedIn: Onsite coverage of Honeywell Connect HBT 2023 (link)
Companies Engaged: Honeywell, Tridium, Quantiuum
Cisco Live 2023
Date: June 4 to 8, 2023
Location: Las Vegas, NV
Event Summary & Takes
We attended Cisco’s big annual event, Cisco Live, which took place in Las Vegas during a triple booked week for neXt Curve. We still took time to virtually attend the event and participated in pre-event briefings that gave us early insights into the key themes that would shape the event.
It’s an interesting era for Cisco when networking and security are becoming increasingly important given the growing chatter about hybrid cloud, edge computing, and work-from-anywhere throughout the ICT industry. Some of these themes are residuals of the pandemic. Others, what seems to be a shift in the way we think of enterprise IT. Cisco looks like a key enabler and benefactor of the shift toward the edge.
Here are some of the key themes for Cisco Live 2023 as stated in their agenda (their words not ours):
- Cisco Networking Cloud: With simplification at its core, the Cisco Networking Cloud vision details how Cisco will deliver a single platform experience for seamlessly managing all networking domains. The Cisco Networking cloud will be the powerful and intelligent platform to proactively manage the network, eliminate silos, assure performance, and reduce human workload.
- Cisco Security Enhancements: New Cisco Secure Access (a security service edge, SSE, solution) offers frictionless access across any location, any device, and any application through one platform. Cisco’s new Secure Firewall 4200 provides seamless connected experiences at the office or on the road, alongside Cisco Multicloud Defense, which leads the way to security in any environment.
- Cloud Native Application Security: Enhanced capabilities coming to Panoptica that will provide full cloud native application lifecycle protection from code, through development, to production runtime in today’s distributed, multicloud environments.
- Full-Stack Observability (FSO): Cisco announced general availability of its FSO Platform, allowing customers to develop and grow a robust application ecosystem built on an open, extensible architecture. This includes new and unique use cases in a single consumption model. Additionally, Cisco’s new bi-directional integration between AppDynamics and ThousandEyes drives powerful customer digital experience monitoring and closes observability gaps with rapid actionable recommendations and insights.
- Generative AI-powered Security and Hybrid Work Capabilities: New generative AI-powered summarization capabilities in Webex by Cisco will increase productivity and elevate customer experience. In addition, new AI capabilities in Cisco Security Cloud will remove complexity, simplify policy management, and improve threat response. To support Cisco’s continued advancements in AI capabilities for hybrid workspaces, Cisco is announcing the Room Bar Pro, with the most powerful processor and able to be deployed across customers’ most commonly used workspaces.
Here are our key takes from the Cisco Live 2023 event.
- Cisco is reinforcing a broader undercurrent of discourse in ICT challenging the long-standing cloud narrative. As we have heard from other ICT vendors including cloud service providers, enterprises don’t just want cloud. They want options including more secure and accessible on-premises environments securely integrated across a hybrid cloud portfolio.
- Security is top of mind for Cisco as it sees security and the network converging. This seems quite obvious but with the growing hybrid cloud movement new cybersecurity capabilities are needed to enable new distributed architectures for multi-domain security models that transverse multi-vendor public, private, and edge clouds. Cisco touts its massive security database, a claim that we are increasingly hearing from security solution providers. Cisco gave hints that it is exploring the use of generative AI technologies and techniques to improve its intelligence and analysis on emerging cybersecurity threats.
- As we have heard from many industrial tech vendors, cybersecurity is essential in making converged on-premises IT/OT environments accessible through hybrid cloud. Without cybersecurity, the stuff at the edge will stay at the edge.
- Observability (network) is that talk of the network and telco worlds at the moment. Cisco is pushing the idea of full network observability through cloud-managed network monitoring and emphasizing the importance of CNAP (Cloud Native Application Protection). neXt Curve sees observability as key to the ongoing evolution of hybrid cloud architectures and fostering zero trust qualities in the administration of security and trust across heterogeneous hybrid cloud environments.
- Cisco is pushing the idea that Meraki is a cloud first automation tool (we don’t like the word “platform”). The term “cloud first” become to mean something different these days. It no longer refers to organizations (often times startups) originating their IT in the public cloud which led to the misguided strategy and practice by some IT organizations of lifting and shifting all of their enterprise workloads to the public cloud. It now means cloud managed and on occasion cloud-native depending on vendor and product offering.
- Cisco emphasizes “simplicity” as a key feature that they are focusing on to enhance the experience that their customers have using Cisco tools. Much of this amounts to automation and easily configurable dashboards and intelligent alerts.
- Cisco is party to what we might consider a reinvention/repositioning of old school IT vendors such as HPE, Dell, Lenovo and others into champions of hybrid cloud in the emerging era of edge cloud and edge AI computing. CMP and cloud brokerage has finally arrived. Telco vendors should take note.
- No shortage of talk about generative AI and AI in general. It’s increasingly difficult to understand what vendors are actually referring to. It’s clear that generative AI is a new development in how vendors such as Cisco are using LLMs and how GenAI applications can be used to enhance their products and services. We are still looking for a vendor who proves the value potential of GenAI tech and tools taking the conversation beyond a gratuitous keynote talking point.
- “Responsible AI is not negotiable.” – Liz Centoni, Chief Strategy Officer of Cisco. Love it!
Related Media & Press Releases
- Cisco Live 2023 site (link)
- Cisco Unveils Next-Gen Solutions that Empower Security and Productivity with Generative AI (link)
Companies Engaged: Cisco
WWDC 2023
Date: June 5 to 9, 2023
Location: Cupertino, CA
Event Summary & Takes
This year’s WWDC or Worldwide Developer Conference hosted by Apple and held in Cupertino was shrouded in a veil of excitement. Will Apple finally reveal their grand XR (extended reality) plan? Would we finally witness Apple’s fabled AR glasses to vindicate what seemed to have been years of disappointing rumors.
If Apple had anything planned, it would definitely be a “one more thing” agenda item.
neXt Curve attended the keynote which announced a number of new software features across iOS, MacOS, WatchOS, and iPadOS with notable absence of the term “generative AI” that has come to dominate the word clouds of recent events by Microsoft, Google, Nvidia, and every other company trying to capitalize on the hype.
And yes, they did announce Vision Pro, effectively a VR headset with an innovative pass-through design that arguably makes it the AR headset that we didn’t expect or imagine. Frankly, a disappointment,…. initially.
We also attended a number of developers sessions to delve into the new XR features introduced by VisionOS and the extension of the Apple software frameworks to find hints of accelerators for developers and new possibilities for ecosystem-expanding applications that could accompany the Vision Pro in the first half of next year.
Here are our key takes from Apple’s WWDC 2023 event:
- Apple has officially killed off “metaverse”. Apple has never mentioned it. It’s about “spatial computing” which –unbeknownst to the industry – Hugo Swart, VP and GM of XR at Qualcomm declared at an analyst briefing at CES 2023 earlier this year.
- Initial impression of the Vision Pro announcement – disappointment. AR glasses would have been groundbreaking, but they would have been a surprise given the state of technology. While Apple calls the Vision Pro an AR headset, it arguably isn’t given its 2-hour mobile battery life and a form factor that would be awkward for mobile use. It’s more akin to what is referred to as a mixed reality (MR) device. To be fair, Lenovo was one of the first to come to market with a pass-through VR headset with their VRX headset based on Qualcomm’s Snapdragon Spaces which they showcased at CES 2023 and even earlier last year at an exclusive industry analyst event.
- The coolest tech in the Vision Pro include use of microLED and the 3D Spatial Camera.
- Many of the use cases that Apple showcased in their presentation of Vision Pro were familiar. The question remains, what is the big picture for this device? We believe it has to do with volumetric (not holographic) content (movies, TV shows, personal photos, sports, live events, etc.) and communications which we predicted in our 2019 Ofcom technology futures research.
- The $3,500 starting price point is about right for what could be a pioneering device for XR. We don’t feel that approaching the market from the bottom would work for Apple. It hasn’t worked for others in driving XR into mainstream.
- We have a funny feeling that smartphone OEMs will be revisiting the “notch” and the use of solid-state LiDAR for their rear and possibly even front facing cameras which have been largely deprecated from Android handsets for the past couple of years.
- Apple announced on-device support for transformer models in iOS 17. Yes, this was their big “generative AI” announcement which many folks missed. Apple will start with augmenting AutoCorrect and inevitably extend the application transformer models for the Photos app, the Camera app, and more. This of it as a transformer enhancement of Apple’s portfolio of operating systems. The big question is how many generations back will Apple’s new GenAI features be supported with iOS 17?
- Looks like Apple has made it very easy for developers to port iPad apps over to VisonOS with some cool porting tools. We believe there will be many VisionOS-optimized apps day one for Vision Pro. Apple has done a great job of simplifying their software frameworks and making it extensible across device-specific operating systems.
- Apple now has what Nvidia is trying to do with Omniverse. Apple’s doing it all on their own silicon. Reality Kit + Reality Composer Pro. Big deal!
- With the introduction of the new Mac Pro, Apple’s entire device portfolio is running on Apple Silicon. This is a big deal as Apple introduces the new M2 Ultra positioning the Mac Pro as the company’s first Apple Silicon native workstation. With up to 196 GB of unified memory and 800 GB/s of memory bandwidth making it and the Mac Studio well suited to handle GenAI workloads.
- Apple continues to up the seamless cross-device experience and collaboration bar with live collaboration.
- Apple has a couple of year to make something of AppleTV and Apple Music for volumetric content production to make Vision Pro compelling and sticky.
Related Media & Press Releases
- Apple WWDC 2023 event site (link)
- LinkedIn: Final Cut Pro and Logic Pro for iPad (link)
- LinkedIn: Takes from WWDC 2023 (link)
- Tantra Mantra: Discussion on Apple’s Vision Pro & its impact on the XR industry (featuring Leonard Lee) (link)
- neXt Curve reThink Podcast: Vision Pro & Privacy (featuring Debbie Reynolds) (link)
- neXt Curve reThink Podcast: Vision Pro (featuring Mark Vena) (link)
- Fierce Electronics: Apple Vision Pro: Disrupting beyond the headset? (link)
Companies Engaged: Apple
Samsung Networks Analyst Day 2023
Date: June 13 to 14, 2023
Location: Dallas, TX
Event Summary & Takes
neXt Curve was invited once again to attend Samsung Network’s Analyst Day 2023 event in Dallas, Texas. We were really impressed with the event last year. Alok Shah and team do a great job of providing an open dialogue with an exclusive number of industry analysts to share the state of their business and product technology. This year was no exception.
The event started with Leonard showing the folks at Samsung Networks and analysts in attendance how to drive a golf ball to the back of the fence at a fun kick-off event at Top Golf.
The follow day started with a dense morning of presentations lead by Alok Shah who provided us with the latest updates and headlines for the Samsung Networks business. Scott Walker, Vice President, Global Telco Ecosystem at Wind River presented details of the company’s partnership with Samsung Networks in delivering edge clouds for the telco network and its Studio Cloud Platform.
We also got a group tour of Samsung Network’s newly minted Innovation Center that featured the group’s solutions for FWA (dubbed “5G monetization”), the future of vRAN (vRAN 3.), private networks for industrial and enterprise use cases, and a wall that showcased the company’s portfolio of radios. The analysts also received a detailed walkthrough of Samsung’s decades long legacy of innovation in mobile wireless by Sameer Marwadi.
Once again, this year’s event was under NDA so there is little that we can share that isn’t already and currently public. Here are our key takes from Samsung Networks Analyst Day 2023 event that we can share.
- Open RAN is nice but what matters for Samsung Networks is vRAN. Samsung has designated their vRAN framework vRAN 3.0 which is O-RAN compliant but focuses on offering a flexible RAN stack to meet a diverse set of operator requirements. vRAN 3.0.
- FWA is turning out to be a real thing and a key application for operators for expanding their monetization of their 5G investments. The value and the return/viability of FWA solutions will differ from market to market. Reducing the cost of CPEs for many developing markets including India.
- 5G industrial opportunity is still nascent despite a lot of excitement earlier in the year that 2023 would be a breakthrough year. This year will be a one of discovery and POC at best.
- Samsung has the radio portfolio, the software, and the COTS partners to mobilize a vRAN offering/solution to an operator in a “near-package” which should help position them as the X+1 RAN option. O-RAN optional.
Related Media & Press Releases
- Samsung Networks site (link)
- LinkedIn: neXt Curve attends Samsung Networks Analyst Day 2023 (link)
- LinkedIn: Giving driving lessons at Top Golf (link)
Samsung Networks Innovation Center Opens its Doors, Offering a Close Look at Advanced Network Connectivity (link)
Companies Engaged: Samsung Networks, Wind River
Sensors Converge 2023
Date: June 20 to 22, 2023
Location: Santa Clara, CA
Event Summary & Takes
This week, we headed up to Santa Clara to attend Questex‘s Sensors Converge event, the big sensor tech conference which is the largest of its kind in North America. As an advisory board member, I was excited to attend the conference in person after four years of participating virtually.
This year’s event drew over 5,000 attendees and over 220 exhibitors. The Santa Clara Convention Center was the perfect size for the event. Over the three days that we attended, we got a great feel for the pace and the pulse of sensor technologies which are the foundation of the IoT and so many other aspects and permutations of the electronics industry, consumer, industrial, enterprise, and military.
We roamed the exhibit halls and sat in on several conference sessions over three days with the focus on the following research topic areas:
- Sensor Fusion
- Intelligent Sensors
- Artificial Intelligence & Machine Learning
- MEMS
- Semiconductor Trends
- IoT Systems
- Security & Trust
The density and quality of the content, sessions, and the interactions were very high with an inclination toward the technical. Yes, the specter of generative AI loomed on the conference. AI/ML heavily colored the program. Thankfully most of the content was grounded rarely straying into the realm of silly. It’s been no secret, AI/ML has been making its way to the edge for a long while.
I (Leonard Lee) had the honor of being a judge for The Best of Sensors Award.
The 2023 Innovative Product of the Year Award Winners:
- Aerospace/Space: Marktech Optoelectronics | ATLAS Hermetic SMD Packaged 2.6µm InGaAs Photodiodes
- AI/Machine Learning: Aizip & Analog Devices | SARAD-T: scalable and robust anomaly detection for industrial preventive maintenance
- Automotive/Autonomous Technologies: Valeo | Valeo SCALA® 3
- Connectivity: Murata | Type 2EG Bluetooth Low Energy 5.2 Wireless module
- Cleantech/Sustainability: Electro Scan Inc. | SWORDFISH
- Data Acquisition & Analytics: TDK InvenSense | SmartBug 2.0
- Industrial IoT: Calumino | Calumino Thermal Sensor
- Industrial Sensors: Sensirion AG | SWT50 UV absorption sensor for water quality sensing
- Instrumentation & Test: Dojo Five | EmbedOps
- MEMS: STMicroelectronics | LIS2DUX12 – Ultralow-power accelerometer with AI & anti-aliasing
- Medical: Analog Devices | Health Sensor Platform 4.0 / MAXREFDES106
- Optical and Cameras: Owl Autonomous Imaging | 3D High-Definition Thermal Ranger Camera with Computer Vision
- Wearables: GyroPalm, LLC | GyroPalm Spectrum
- Emerging Tech: Amphenol Advanced Sensors | Thermal Runway Sensor
Kudos to Charlene Soucy and the Questex team for putting on a great and apparently successful event this year which continues to restore itself to its pre-pandemic scale.
Here are our key takes from the Sensors Converge 2023 event.
- Last year there was a very heavy focus on LiDAR systems for automotive. The excitement seems to have waned a bit as ADAS systems have become more of the focus of automakers. LiDAR is computationally expensive while more effective than radar, but we don’t see continued strength in interest as the autonomous vehicle thesis wanes. There were a number of mentions of China being the exception with some vendors claiming that some Chinese automakers have cracked the L4 nut.
- We saw seems like an increased interest in solid-state LiDAR for applications such as AGV (Autonomous Guided Vehicles), robots, and some early mention of emerging XR headsets which might have been inspired by the Vision Pro announced by Apple which sports a 3D Spatial Camera that incorporates a solid state LiDAR sensor.
- We observed a continuing trend of ML on or near sensor. We are seeing uses of ML to reduce noise issues in sensors such as LiDAR and radar. Many of these ML applications are specialized and are able to be deployed on MCUs thanks to improved model compression and quantization techniques according to many of the vendors we spoke to. These algorithms are able to process a growing range of in-stream data on the sensor device with the prospect of dramatically reducing the data that would need to be transmitted even to an edge gateway.
- Lots of advancement in IMU (Inertial Measurement Unit) with embedded and integrated AI to extend functionality and to support on-device learning. Some vendors showcased devices with learning modes to update a ML model to adapt to new requirements and conditions.
- 95% is the average accuracy of ML applications that we encountered in the exhibition hall, especially for computer vision and anomaly detection. Some models can achieve higher accuracy, but it is our general observation that this is a constraint in many more critical applications. While there has been a good deal of progress in on-device and near-sensor ML, there is a lot of work to get to great.
- There was quite a bit of chatter about the dependency of smart transportation systems on wireless connectivity. Several vendors cited quality of service (QoS), especially reliability, as a big gap with latency a problem with some real-time applications for their smart city customers. Current 5G deploys are largely insufficient in meeting the QoS needs for critical features and functions and are holding back progress for applications such as pedestrian safety.
Related Media & Press Releases
- Sensors Converge site (link)
- LinkedIn: neXt Curve takes from Sensors Converge 2023 (link)
- LinkedIn: Ruining metaverse for Nolan Moore at Sensors Converge 2023 (link)
Companies Engaged: Analog Devices, Arduino, TDK, GyroPalm, Things Industries, STMicroelectronics, Innatera, Aizip, Infineon, Synaptics, Blues Wireless, Rutronix, Renesas, Reality AI, Nvidia, Bosch, Crocus Technology, Toradex, NXP, Cratustech
HPE Discover 2023
Date: June 20 to 23, 2023
Location: Las Vegas, NV
Event Summary & Takes
Unfortunately, we were not able to attend Antonio Neri’s sixth keynote as CEO at HPE Discover. We were triple booked and a bit weary of Las Vegas. Seems like too many industry and vendor events take place in Vegas. It’s nice to take a break given that we have a number of trips there for the remainder of the year.
HPE Discover follows Dell Technologies World, which also took place in Las Vegas last month. We were pretty excited to see how HPE would differentiate itself from Dell in what we see as a the fast-emerging era of hybrid cloud computing and edge computing which, of course, includes AI.
Earlier in the year, we had the opportunity to spend time with the team and executives at HPE in Barcelona for MWC 2023 and have long tracked the growth of the company’s Intelligent Edge group and foray into telecom through their support of Open RAN. We were interested in follow up on the following research objectives of HPE Discover 2023.
- Open RAN and private cellular networks
- SASE and edge cloud security
- HPC and accelerated computing
- AI and the HPE’s treatment of generative AI
- Hybrid cloud management and brokerage
Here are our key takes from the HPE Discover 2023 event:
- The future opportunity for HPE according to Antonio Neri is Edge + Hybrid Cloud + AI.
- HPE’s point of view is that IT organizations have become hybrid cloud by accident as they realized that most of their workloads and applications (on the order of 70%) will not be migrating to the “cloud”. HPE GreenLake is being positioned as a tool for IT organizations to become hybrid cloud by design. Consequently, HPE GreenLake has experienced double digit growth and high retention rate capturing 10 billion in total contract value. GreenLake achieved a $1.1 billion ARR up 30 percent YoY in the latest quarter.
- HPE is betting big on what they call the “edge”. They consider it the new frontier and are planning on investing 5.5 billion into Intelligent Edge portfolio over an undisclosed period. Having had many conversations with Dr. Tom Bradicich, VP and Global Head of Edge & IoT Software Lab at HPE, the edge means edge infrastructure located anywhere between the hyperscale cloud and on-premises intelligent IoT gateways.
- Hybrid cloud is a big theme for HPE and a core tenet of their strategy represented by HPE GreenLake. This year, HPE continues to evolve the platform to support what is increasingly a compute/storage fabric that transverses the edge stitched together with new networking and security capabilities and services.
- One of the big announcements coming out of MWC 2023 as HPE’s acquisition of Athonet (a specialist in private 5G/LTE core software) in a big move to pursue the highly anticipated private 5G network opportunity coming into 2023. The combination of Aruba and Athonet positions HPE well in a crowded field of private cellular network players with a SASE beachhead. Cisco and Ericsson + CradlePoint are positioned similarly. Now the industry is waiting for the private 5G network wave that has yet to arrive.
- It seems that a key aspect of HPE’s hybrid cloud strategy is to partner with data center hosting companies such as Equinix to expand GreenLake’s presence across networks of colocation sites and provide partners with a platform to support hybrid cloud computing for their customers. We are seeing similar hybrid cloud strategies playing out with Dell, VMware as well as cloud players AWS, Google Cloud, and Microsoft Azure.
- HPE is leaning into the generative AI hype with its supercomputing heritage with its acquisition of the legendary Cray Computers in 2019. The company introduced GreenLake for Large Language Models (LLMs) that allow enterprises to consume supercomputing resources they need to build and run their own GenAI applications. Like with everyone else who has announced a GenAI offering, time will tell if this opportunity lives up to inflated expectations especially against the backdrop of increasing concerns of sustainable AI.
- It’s taken the industry and CIOs a while, but they are realizing that cloud first is and never was a smart IT strategy. We like how VMware CEO, Raghu Raghuram, describes the better strategy – cloud smart. As we have been advocating in our neXt Curve research for five years, the best cloud strategy is the one that considers purpose of placement and cost/performance.
- It’s becoming apparent that HPE, Dell, Lenovo, IBM/RedHat and VMware are among a growing rank of ICT companies that are vying to become champions of hybrid cloud and edge infrastructure with a very different playbook than the cloud giants and the telecom tech players (with the exception of Huawei) who don’t seem to know they are in the game as well.
Related Media & Press Releases
Companies Engaged: Hewlett Packard Enterprise
Upcoming Industry & Media Events
This month, neXt Curve participated in the following virtual and in-person industry and technical events. For our full schedule of industry events refer to our event calendar. We also encourage you to follow neXt Curve’s LinkedIn company page.
Subscribe to the neXt Curve Insights monthly newsletter to be notified when the next newsletter is published. Go to www.next-curve.com to be added to our mailing list. You will also be notified when we publish new research notes and media content.