Spotlight on the IIoT: Today’s Top Technical Trends in EMEA

In Episode 48 of The Connext Podcast:

• [0:32] The role of a Field Applications Engineer
• [2:22] What are the big IIoT buzzwords in Europe right now?
• [3:47] Common technical challenges in IIoT
• [7:43] What are the benefits our customers start to see once that technical need has been met?
• [8:34] What’s your favorite IIoT use case that you’ve encountered in the field?

Related Content: 

• [Blog] What is IIoT? The Industrial Internet of Things Primer 
• [Blog] Designing an Autonomous Vehicle for Real-World Performance
• [Blog] Connext DDS and the Industrial IoT: The Top 5 Things to Know 
• [eBook] The Rise of the Robot Overlords: Clarifying the Industrial IoT
• [Podcast] Clarifying the Industrial IoT
• [Product Page] Connext 6

Podcast Transcription: 

Steven Onzo:

Hello everybody and welcome to another episode of the Connext Podcast. Today I'm here with Sara Granados. She's a Field Applications Engineer in the EMEA region - she's visiting all the way from Spain. Thanks for being here.

Sara Granados:

Thank you. Thanks for having me.

Steven Onzo:

So the big thing I want to talk about today is your role, Field Applications Engineer - what that means, and to try and understand a day in the life of your role here at RTI. So in order to kick things off, can you tell me what a typical day is like being an FAE in EMEA?

[0:32] The role of a Field Applications Engineer

Sara Granados:

So the way I like to explain my job is: I like to explain things to technical people - that's my role basically. I go, I get in with the salesperson and they explain the business and what RTI is and what we do. But I have to go and talk to the technical person in the room and explain to them how the technology that we have can be applied to their problem, and actually understand their problem and review with them if the technology fits or not. That's basically my goal: I have to decide if we can solve their problems.

Steven Onzo:

And normally, do they reach out to you or did we reach out to them, and maybe we can see from afar that they could benefit from DDS. How does that normally work?

Sara Granados:

So it's really funny. because sometimes they start explaining the problem - like you run into them in a show or you see their problems - and you say: We could help you so much! But they don't want to come to us. They don't want to explain it to us, or they have other technologies - there are always political reasons to do things. So they don't always go with the best technology - they go with the one that fits better within their company. But usually we get a lot of leads in Europe, we are really lucky. The person-to-person works really well in Europe: If you’re in a team and the technology works, then you share that with other teams, and we get a lot of people coming to us that way.

Steven Onzo:

So that's kind of like those are potential customers, but you also work with existing customers. Do you work with more than the other, or is it pretty equal?

Sara Granados:

So as presales, I tend to spend more time with prospects, but I also work. So half of my time, I am in presales and the other half I'm focusing on automotive now. I'm helping RTI in the presales in the early stages of our customers when they start using DDS for automotive. So a lot of my time is actually with existing automotive customers, as well.

[2:22] What are the big IIoT buzzwords in Europe right now?

Steven Onzo:

So I know you’re located in Spain, but travel all over Europe. You mentioned automotive but aside from that, what are some of the big IIoT buzzwords in Europe right now? What are people excited about and what are some of the hottest applications in this region?

Sara Granados:

So I travel a lot to Germany, actually. And then a lot of things: t's automotive, a lot of driving things - trucks, cars, buses, all that stuff. We have a lot of projects also in avionics, a lot of them, and the common one between all of them is security. Everybody is realizing that you need to communicate with other systems. So when you have your isolated system, you are okay not having very tough security, but as you move talk to other systems and subsystems between each other, that’s  when you actually need to have security and to be able to control the security of your system.

Steven Onzo:

Are these prospects all trying to do something autonomously that they need security for?

Sara Granados:

Doesn't have to be autonomous. So the common pattern that I see between all of them is a distributed system. You have a lot of modules that need to talk to each other and you don't want to be tying your application to one deployment. You want to be able to be flexible and have the same deployment apply to different sites, to different hardware, different locations. That's the common thing. You don't want everything tied together in a single deployment.

[3:47] Common technical challenges in IIoT

Steven Onzo:

And I think this is actually a good transition for this next question - and this is a dumbed-down version of what probably really happens, but when you talk to them and they say, “Hey, I need this from you, can you make this happen?” What is that that they're talking about? I know that's oversimplified, can you dive a little deeper and explain what that process is like?

Sara Granados:

They usually have a small problem that they need to solve, to prove internally that the technology that we have is going to solve their bigger problem. And what I try to do is go and understand the bigger problem, because that is where we can help them most. And what they ask me is, "Hey, I have data that needs to be sent with this performance - can you achieve that? But I also need security, and I also need..." And it's a lot of different requirements that need to come together in one technology - and there are not many technologies out there that you can have different requirements and adapt them to different applications, as you know.

An advantage of DDS is you can do that customization. I always say that it's easy to sell a technology that you believe in. I really believe in what we do, because I've been - I mean, more than four years in sales and almost nine years at RTI - and I've seen so many problems solved with our technology. So whenever they come to a new problem, I just listen to them and say: okay, I can solve that. Or, I can not, or let's figure it out. My main job is that: To understand their problems.

Steven Onzo:

Is there ever a time where they say: "Hey, Sarah this is what we need done, this is the problem we're having - do you have a solution for this?" And then you say, yes, we can actually solve 10 of your problems, and they didn't even realize that they had 10 problems.

Sara Granados:

Actually that's really funny - it happens a lot. Like they have this small problem, and they say: "Hey, can you solve this?” Yes, but you have not taken into account that other smallest thing, that other small thing and that's part of my job, to help them understand how wide their problem is going to become. Many of my customers - mainly in the automotive and old traditional world - they are coming from a very traditional architecture - monolithic architecture - and they are moving to a distributed system and they don't know the problems they are going to run into. And that's one of the reasons why they look at us - because we have experts that have implemented that into a lot of systems.

Steven Onzo:

So you mentioned that you've been working with security a lot. Are there ever any common problems you see within these prospects that they're trying to solve with DDS regarding security?

Sara Granados:

So the common problem is that most of the time, they don't know exactly which security requirements they have today, but they have to be flexible for whatever problems that are coming in the future. They need to be able to secure the system today, and still be able to communicate with external applications in a secure way. Or for instance, you have proprietary stuff in your hardware, in your system, and you don't want anybody else outside to see it. But you want to be able to communicate with everybody that is in the network in a safe way, only exchanging the exact minimum amount of information that you need to exchange.

A funny use case is: I was talking to defense customers, I cannot say names, and they were like yeah, well we are a European project. We have 20 different countries that need to talk to each other, but nobody else wants to talk to the rest. They have to, but they don't want to share too much.  So can you give me a solution that I can tune locally so within my system is secure, but then I can tune it differently when I need to talk to other countries? So we are going to change less, but it'll still be efficient to talk between and collaborate between countries. That's what they needed and that's what we provided them.

Steven Onzo:

That seems to go back to the basics of DDS, like publish/subscribe. I want to know what's going on over here, but I don't want this node over here to know what's happening - and you can fine tune that. And that really comes down to how you configure your QoS Settings, is that right?

Sara Granados:

Yes, that's it.

[7:43] What are the benefits our customers start to see once that technical need has been met?

Steven Onzo:

Okay. So from there, what are the benefits our customers start to see once that technical need has been met.

Sara Granados:

So the first thing that people say is: “ You just plug things, and it works!” That's nice. Whenever a customer comes and says I just plugged everything and it worked, that's great. But then they see that small problem - they have these prior Proof of Cprioroncepts that they have, and then they want to evolve to a bigger system. And as they are adding new components, they say okay, I can change this and keep adding parts of my system and the network keeps up and the hardware keeps up. I'm filtering the information so not everybody received everything so I can send more information and then only send when it's needed. So my system scales and you can make bigger systems - you can keep adding functionality without collapsing your system. That's one of the reasons why they pick us as well.

[8:34] What’s your favorite IIoT use case that you’ve encountered in the field? 

Steven Onzo:

So as the conversation winds down, I'd like to ask you what one of your favorite use cases is that you've encountered. Maybe one that potential customers alike could learn something from.

Sara Granados:

Now you're going to make it hard for me - which ever I pick, the others will blame me...oh, you didn't pick me...

Steven Onzo:

Well maybe that'll be the sequel to this one - when we get you back on.

Sara Granados:

I mean, I remember a very cool one. It's probably not the most challenging technologically, but I'm a gamer, I like playing video games.  And we went to visit a customer where they are doing virtual reality games. It's one of those that you wear the glasses, but you also have a backpack with your computer, and you're walking through the room and touching things and you interact with things - that you see them differently. Like for instance, I had a pole and I was seeing it as a torch, and then it was something I had to throw to a partner. So it was two of us walking in the room and passing things around and interacting with the world and everything in a virtual reality world, and I loved that one. It was like joining the two things that I love most - my gaming stuff and my job - all together in one room. I loved that one.

Steven Onzo:

So what was their problem that they had that DDS was able to solve?

Sara Granados:

So they had to capture all the sensory information. When you are in a virtual reality place, you have to be able to detect where your hands are, where your feet are - and as you're moving in, the rest of the environment has to react to you. So you have sensors on your hand, sensors on your feet - they are cameras both looking at you. So when you move your hand in the virtual reality world, it moves as your hand so it's natural. They threw me a ball and I had to catch it and I was able to do it because you saw your hands, you saw them moving naturally, the way they were moving, and they had to capture all those sensors of movement and sending through DDS from the cameras to your backpack. So the computer that you had in your pack could transform that in a smooth movement and show it in your glasses, so you will see your hands at the same time that they were moving.

Steven Onzo:

This seems like a similar use case for autonomous vehicles where you have sensors, LIDAR, radar and cameras - is that safe to say?

Sara Granados:

I feel a bit like this actor - I don't remember the name…”A Beautiful Mind.” I see patterns all around myself - that's what's happening. I go to visit that customer, like: “Oh, you’re seeing that in another totally different use case.” Like, I'm visiting a defense customer and they are explaining, it's like that - like this other truck company I was at yesterday. They have exactly the same kind of sensors, the same architecture, and we can solve that problem - and we have done it, so we can help them.

Steven Onzo:

I think that's interesting how you can have two completely different industries, however they are both trying to solve a similar problem.

Sara Granados:

Yes.

Steven Onzo:

That's great. Well, I think that's a great note to end on. Sara I want to thank you again for coming onto the podcast and talking a little bit about your role here at RTI, and I hope to have you back on soon.

Sara Granados:

Thank you.