Living Life on the Edge

Old Ideas Redesigned for Edge and Hybrid Computing

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It’s a data grab out there! It feels like everyone in every industry is trying to generate, store and process more data.  Despite the excess of privacy breaches and data mis-handlings this past year, consumers are still more than happy to exchange their interaction data for social media and other services.

Industry after industry is redefining itself using data. Two example sectors make the case. Up to 30% of the world’s data is generated in the healthcare industry alone, and the amount of data generated in healthcare continues to grow at a rapid pace. Healthcare is relying on everything from wearable health monitoring devices to drug management sensors to AI-based local medical image analysis platforms to drive new data and, with it, to bring new revenue-generating insights.  In the traditionally conservative automotive sector, the connected car has really become one giant “edge” computing device.  According to the former CEO of Intel, Brian Krzanich, one autonomous car will use 4,000 GB of data/day.

The explosion of data generation is being driven by the growth of smarter computing devices “at the edge” – or near the customer rather than in the cloud. Edge computing is expected to grow by 30% from 2018 to 2022. With these new local compute devices come two things: an opportunity to collect more data; and an opportunity to develop tools to manage that data locally instead of in the cloud.

The question that prompted me to write this post is – who are the new entrants that are taking the ideas we use to manage data and compute in the cloud and bringing them to the edge.

Peter Levine, of Andreessen Horowitz, is quoted as saying “There’s going to be a symbiotic relationship between the edge and the cloud.” That’s true.  We’re not abandoning cloud computing – although we might be relegating it to our more resource-intensive, but less latency-dependent processing needs.  But now there are opportunities to provide new services for both the edge and this hybrid compute environment.

Here are a few companies I think are tapping into those opportunities.

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Machine Learning at the Edge

FogHorn Systems is one company that has built a machine learning solution with a tiny software footprint that can run on smaller compute power, which is more typical of edge computing. This enables advanced data analysis to happen locally instead of having to send everything up to the cloud, a particularly useful feature when you need analysis in real-time.

It wasn’t really that long ago that Google, Amazon and others popularized offering machine learning capabilities in their cloud environments.  How quickly things become passé!  While there are a lot of companies talking about machine learning at the edge, there are still very few that can actually do it well.

Data Silos at the Edge

AtScale actually looks like the opposite of an edge computing company. AtScale’s platform makes it easier to move data from local sources to the cloud, creating a virtual “data lake” that allows the customer to run analysis.

But as I said above, we’re not abandoning the cloud altogether but creating a hybrid of cloud + edge.  Hybrid cloud environments have a data problem. Local compute devices and “micro clouds” create new silos of data. Data silos prevent businesses from drawing full insights from their data.

The question is whether companies like AtScale can expand their solutions to federate data silos from edge computing devices into a unified data lake.

AWS at the Edge

We’ve had “edge devices” for a long time – we used to call them embedded systems and now we call them IoT devices. But in the past, these devices were very limited in what they did. Companies could deploy the devices and then leave them for years to operate without worrying much about updates.

Today’s devices are being asked to do much more, including generating and even processing all this data. As a result, updates are becoming a more frequent requirement – one which the existing infrastructure wasn’t designed to support.

The cloud offered agility to the enterprise.  Companies like Zededa are bringing that agility to edge computing. Zedada’s technology creates an abstraction layer between the hardware and software on the edge, allowing the Zedada platform to deploy services to the edge device in a similar way to services that run in an Amazon Web Server environment in the cloud.  WindRiver’s StarlingX project is also tackling the need for common requirements for virtualizing edge computing servers

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These three examples only scratch the surface of the list of learnings from the rise of the cloud that become opportunities in the new world of intelligent, data-generating edge devices.

For example, we also need new customer analytics solutions similar to how Mixpanel, Gainsight, and others currently support cloud solutions.  However, in addition to “customer” analytics, we need “machine” analytics since many of these edge devices serve other machines rather than human users.

And obviously, we need new brands of security software that can handle the distributed nature of these devices and the large number of attack vectors that exist in edge computing compared with cloud computing.  Happily, there is no shortage of companies and conversations thinking about that problem.

Will Smith is quoted as saying “Life is lived on the edge”.  It used to be that data lived in the cloud.  But today, like the rest of life, it too can live at the edge. What other cloud-like solution needs to be redefined for us to fully take advantage of life on the edge?

More Robots, Innovation Conferences, and some IoT startups

Monthly Tech Focus: Robot Apocalypse, Part 2

Last month we talked about how robots were taking over jobs in the Factory of the Future.  But robotics are going well beyond our factories - and with mixed results.

While governments won’t call it that, we’ve had autonomous killer robots for a while - in the form of unmanned combat aerial vehicles. The United Nations continues to discuss and debate the ethics of using UAVs as governments continue to use them.

Back on the ground and in the commercial world, in October, Rethink Robotics, the Boston, Mass.-based maker of collaborative robots, shut down. Rethink, founded in 2008, raised nearly $150 million in funding.  According to The Robot Report and others, Rethink was trying to negotiate an acquisition, which fell through as Rethink ran out of cash - a sober lesson for companies as they “rethink” their own growth and exit strategies.  German automation specialist, The HAHN Group, then swooshed in to buy up Rethink’s patents and IP - likely at pennies on the dollar.

In a similar vein, you may recall that, last year, Google sold Boston Robotics, which it acquired in 2013, to Softbank. News outlets like The Next Web suggested the sale was due to the fact that, despite the stunning feats of the Boston Robotics robots, the company had a hard time building something that people needed to buy.  

But despite these setbacks and broader ethical issues, I’m still betting on robots as being significantly and positively disruptive.

If you haven’t seen the latest on what Boston Robotics is doing under the ownership of Softbank, take a moment to watch the video on this page.


News from Our Friends

Congratulations to Frida Polli, and her team at Pymetrics, an enterprise SaaS company using neuroscience and AI to build a better recruitment platform.  Last month, Pymetrics raised $40 million in Series B funding. Companies using Pymetrics have seen an increase in diversity of hires as well as retention rates.  

Congratulations to VEERUM on their recent funding round as they work to offset overspending of capital project delivery. The VEERUM platform creates an accurate digital layout of projects so problems and plans can be identified before work begins.

Congratulations to Helen Kontozopoulos and her co-founding team for launching ODAIA, a machine learning and analytics company offering solutions to help you predict customer and employee satisfaction and churn.

Do you have news to share with our community? Contact us and let us know.


Learnings from Our Travels this Fall


At this year’s ChIPs Global Summit, I was fortunate to hear pitches from Joylux Founder Colette Courtion, Obsess AR Founder Neha Singh, and GoTogether Founder Kimberly Moore.  We also heard lively discussions from government and industry representatives about how prepared our government is to effectively be able to regulate today’s social media technology behemoths.

This was my first year attending the annual conference for the Association of University and Research Parks.  I talked to university and research park innovators about alternative guidance and assistance they could provide to their startups and alternative paths to startup success.  Just like any portfolio, startups shouldn’t all be treated the same way, and portfolio diversity isn’t just about technology diversity but also about diversity in size, growth rates, and funding strategies.  

Team Tribal friend Ilana Golan, CEO of Golan Ventures, gave an entertaining talk November 15 called About the time I fucked up!  Wishing there was a video I could show you - you’ll have to reach out to Ilana directly to hear more!

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Segment News - IoT


We are focusing on IoT this week, starting with Sensorup, the team behind one of the key standards to enable interconnectivity among IoT devices. From real-time traffic tracking to water usage, they stitch together local IoT devices and their data.


ShoofTech's veteran leadership team says they will connect data from IoT devices to the cloud using advanced wireless technology. See their Plug and Play pitch here and judge for yourself.


Putting IoT on Ice!  Scorched Ice is creating intelligence skates with its embedded IoT sensors that help athletes and coaches learn to become champions on ice!


Do you have news you want shared?  Let us know.







Factory 4.0, Less Pain with Blockchain, The Driver’s Seat, and more...

 

Tech News of the Month: The Robot Apocalypse?

The current trend of industrial automation and data analytics is advancing faster than most large industrial corporations are ready for. Called the fourth industrial revolution or "Factory 4.0", it brings everything from AI, to robotics, IOT, and AR/VR, to the industrial floor (whether general managers are ready for it or not).

One company leading the way is China-based phone part maker Changying Precision Technology Company. In a great summary, CB Insights talks about Changying's unmanned factory and describes the areas of the manufacturing process ripe for disruption.

Changying used to require 650 workers to keep the factory running. Now robot arms have cut Changying's human workforce down to just 60 workers.  Read more in this post.

Not to be outdone, Zume Pizza has put into production what it calls the first pizza making robot.

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Our Friends’ Funding Successes

 It makes sense.  Congratulations to Melissa KargiannakisSkritswap's CEO, and her team for raising their first round of US $500,000. Skritswap uses machine learning to make complicated content more readable so anyone can truly understand anything, no matter how complex.

Back to the factory floor.  Speaking of Factory 4.0, Canvass Analytics, an AI-based analytics platform helping manufacturers anticipate process inefficiencies, predict equipment failures, and foresee energy usage in real-time, raised $5M this summer.

 

Tribal Investment News

We're excited to announce that Tribal Investments has made an investment in AIKON.  AIKON is a blockchain platform removing barriers that make it difficult for companies to offer their SAAS service to other businesses and consumers.  SAAS companies can offload identity management and rights management to the AIKON platform and sell across geographies without the challenge of managing different fiat currencies.

Segment News - The Driver’s Seat

Whether you are in the autonomous vehicle market segment or not, it's a segment worth paying attention to because it's going to change the world...unless it doesn't.  Will one of these newly funded companies be part of the change?

Three million is a magic number.  WaveSense, Fleetonomy and Perceptive Automata, each raised $3 million for their self-driving vehicle solutions.

  • WaveSense is a Massachusetts-based company offering ground penetrating radar to map subsurface landscapes to help autonomous vehicles to navigate.

  • Fleetonomy hails from Israel and offers AI-based fleet management solutions.

  • Perceptive Automata, another Massachusetts startup, builds software that teaches autonomous vehicles to watch humans as other humans would.

Lifting off beyond the magic number. SkyX, builds vertical take off and landing unmanned vehicles for monitoring and inspecting over long distances.  They raised $9.5 million in a Series B funding. 

 

Featured Events

 Webinar: Scale or Sale: Optimizing Your Exit Opportunities
Date & Time: Thursday, October 11, 2018 11:00 am PT
Hosting by: Boast AI and Connections Silicon Valley

 

Jory Des Jardins will be at
NPR's How I Built This Summit
on Tuesday, October 16
offering her expertise to attendees as one of the Summit's select Mentors

 

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Combining Agile, Design-Thinking and Lean to unlock greater business impact

written by Marion Groh Marquardt and posted on LinkedIn

 CEO Web Croissants | Builder of Cross-Discipline Innovations

Digital transformations, including digitizing business processes, results in increased profits, and an ability to remain competitive and innovative in the face of disruptors. In addition, collaborationinnovation, and customer-empathy are all recognized as fundamental building blocks of effective organizational cultures and effective business.

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