(click) >> Hey welcome back everybody, Jeff Frick here with the Cube we're at the Accenture Technology Vision event 2018. The actual report comes out in a couple of days. We're here at the preview event. A couple hundred people in downtown San Francisco. A lot of demos of AR and VR downstairs. It's really a center kind of highlighting the top trends that they've surveyed their community and we're excited to be here to be joined by one of the experts. He's Tony Parisi, on the Cube a long time ago we looked at 2013 amazing. He's the global head of AR and VR for Unity technology. Tony great to see you again. >> Good to see you. >> So uh, so you've been on this AR VR virtual reality thing for a while. Amazing development in this space. >> I've been working in the field for a couple decades now in one form or another and it's just been great to see with the resurgence of virtual reality. And we had experiments 20 years ago trying to turn this into a consumer ready technology. Really wasn't ready yet. With the advent of oculus and some of these other technologies, we've seen something that a consumer could afford that enterprises can afford in large numbers. You know, some thousand dollar piece of hardware connected to a personal computer that's a few thousand dollars that can drive amazing VR experiences. These same kind of immersion techniques brought into a phone where you can take a smartphone and just look through it like a magic window into this extended reality where you're seeing 3D graphics that persist in the environment around you. And these are all working toward the future where we're going to have all this 3D amazingness. Digital magic in front of us. And it's just incredible to see how far we've come in all these years and how it's just about to be both consumer ready and be deployed into businesses for all kinds of different productivity opportunities. >> Yeah it's interesting >> Amazing - that a center role them all up into one. They went with the extended reality. Cause there's a lot of confusion, is it augmented reality, virtual reality you know, how much of it is virtual stuff overlayed to reality, how much reality is brought back into the virtual space. But at the end of the day it's a lot of blending. It's going to depend on the application. >> Definitely depends on the application. If you just take marketing terms and put them aside because everyone's got their own talking about this and agreed there's a little bit of confusion right now. If you just look at the common element, it is 3D graphics. It is graphics that represent objects, environments, places, people in a way that's much more realistic. It's much more intuitive for an enuser to grasp that touches us in our brains, in a place that a flat screen doesn't so that we remember it better, or learn it more effectively. That's what all of these different techniques have in common. So, you know, call it what you want. Accenture's rolling forward with all of that. My company Unity's supplying the core technology to power all of that across 30 platforms and you look at the whole industry. Game platforms, which is where we were born. And now in the VR and AR it's you know, a dozen platforms at least that look like they could be viable. The common element for anybody who's developing is that it's 3D graphics and they're going to make investments in certain kinds of software, certain kinds of application design and techniques and knowledge that's going to transfer among all of these different kinds of hardware platforms. Because we know at the end of the day there'll be a handful there will be 3 or 4 that end up dominating just like in any other part of the computer industry with any other digital technology. So, you know we're moment because it's so early where the technology um, we don't know how to talk about it yet. But I think if you look back, probably the same thing was true of mobile and the PC at the time if you were in the middle of it. - Right >> People call it the PC, or they called it the internet, or they called it the web, or then they called it mobile or a smartphone. You know, there's just all these terms for it but that, you know, that'll be in the the rear view mirror in a couple years. And we'll just all take this for granted as, oh there's 3D stuff now in front of us. Or there's a 3D place I go into in a VR headset. >> Yeah even we were at Baobab Studios last week and, you know, even in entertainment right? Early early television replicated just a stage right? And early movies replicated just a stage before they figured out what they could do with the medium. Same thing here and it's interestingly common, how much is interactive kind of game-like. How much of it's narrative storytelling like a movie. And he's like, don't think of it that way. It's a completely different medium with a completely different opportunity to tell stories, to do things in a completely different way. >> One hundred percent. That team at Baobab is amazing. They use Unity a lot to create their experiences. And they're the first to tell you, we don't quite know what it's going to look like in a few years. We're trying lot's of things, we are going to start from some, you know touchstones, some places we already know. Game design, linear storytelling. But this is a different beast and we don't know what we're going to get. Baobab is a great example of a company that's not afraid to experiment. They're going to try and put you, I mean, what they do is they make Pixar kind of quality, high production value animated content like a Pixar movie but you're in it in VR. You can look all around, you can see the entire action unfolding around you. And more than that, they've made you a part of the story. They make you a character. Usually a secondary character. So the whole burden is not on you as the viewer to have to figure this story out. But someone who can help the story along so you feel fully involved. And if you play that forward, if you think about where that's going to go in a few years, we may be the folks who are making the stories up. I mean, it starts with just kind of being a secondary character, but as we learn this as users, as we learn how to do this, we may start making the stories up and being a much more active part of it. But, somehow still having that sweet spot where we're giving the director and the content creator the final say in sort of how this world is being created. Uh, Brett Letter the famous director did Lawnmower Man if you know his work in a 90s work in a movie about VR. He's back in the world here also doing VR again. And he likens this to world building. He thinks VR creation for entertainment is much more like creating a Disney theme park. A world that you can inhabit and be part of and have fun for hours, days at a time versus telling one story from start to finish. So I mean, think about it what's going to happen in the next couple years. It's mind blowing where this could go. And we really don't know, none of us could predict. >> So you're deep into it Tony. I wonder if you could share a story of maybe some applications that you're seeing in production or kind of in development. Where people are not thinking, you know, men like me obviously we know entertainment, we know games, we know some of the industrial stuff like walking a shop floor and seeing the RPMs of a machine. But what are some of the applications that we don't know that you see coming down the pipe. >> Well if you just think about take one industry, like the auto industry. Right? I think you can imagine like you said if you're somewhat versed in this. The idea that you could use virtual reality to design a car instead of what they do today which is they use some 3D design packages but they still build a physical prototype of the car out of clay and, you know, companywide a Ford, or a Volkswagon, or a company like that will spend millions for every new car building these physical prototypes. They want to replace that with purely digital and virtual processes at some point which is going to save them a heck of a lot of time and money and materials cost. Right? But now you just take that one example and you take that car design and do the entire life cycle of that car to when it's assembled, manufactured, you can train people in VR how to do that. When it's getting rolled out onto a show floor, to people who are selling it. All the way to when that car is a self driving car that you put somebody into and they get in the cabin of that thing and the cabin because there's no driver in there, you now have a lot of room in there. Right? It's an entertainment center. So these kind of augmented and virtual reality technologies could potentially touch every phase in the lifecycle of not just the development, but the deployment, and the ongoing operation of a motor vehicle as we know it. So that's going to radically transform things sometime in the next 5 to 10 years. >> Alright Tony I'm going to let you go, the party's underway. We got the autonomous robots are playing in the band. In 5 years from now we can't wait 5 years because I don't even know what's going to be here. >> I hope we do this again. >> It'll be crazy different. - Well in advance of 5 years from now. >> So thanks for talking with me a few minutes. Tony Parisi, Jeff Rick, you're watching the Cube from the Accenture Technology Vision 2018. Thanks for watching. (upbeat digital music)

>> Welcome back to the program. My name is Dave Valante and in this session, we're going to explore one of the more interesting topics of the day. IoT for Smart Factories. And with me are, Todd Edmunds,the Global CTO of Smart Manufacturing Edge and Digital Twins at Dell Technologies. That is such a cool title. (chuckles) I want to be you. And Dr. Aditi Banerjee, who's the Vice President, General Manager for Aerospace Defense and Manufacturing at DXC Technology. Another really cool title. Folks, welcome to the program. Thanks for coming on. >> Thanks Dave. >> Thank you. Great to be here. >> Nice to be here. >> Todd, let's start with you. We hear a lot about Industry 4.0, Smart Factories, IIoT. Can you briefly explain, what is Industry 4.0 all about and why is it important for the manufacturing industry? >> Yeah. Sure, Dave. You know, it's been around for quite a while and it's gone by multiple different names, as you said. Industry 4.0, Smart Manufacturing, Industrial IoT, Smart Factory. But it all really means the same thing, its really applying technology to get more out of the factories and the facilities that you have to do your manufacturing. So, being much more efficient, implementing really good sustainability initiatives. And so, we really look at that by saying, okay, what are we going to do with technology to really accelerate what we've been doing for a long, long time? So it's really not- it's not new. It's been around for a long time. What's new is that manufacturers are looking at this, not as a one-of, two-of individual Use Case point of view but instead they're saying, we really need to look at this holistically, thinking about a strategic investment in how we do this. Not to just enable one or two Use Cases, but enable many many Use Cases across the spectrum. I mean, there's tons of them out there. There's Predictive maintenance and there's OEE, Overall Equipment Effectiveness and there's Computer Vision and all of these things are starting to percolate down to the factory floor, but it needs to be done in a little bit different way and really to really get those outcomes that they're looking for in Smart Factory or Industry 4.0 or however you want to call it. And truly transform, not just throw an Industry 4.0 Use Case out there but to do the digital transformation that's really necessary and to be able to stay relevant for the future. I heard it once said that you have three options. Either you digitally transform and stay relevant for the future or you don't and fade into history. Like, 52% of the companies that used to be on the Fortune 500 since 2000. Right? And so, really that's a key thing and we're seeing that really, really being adopted by manufacturers all across the globe. >> Yeah. So, Aditi, it's like digital transformation is almost synonymous with business transformation. So, is there anything you'd add to what Todd just said? >> Absolutely. Though, I would really add that what really drives Industry 4.0 is the business transformation. What we are able to deliver in terms of improving the manufacturing KPIs and the KPIs for customer satisfaction, right? For example, improving the downtime or decreasing the maintenance cycle of the equipments or improving the quality of products, right? So, I think these are lot of business outcomes that our customers are looking at while using Industry 4.0 and the technologies of Industry 4.0 to deliver these outcomes. >> So, Aditi, I wonder if I could stay with you and maybe this is a bit esoteric but when I first first started researching IoT and Industrial IoT 4.0, et cetera, I felt, well, there could be some disruptions in the ecosystem. I kind of came to the conclusion that large manufacturing firms, Aerospace Defense companies the firms building out critical infrastructure actually had kind of an incumbent advantage and a great opportunity. Of course, then I saw on TV somebody now they're building homes with 3D printers. It like blows your mind. So that's pretty disruptive. But, so- But they got to continue, the incumbents have to continue to invest in the future. They're well-capitalized. They're pretty good businesses, very good businesses but there's a lot of complexities involved in kind of connecting the old house to the new addition that's being built, if you will, or this transformation that we're talking about. So, my question is, how are your customers preparing for this new era? What are the key challenges that they're facing in the the blockers, if you will? >> Yeah, I mean the customers are looking at Industry 4.0 for Greenfield Factories, right? That is where the investments are going directly into building the factories with the new technologies, with the new connectivities, right? For the machines, for example, Industrial IoT having the right type of data platforms to drive computational analytics and outcomes, as well as looking at Edge versus Cloud type of technologies, right? Those are all getting built in the Greenfield Factories. However, for the Install-Based Factories, right? That is where our customers are looking at how do I modernize these factories? How do I connect the existing machine? And that is where some of the challenges come in on the legacy system connectivity that they need to think about. Also, they need to start thinking about cybersecurity and operation technology security because now you are connecting the factories to each other. So, cybersecurity becomes top of mind, right? So, there is definitely investment that is involved. Clients are creating roadmaps for digitizing and modernizing these factories and investments in a very strategic way. So, perhaps they start with the innovation program and then they look at the business case and they scale it up, right? >> Todd, I'm glad you did brought up security, because if you think about the operations technology folks, historically they air-gaped the systems, that's how they created security. That's changed. The business came in and said, 'Hey, we got to connect. We got to make it intelligence.' So, that's got to be a big challenge as well. >> It absolutely is, Dave. And, you know, you can no longer just segment that because really to get all of those efficiencies that we talk about, that IoT and Industrial IoT and Industry 4.0 promise, you have to get data out of the factory but then you got to put data back in the factory. So, no longer is it just firewalling everything is really the answer. So, you really have to have a comprehensive approach to security, but you also have to have a comprehensive approach to the Cloud and what that means. And does it mean a continuum of Cloud all the way down to the Edge, right down to the factory? It absolutely does. Because no one approach has the answer to everything. The more you go to the Cloud the broader the attack surface is. So, what we're seeing is a lot of our customers approaching this from kind of that hybrid right ones run anywhere on the factory floor down to the Edge. And one of the things we're seeing too, is to help distinguish between what is the Edge and bridge that gap between, like, Dave, you talked about IT and OT and also help what Aditi talked about is the Greenfield Plants versus the Brownfield Plants that they call it, that are the legacy ones and modernizing those. It's great to kind of start to delineate what does that mean? Where's the Edge? Where's the IT and the OT? We see that from a couple of different ways. We start to think about really two Edges in a manufacturing floor. We talk about an Industrial Edge that sits... or some people call it a Far Edge or a Thin Edge, sits way down on that plant, consists of industrial hardened devices that do that connectivity. The hard stuff about how do I connect to this obsolete legacy protocol and what do I do with it? And create that next generation of data that has context. And then we see another Edge evolving above that, which is much more of a data and analytics and enterprise grade application layer that sits down in the factory itself; that helps figure out where we're going to run this? Does it connect to the Cloud? Do we run Applications On-Prem? Because a lot of times that On-Prem Application it needs to be done. 'Cause that's the only way that it's going to work because of security requirements, because of latency requirements performance and a lot of times, cost. It's really helpful to build that Multiple-Edge strategy because then you kind of, you consolidate all of those resources, applications, infrastructure, hardware into a centralized location. Makes it much, much easier to really deploy and manage that security. But it also makes it easier to deploy new Applications, new Use Cases and become the foundation for DXC'S expertise and Applications that they deliver to our customers as well. >> Todd, how complex are these projects? I mean, I feel like it's kind of the the digital equivalent of building the Hoover Dam. I mean, its.. so yeah. How long does a typical project take? I know it varies, but what are the critical success factors in terms of delivering business value quickly? >> Yeah, that's a great question in that we're- you know, like I said at the beginning, this is not new. Smart Factory and Industry 4.0 is not new. It's been, it's people have been trying to implement the Holy Grail of Smart Factory for a long time. And what we're seeing is a switch, a little bit of a switch or quite a bit of a switch to where the enterprises and the IT folks are having a much bigger say and they have a lot to offer to be able to help that complexity. So, instead of deploying a computer here and a Gateway there and a Server there, I mean, you go walk into any manufacturing plant and you can see Servers sitting underneath someone's desk or a PC in a closet somewhere running a critical production application. So, we're seeing the enterprise have a much bigger say at the table, much louder voice at the table to say, we've been doing this enterprise all the time. We know how to really consolidate, bring Hyper-Converged Applications, Hyper-Converged Infrastructure to really accelerate these kind of applications. Really accelerate the outcomes that are needed to really drive that Smart Factory and start to bring that same capabilities down into the Mac on the factory floor. That way, if you do it once to make it easier to implement, you can repeat that. You can scale that. You can manage it much easily and you can then bring that all together because you have the security in one centralized location. So, we're seeing manufacturers that first Use Case may be fairly difficult to implement and we got to go down in and see exactly what their problems are. But when the infrastructure is done the correct way when that- Think about how you're going to run that and how are you going to optimize the engineering. Well, let's take that what you've done in that one factory and then set. Let's make that across all the factories including the factory that we're in, then across the globe. That makes it much, much easier. You really do the hard work once and then repeat. Almost like cookie cutter. >> Got it. Thank you. >> Aditi, what about the skillsets available to apply these to these projects? You got to have knowledge of digital, AI, Data, Integration. Is there a talent shortage to get all this stuff done? >> Yeah, I mean, definitely. Lot different types of skillsets are needed from a traditional manufacturing skillset, right? Of course, the basic knowledge of manufacturing is important. But the digital skillsets like IoT, having a skillset in in different Protocols for connecting the machines, right? That experience that comes with it. Data and Analytics, Security, Augmented Virtual Reality Programming. Again, looking at Robotics and the Digital Twin. So, the... It's a lot more connectivity software, data-driven skillsets that are needed to Smart Factory to life at scale. And, you know, lots of firms are recruiting these types of resources with these skill sets to accelerate their Smart Factory implementation, as well as consulting firms like DXC Technology and others. We recruit, we train our talent to provide these services. >> Got it. Aditi, I wonder if we could stay on you. Let's talk about the partnership between DXC and Dell. What are you doing specifically to simplify the move to Industry 4.0 for customers? What solutions are you offering? How are you working together, Dell and DXC to bring these to market? >> Yeah, Dell and DXC have a very strong partnership and we work very closely together to create solutions, to create strategies and how we are going to jointly help our clients, right? So, areas that we have worked closely together is Edge Compute, right? How that impacts the Smart Factory. So, we have worked pretty closely in that area. We're also looked at Vision Technologies. How do we use that at the Edge to improve the quality of products, right? So, we have several areas that we collaborate in and our approaches that we want to bring solutions to our client and as well as help them scale those solutions with the right infrastructure, the right talent and the right level of security. So, we bring a comprehensive solution to our clients. >> So, Todd, last question. Kind of similar but different, you know. Why Dell, DXC, pitch me? What's different about this partnership? Where are you confident that you're going to be to deliver the best value to customers? >> Absolutely. Great question. You know, there's no shortage of Bespoke Solutions that are out there. There's hundreds of people that can come in and do individual Use Cases and do these things and just, and that's where it ends. What Dell and DXC Technology together bring to the table is we do the optimization of the engineering of those previously Bespoke Solutions upfront, together. The power of our scalable enterprise grade structured industry standard infrastructure, as well as our expertise in delivering package solutions that really accelerate with DXC's expertise and reputation as a global trusted advisor. Be able to really scale and repeat those solutions that DXC is so really, really good at. And Dell's infrastructure and our, 30,000 people across the globe that are really, really good at that scalable infrastructure to be able to repeat. And then it really lessens the risk that our customers have and really accelerates those solutions. So it's again, not just one individual solutions it's all of the solutions that not just drive Use Cases but drive outcomes with those solutions. >> Yeah, you're right. The partnership has gone, I mean I first encountered it back in, I think it was 2010. May of 2010. We had guys both on the, I think you were talking about converged infrastructure and I had a customer on, and it was actually the manufacturing customer. It was quite interesting. And back then it was how do we kind of replicate what's coming in the Cloud? And you guys have obviously taken it into the digital world. Really want to thank you for your time today. Great conversation and love to have you back. >> Thank you so much. It was a pleasure speaking with you. I agree. >> All right, keep it right there for more discussions that educate and inspire on "The Cube."