On this week's Industrial Talk we're onsite at IoT Solutions World Congress and talking to Marc O'Regan, CTO at Dell Technologies and Marc Peters, Distinguished Engineer/CTO for Deutsche Telekom, about "Responsible Computing, what is it and why it's important". Get the answers to your "Responsible Computing" questions along with their unique insights into the “How” on this Industrial Talk interview!
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SUMMARY KEYWORDS
Marc, consortium, computing, technology, responsibility, organization, compute, industrial, responsible, conversation, data, framework, tx, ai, business, perspective, industry, ctos, people, ibm
00:00
Industrial Talk is brought to you by Trend Micro now you know cybersecurity is important if you're on this digital transformation journey, Trend Micro networks has the solutions for you. And you're saying to yourself, Scott, they're going to be complex, they're going to be difficult. No Trend Micro's taken that into consideration. And they provide a suite of solutions that truly meet your cybersecurity needs go out to TX, one dash networks.com and find out more, you're not going to be disappointed. Also industry IoT Consortium. At industrial talk, we always talk about education, we always talk about collaboration, we are always talking about innovation. And if you're a business that has any desire to be resilient to the future, you need to be able to educate, collaborate, as well as innovate with other industry professionals. That's a must. Industry IoT consortium brings that all together, you need to be a part of this community, you need to be connected with these leaders that are all apart the industry IoT consortium, go out to ai consortium.org. Find out more. Again, you will not be disappointed. You're just going to be happy. All right, thank you very much for joining industrial talk. Once again, we are broadcasting on site IoT solutions World Congress in Barcelona. Again, put that on your bucket list for 2023 end of January a must attend an event. In this conversation we have a two gent conversation with Marc O'Regan and Marc Peters, the two Marcs are talking about one responsible computing what does that mean? And then two, how do you get involved? How do you get involved with responsible computing? That's what's on this industrial talk. Enjoy the conversation?
02:02
You guys having a good conference? It's interesting things to see. Great, Tony, thank you. Good. That's what I want. It's all that's exciting. Now for the listeners. Let's, let's start with you. Marc, we're gonna give us a little background on who you are.
02:20
Sure. So first and foremost, thanks a million for having us on Scott.
02:25
pleasure is all mine don't even begin.
02:28
So my name is Marc O'Regan, I, a CTO for Dell Technologies. I'm the CTO for Europe, Middle East and Africa. My background is distributed computing,
02:39
distributed computing in architecture.
02:43
That takes in things like performance computing, Edge architecture, things of that. I guess my responsibilities for Dell Technologies, observe emerging technologies. You know, make sure that future strategy if the organization is going where it needs to go. And
03:07
yeah, there's there's emerging technology out there. You're you're at a great conference for that. That's for doggone Sure, without a doubt. Now, for you, Marc. Number two, give us a little background on who you are.
03:19
Yeah, so multidose. I'm an IBM Distinguished Engineer. So with IBM for quite some time already. Different responsibilities are covering. So I have a day job for sure. But I'm here today, mainly because I am leading since more than two years initiatives that we have bought responsible computing. So I've been doing that as part of the IBM Academy of Technology, bringing together a broad range of different participants from IBM, but also linking up with outside IBM organizations to make sure that we are not just drinking old wine, but making sure that others are validating and engaging together with us in that interesting journey.
03:59
Okay, so let's let's Let's venture into responsible computing. Now. You need to help us define what that is what, what does that mean?
04:09
So as I said, first of all, computing is something that initiated two years ago, approximately Now, and it came out of information that we collected from ctoc hours across EMEA. And we were dressing them for questionnaires, understanding what the future of technology will be. While collecting the answers. We understood that it's not only about technology, but the CTOs and CIOs were expressing some anxieties and some concerns about what their role would be in a sustainable environment, the future, what they would need to take care of when they would have to be approached by the CTOs and CEOs around sustainability or carbon footprint. What about security? What about data usage and data concerns and data capabilities? What about the coding and develop within the organizations, and how to bring this all together in a systemic or holistic approach in environmental interlinking different facets of what we now call responsive computing.
05:12
So it goes beyond because when somebody says responsible computing, okay, you got an image in your mind, and you're now is, is there also sort of that that moral component to it where, you know, a lot of conversations wrapped around AI, neural net, taking my job away, it's just that also encompass that, or is that just outside of the scope
05:36
budget that definitely, so what we came up with is kind of a framework that we shade, and we call it a hexagons of hexagon, because there's six dimensions. And the six dimensions are responsible computing data center. So that's a physical infrastructure of a data center. Then it's about responsibility infrastructure. So these are the compute capabilities or storage capabilities that are sitting in the data center. The third dimension is responsibility code. So how do you develop how do you program what type of programming language do you use to make code more efficient. And the fourth area is responsible for doing data usage. And it used to be called data insights. But data insights from an IT perspective is more like analytics driven. automatic focus how brains towards a dimension, that's why we call it data usage. And we are addressing their regulatory capabilities and challenges. But also what dark data is, for example, producing in terms of power consumption, just sitting on a machine somewhere. The fifth, some engineers, responsible booting systems. So bringing this all together from a systems perspective, and also adding the ethical side of it or diversity side of the perspectives. And the last one is responsive computing impact. That's why we addressing the impacts of people and society. And when I say it's the last one, it's not just correct. As I said, it's actually going to affect seconds. So it's grouping together, there is an inter linkage and there is no defined that report yet reports are defined by maturity assessment models, bringing it more approachable to individuals, and letting organizations and individuals decide where to enter the specific facts.
07:14
So, Marc, Marc, Oregon, Dell, why is it important for Dell to be a part of this responsible computing Consortium?
07:25
Yeah, good question. I think, Scott, it's important for it's extraordinarily important for Dell to be part of this, it's important for organizations to be remembers, also, this is the conversation that's been going on for some time in industry. And it's a critical conversation, it's a conversation that's, by and large, then played down or largely award, and it can't be ignored any further. It's on the top of everybody's mind. Responsible computing, we're thinking about everything from, you know, the responsibility that we have, as an organization, as an organization for Dell, for example, to ethical computing, sustainable computing, everything from how we build our technology, the process that we go through partners and componentry elements that we bring into the build models and technology constructs, right through to the platform where the datasets are observability that data, data integrity, data, sovereignty, data placement, and the use of data usage, how we use data, for good or for bad. So it really is a conversation about responsibility, that responsibility to the technology responsibility to the data to the code arrived a few moments ago, responsibility to ourselves and to each other. And that's the consortium is in place to build that framework and the frame those six principles that Marc hopes to, into a framework that's understood. So a question that comes
08:59
to mind and and and I don't, I don't know, I mean, you, I guess, you guys will know, is every time I come to an event like this, the people like you and trailblazers that are really pushing the envelope from a, from an innovation perspective, there's a there's a philosophy that exists. Me, let's say, I'm just Scott Mackenzie manufacturer, in my behind the times, all I'm trying to do is trying to figure out how, where, where my role in my business is, within all of this technology, this, this growth in technology. So when we start talking about responsible computing, am I behind that? Or is there a way out that I can incrementally sort of approach this, this this fact if I if I want to do this? I've got to approach this. Is there an incremental way to be able to do that?
09:50
Yes, so that they pick up the question, Scott. So definitely, there's an incremental way and you can do it through the framework. You can do two pathways that we have defined So it's kind of cross cutting themes that are brought forward by any industry. So if you're a manufacturing industry, then there is perfectly a place for you to contribute even to responsibility to get to the consortia. Because we think we are convinced, in fact, this is not just a technology company consult here. But this is something that needs to be driven by cross industry organizations and members. So when we have started that or initiate that early thinking, in 2020, we were validating the thinking with outside parties. And they were coming from the financial services sector, from telco business and from energy and consulting services. So that's where we got initially feedback and comments and also from submissions already. And that's where the value of the consortium end of the framework really comes from.
10:45
Yeah, what I see is that it's, it is it's broad, if, if you're, if you're a human being living in this world, you're going to be exposed, you just have to be exposed. And if, if you're a business that has any desire to have some resiliency and long term success, again, it's a conversation that needs to happen. Do you agree with that? Yeah,
11:07
absolutely. And, and And to answer your first question, are you behind the times? I don't think so I think you're within the good quote, the great bulk of the times they are changing. And they are, if you look at technology, just simply from a technology perspective, you have shifts major shifts, tectonic shifts in technology, every 1520 years. It goes from, you know, centralized, to decentralized, and we're very much at that decentralized swing of the emergence of edge. Like artificial intelligence AI has been with us for 170 odd years. Yes, sir. That edge is with us for as long as no longer Okay, so these are emerging technology spaces that are emergent within our tones. And they are coming into the emerging technology frame. And CIOs, CTOs and CEOs have to make that decision? How do I insert these technologies into my, into my business into my organization into networks? Or whatever that might be? And how do I do so meaningfully? And with a level of trust and resilience, as mentioned earlier? And, and what is the framework around for better understanding and doing so, you know, as we look at things like AI, as new algorithms emerge, we're on this third wave of AI and the algorithms are changing. You know, Marc mentioned this a little bit already wrong. from a coding perspective, it's it's the responsibility to how you code your methodology, the software that you're using, the program that you're using, but also the you know, how you exploit the underlying technology, and then how you ultimately build ethical applications and how they're consumed. So AI, outside of just the general ethics and bias kind of frame, it's huge. It's a huge, huge area for taking AI and we're lacking it out. yet. We're landing it into a factory for a landing it into ICUs, in our hospitals, or rather from energy operator into smart cities, you know, how does that work? How do we approach this? What kind of architectural technology problems do we need to solve? And so on and so forth? So it's these things, I think that are going to start to emerge, you know, within one of those six pillars within the hexagon, or potentially even cross merging between one or more of those?
13:21
Okay, so you see, you guys, you guys sort of huddled around the watercooler and you have these conversations and somebody comes back to the watercooler and says, aha, I got a new one for you. And then you'd say, you know, you're right. And then for someone that says, Hey, I'd like to get involved, I'd like to figure out, I'd like to be a part of what's going on, because I believe in it, and I see it and I understand it. And even though I've just got a little glimpse of it, how does somebody get involved with the consortium.
13:50
So the easiest way is, first of all, to look at the responsive computing dotnet website makes it easy to understand what is already written there. What we have started developing together is what they call the manifesto for responsive computing. It's a set of values and principles. So everyone organizations and individuals are free to join through this manifesto, and adhere to the principles that was already getting involved. And some of them may evolve into a full membership of the consortium later on and start contributing not just from from the thinking, but also to define the measurements, the control points, and first drive its adoption process.
14:31
So, so it's not difficult. I mean, there's just awful opportunities out there galore. And it depends on where you want to be within that whole definition of how do I get involved. So I wouldn't call
14:43
it opportunities. I think there is a necessity to get engaged, make sure that the voice is heard, and that we are really going and moving forward because it's just nothing that one organization can get to as itself. This is really cross organization. additional work that then be will be very fruitful to what we are looking for. And that is prosperity, its health, it's about people. It's about planet. So all the passwords that you also see in the press today are coming together from a from a technology perspective into responses.
15:19
Yeah, you're talking around the necessity to collaborate, because not everybody has all...
Transcripts
00:00
that on your bucket list for:
02:02
You guys having a good conference? It's interesting things to see. Great, Tony, thank you. Good. That's what I want. It's all that's exciting. Now for the listeners. Let's, let's start with you. Marc, we're gonna give us a little background on who you are.
02:20
Sure. So first and foremost, thanks a million for having us on Scott.
02:25
pleasure is all mine don't even begin.
02:28
So my name is Marc O'Regan, I, a CTO for Dell Technologies. I'm the CTO for Europe, Middle East and Africa. My background is distributed computing,
02:39
distributed computing in architecture.
02:43
That takes in things like performance computing, Edge architecture, things of that. I guess my responsibilities for Dell Technologies, observe emerging technologies. You know, make sure that future strategy if the organization is going where it needs to go. And
03:07
yeah, there's there's emerging technology out there. You're you're at a great conference for that. That's for doggone Sure, without a doubt. Now, for you, Marc. Number two, give us a little background on who you are.
03:19
Yeah, so multidose. I'm an IBM Distinguished Engineer. So with IBM for quite some time already. Different responsibilities are covering. So I have a day job for sure. But I'm here today, mainly because I am leading since more than two years initiatives that we have bought responsible computing. So I've been doing that as part of the IBM Academy of Technology, bringing together a broad range of different participants from IBM, but also linking up with outside IBM organizations to make sure that we are not just drinking old wine, but making sure that others are validating and engaging together with us in that interesting journey.
03:59
Okay, so let's let's Let's venture into responsible computing. Now. You need to help us define what that is what, what does that mean?
04:09
So as I said, first of all, computing is something that initiated two years ago, approximately Now, and it came out of information that we collected from ctoc hours across EMEA. And we were dressing them for questionnaires, understanding what the future of technology will be. While collecting the answers. We understood that it's not only about technology, but the CTOs and CIOs were expressing some anxieties and some concerns about what their role would be in a sustainable environment, the future, what they would need to take care of when they would have to be approached by the CTOs and CEOs around sustainability or carbon footprint. What about security? What about data usage and data concerns and data capabilities? What about the coding and develop within the organizations, and how to bring this all together in a systemic or holistic approach in environmental interlinking different facets of what we now call responsive computing.
05:12
So it goes beyond because when somebody says responsible computing, okay, you got an image in your mind, and you're now is, is there also sort of that that moral component to it where, you know, a lot of conversations wrapped around AI, neural net, taking my job away, it's just that also encompass that, or is that just outside of the scope
05:36
budget that definitely, so what we came up with is kind of a framework that we shade, and we call it a hexagons of hexagon, because there's six dimensions. And the six dimensions are responsible computing data center. So that's a physical infrastructure of a data center. Then it's about responsibility infrastructure. So these are the compute capabilities or storage capabilities that are sitting in the data center. The third dimension is responsibility code. So how do you develop how do you program what type of programming language do you use to make code more efficient. And the fourth area is responsible for doing data usage. And it used to be called data insights. But data insights from an IT perspective is more like analytics driven. automatic focus how brains towards a dimension, that's why we call it data usage. And we are addressing their regulatory capabilities and challenges. But also what dark data is, for example, producing in terms of power consumption, just sitting on a machine somewhere. The fifth, some engineers, responsible booting systems. So bringing this all together from a systems perspective, and also adding the ethical side of it or diversity side of the perspectives. And the last one is responsive computing impact. That's why we addressing the impacts of people and society. And when I say it's the last one, it's not just correct. As I said, it's actually going to affect seconds. So it's grouping together, there is an inter linkage and there is no defined that report yet reports are defined by maturity assessment models, bringing it more approachable to individuals, and letting organizations and individuals decide where to enter the specific facts.
07:14
So, Marc, Marc, Oregon, Dell, why is it important for Dell to be a part of this responsible computing Consortium?
07:25
Yeah, good question. I think, Scott, it's important for it's extraordinarily important for Dell to be part of this, it's important for organizations to be remembers, also, this is the conversation that's been going on for some time in industry. And it's a critical conversation, it's a conversation that's, by and large, then played down or largely award, and it can't be ignored any further. It's on the top of everybody's mind. Responsible computing, we're thinking about everything from, you know, the responsibility that we have, as an organization, as an organization for Dell, for example, to ethical computing, sustainable computing, everything from how we build our technology, the process that we go through partners and componentry elements that we bring into the build models and technology constructs, right through to the platform where the datasets are observability that data, data integrity, data, sovereignty, data placement, and the use of data usage, how we use data, for good or for bad. So it really is a conversation about responsibility, that responsibility to the technology responsibility to the data to the code arrived a few moments ago, responsibility to ourselves and to each other. And that's the consortium is in place to build that framework and the frame those six principles that Marc hopes to, into a framework that's understood. So a question that comes
08:59
to mind and and and I don't, I don't know, I mean, you, I guess, you guys will know, is every time I come to an event like this, the people like you and trailblazers that are really pushing the envelope from a, from an innovation perspective, there's a there's a philosophy that exists. Me, let's say, I'm just Scott Mackenzie manufacturer, in my behind the times, all I'm trying to do is trying to figure out how, where, where my role in my business is, within all of this technology, this, this growth in technology. So when we start talking about responsible computing, am I behind that? Or is there a way out that I can incrementally sort of approach this, this this fact if I if I want to do this? I've got to approach this. Is there an incremental way to be able to do that?
09:50
tiate that early thinking, in:
10:45
Yeah, what I see is that it's, it is it's broad, if, if you're, if you're a human being living in this world, you're going to be exposed, you just have to be exposed. And if, if you're a business that has any desire to have some resiliency and long term success, again, it's a conversation that needs to happen. Do you agree with that? Yeah,
11:07
c shifts in technology, every:
13:21
Okay, so you see, you guys, you guys sort of huddled around the watercooler and you have these conversations and somebody comes back to the watercooler and says, aha, I got a new one for you. And then you'd say, you know, you're right. And then for someone that says, Hey, I'd like to get involved, I'd like to figure out, I'd like to be a part of what's going on, because I believe in it, and I see it and I understand it. And even though I've just got a little glimpse of it, how does somebody get involved with the consortium.
13:50
So the easiest way is, first of all, to look at the responsive computing dotnet website makes it easy to understand what is already written there. What we have started developing together is what they call the manifesto for responsive computing. It's a set of values and principles. So everyone organizations and individuals are free to join through this manifesto, and adhere to the principles that was already getting involved. And some of them may evolve into a full membership of the consortium later on and start contributing not just from from the thinking, but also to define the measurements, the control points, and first drive its adoption process.
14:31
So, so it's not difficult. I mean, there's just awful opportunities out there galore. And it depends on where you want to be within that whole definition of how do I get involved. So I wouldn't call
14:43
it opportunities. I think there is a necessity to get engaged, make sure that the voice is heard, and that we are really going and moving forward because it's just nothing that one organization can get to as itself. This is really cross organization. additional work that then be will be very fruitful to what we are looking for. And that is prosperity, its health, it's about people. It's about planet. So all the passwords that you also see in the press today are coming together from a from a technology perspective into responses.
15:19
Yeah, you're talking around the necessity to collaborate, because not everybody has all the answers, right. And in in the case of a consortium, you're bringing in all of these different viewpoints, these different challenges, and you're able to access this full collaborative type of environment to be able to draw some right conclusions or our head in that direction. Is that correct? Yeah, that's
15:45
That's exactly it. And, and it is bringing in that new thing that you mentioned, Scott, right. It's what's this new thing? Like, how can we certainly go about doing that, but it's also about the old thing as well. When you think about things from an ecosystem perspective, from an environmental perspective, to do a deal, together, you have to take this as a problem in IoT, you have to take something maybe that was born into an ecosystem 40 or 45 years ago, maybe written in cobalt, it wants to talk to something that was written in Ruby, and rails or Python that's just been injected in 45 days ago, how do you get these two guys talking to each other, right. And it's an extraordinarily difficult thing to do. But I think the value and the power of the consortium is that, you know, we have, you know, partners and members sitting. So we've been through a lot of this, and who can be absolved for a lot of these types of things, and who can actually bring ideas and ideation into the different workshops, tell, for example, we would have built a power in some of the biggest, most efficient data centers and cloud platforms worldwide. And, you know, the techniques and approach that we used to do that, you know, started with Compute elements, and how you could actually take something that was one unit pi, and had two central processing units into maintaining that you might be bringing in eight, or even 12, central processing units, while maintaining to power supplies and lack of another myriad of different challenges that came into that. What do we you know, as we take the, you know, the lid off the server node, and we look across the plate or compute construct, what can come next, you know, we got to make room for different components in here, because we've obviously got to shrink components. So, you know, shrinking CPU die shrinking on DRAM modules, you know, taking FPGA cards that aren't used, and so on, and so forth. And then they keep for a better and more efficient airflow across the planner of the actual compute. And then understanding the efficiency levels of individual components that you choose to put into the constructs. And then you distribute that across, you know, an entire landing zone of a data center, or availability zones, a data center, that's at the compute level, then at the actual data center, or cloud level itself, it's the power usage efficiency, so the energy coming into the facility, you know, by the by the energy going out of that facility. So what is the compute consuming? And what do you do with the residual heat? In one instance, in the data centers, quite a large one, unlike that, we took that lead, and we used it to help purify water, drinking water for, you know, the greater Boston area of Dublin, the capitals of Ireland. So these are just small examples of techniques and things that may arise. Been a
18:38
work stream, but but but really, what you're saying is that, here it is. We don't even know what type of use cases that can come out of result of going in this in this direction. And then if you're in is that if you're going in that direction, you discover new use cases, such as a purification of water using the, whatever the heat associated with that is generated to do that. So it's what this
19:03
is, this is it, and I think, we don't know. But what we do know is that if you're a bank, you're going to bit want to get close to the data. And that data equals wealth, that wealth, your your business, right, that's your responsibility. It's your bank, you want to get your compute company, and your artificial intelligence model, for example, as opposed to the sensor or actuator or alarm system. And if you're a healthcare provider, or a hospital, you want to get back that capability right into the back of an ambulance, or in some cases, even onto or into a patient. There are different things. They're different use cases, but the pillars and principles tend to be the same.
19:46
And you're compressing the time. You're just compressing time to from from realization to action, or whatever it might be and then some All right. You know, we can talk about this all day. How do people get a hold of you? Marc,
20:01
oh, people can always reach out to me. So LinkedIn, for example,
20:06
I'm gonna have his direct link to Marc Peters, LinkedIn. So reach out to him on industrial talk, Marc two.
20:16
So fast, you can get me by the little toe the left. If that fails, you can get the Red Dog Marc is my Twitter handle. And again on LinkedIn,
20:30
you guys are great. I mean, the passion is wonderful. I just, it's, as I continue to interview a lot of people from this particular event, there's no lack of passion, there's no lack of a desire to do something special. And what you're talking about here with the responsible computing consortium, it falls right into special thank you for good doing that really do it. That's that's a, that's a great idea. All right, listeners, again, we're going to have all the contact information for the Marc squares here. Then it's m, A, R, C, no Ks, and both names are like that. And it will be out on industrial talk. Once again, we're broadcasting live from IoT solutions World Congress, Barcelona is the town. And we're having a great time. And it is fun, talking to great professionals, companies that are really going to shape the way we do business and make our lives better. So thank you very much. Stay tuned, we're going to have another great conversation shortly. You're listening to the industrial talk Podcast Network. All right, once again, thank you very much for joining industrial talk and a hearty thank you to Marc Oh, Reagan and Marc Peters, as you could tell, thoughtful individuals focused on solving today's challenges in industry right there right now. The other thing is that they're big into the need to collaborate. That's why they have this responsible computing consortium out there and all the links will be out there. That's why they're involved. That's why you need to be involved. It is what's happening in the future. And you need to know how to do that and do that effectively and collaborate with people like Marc and Marc to know how to do it and what is important. All right. Again, we are building here at industrial talk an ecosystem of problem solvers like Marco Regan and Marc Peters. And we are all focused on education, which is a must. Collaboration is important. And if you have a desire to have a business that is resilient, innovate, right here, industrial talk, remember we have all the contact information for the Marcs out on industrial talk. So reach out, you will not be disappointed. Thank you very much again for joining. We're going to have another great conversation shortly. So stay tuned.
