Velkommen til LØRN.TECH, en lærings dugnad om teknologi og samfunn, med Silvija Seres og venner. 

Silvija Seres: Hello, and welcome to LØRN in collaboration with Cisco. My name is Silvija Seres, and our topic today is networks, and my guest is Frank Tuhus, who’s a system architect at Cisco, welcome Frank.

Frank Tuhus: Thank you, Silvija.

Silvija: We are going to talk about networks, but also about internet and things, connectivity and perhaps some other kind of data perspectives of network, and I’m hoping also that we can talk about the new aspects of your work that you’re discovering as we are speaking, because of the covid crisis. Are there any positive new surprises, have things changed for what you will be building or recommending after the crisis, et cetera. But let’s get to that in that time. So, I like to ask people to introduce themselves personally as well, because people care more about what you have to say if they can imagine the person behind the voice. So, if you could tell us about Frank, personally and professionally. 

Frank: Okay. So my name is Frank. I work as a solutions architect, a systems architect, with Cisco at the moment. I’ve been with the company for 20 years. i’m actually a trained builder, that's my education, but at some point it actually changed, my hobby became my job, i guess. Through some studying at university in Vestfold, I then joined Cisco 20 years ago. 

Silvija: When you say builder. As in building houses?

Frank: Building houses, yes. Carpenter. 

Silvija: So that also… Carpenter, very cool, very cool. That brings you then also close to this IoT side of networks and security. 

Frank: That has brought me closer to IoT in the last years, yes, very much so. I started off the first 10-15 within Cisco working with telecoms, these services provided, like Telenor and Telia in Norway. But I also had four years in the Middle East, covering the service provider in Saudi Arabia. 

Silvija: Okay. So, we didn’t touch the personal side of Frank. Do you have a weird hobby? That usually defines people quite well.

Frank: Weird hobby, hehe. I don’t know if sailing is a weird hobby, I don’t know.

Silvija: Not in Norway, but perhaps for the rest of the world. 

Frank: Maybe for the rest of the world. I live on a small island south of Oslo, about one hour south of Oslo, where we are quite close to the coast, and of course the boating and sailing are quite big parts of my leisure time, I would say. 

Silvija: Very cool. You do some music as well? As a listener or as a performer?

Frank: I am a performer. I played the trumpet, and I picked it up again. It's about 20 years ago since I played active, now I picked it up again the last couple of years, and I'm now playing in a jazz band, and also my son is in a marching band, so I'm following him as well.

Silvija: Marching band is a norwegian thing that I'm not… For children especially... But I’m not sure that our international listeners can relate to the same way as Norwegians, but we’ll get back to that in another podcast. So, Okay. So what do you do for Cisco, then?

Frank: So, solutions architect, covering what we define as IoT, so internet of things, what we are doing not only on the connectivity side, but also how we’re developing new services for our customers, together with our partners and our customers, I would say. But then surrounding around what we would define as internet of things. 

Silvija: Okay, so why does Cisco care about internet of things, and what is internet of things?

Frank: So I usually actually start off trying to define what IoT is. From this point onwards I will just be saying IoT, so internet of things. And I usually start off by comparing it to the normal internet, where… Also called the world wide web. So all the data, world wide web, has been created by us, by humans. So either by typing or uploading an image, uploading a video or playing some music, and uploading it as a content on the internet. The biggest difference with IoT, so the internet of things, is the thing. So, with IoT the data is actually being generated by the thing. The Machine. And the machine, in that sense, could be anything from a temperature sensor, like the one creating with Netatmo, which is a service providing data to even Yr in Norway, the weather forecast, but also the thing can be a sensor on maybe a patient staying at home, maybe in a quarantine situation like we're in at the moment. If you have an elderly person with a sensor that can recognize if a person is falling over, or are falling out of bed, or haven’t eaten for two days. Those kinds of sensors can also be machine generated data in IoT. And then through connectivity, and that is where i guess Cisco is coming into play as well, because all of these sensor machines generate all this data, and then through connectivity, of some kind, and I guess we’ll come back to that. But then the data has been transported up to some kind of an application, where value will be created. And, and the value can be anything from presenting data in a dashboard, but it can also be sending an ambulance to pick up a person that has fallen over.

Silvija: Ok. so I think the problem we have with IoT is that it's a little bit like every new disruptive technology, to begin with it looks like nonsense, you know… People said that nobody would want a car, because it’s ugly, it smelly, it's noisy,  until they understood that the car is something more than a horse, in the same way, you know, people talked about Mobile Phones versus phones, and phones versus telegrams, we talk about smartphones versus mobile phones. I think it’s really difficult for us to imagine how this will change our lives, because this will create both new needs, but also new services that will eventually become so standard that you won’t be able to live without them. But how do we drive this into the right direction?

Frank: So, one of the biggest challenges that I actually see with IoT, is that we have so many good developers, we have so many smart engineers, that will develop new things. And they, too often, and again this is my opinion, too often find a smart thing, and then try to figure out what they should do with this thing. How can I create value from this thing. Instead of taking the other approach, where you’re finding a problem and see if I create this value for everyone, one specific person or a community. We’ll have a look at this value, the problem we are solving, and then working backwards, and then we might end up with a thing. And then, because then you’re actually solving a problem, instead of just utilizing a thing. That is one of the things that I see as one of the bigger problems, that we’re starting in the wrong end. And of course by combining all of these services, we feel, and we’ve also started to see, that one plus one actually equals much more than two. Because you can then utilize data coming in from one sensor, and then you can trigger an action on a completely different thing, or part of your home, for instance. 

Silvija: Very cool, So how do you help your partners and your customers find that value?

Frank: That is of course… We have many different processes of working, everything from design thinking where we are actually working and discussing with the partner and customer to figure out how this will be accepted by the users, but very often we are actually.... Let’s take municipality, we are very often working with municipalities in the kingdom of Norway, where they have a challenge. They really have a challenge. They are spending too much time on physically visiting these locations to just check up on something, just to open a door and say “yep, everything looks ok” and then closing the door and driving to the next station. And then opening the same door, yep, looks OK. And then, a week later they’re doing the same round. And a week later, doing the same thing. So all of these repetitive, very costly, processes, this is also very often where we are bringing in the value. How can you automate this, and how can you digitize this. I can actually make that visit… You might even visit that location every hour instead of once a week. Because you are doing it by digital means. And again...

Silvija: Is it difficult to get the people to trust that these processes, once they are digitized and automated, are safe enough, efficient enough, to understand the value that they actually create?

Frank: Yes. And one of the bigger challenges, is of course that we are world champions in pilots. We are running pilots and trials and proof of values all over the place. And we are demonstrating that it's possible to solve it, but the bigger challenge is that once the pilot has been completed and we’re coming back into the organisation, the organisation is still the same. Meaning that all the people that you are actually trying to help, they haven't been involved and seen the benefit of the pilot, and the organisation is also probably organised the same way, and that is also where we see the challenge, because then they feel, I mean, come on they are humans, they are being sort of overtaken my machines and sensors, and this is the biggest challenge. So a perfect polit and program and development, also include the entire organisation, because when you’re digitizing something, you most probably need to make a big change in the organisation as well. Both with what people are doing and how much time they’re spending on each and every task, but also maybe who is actually doing what. So maybe one person that has been responsible for something the last 25 years, maybe he should find something more interesting to do, and open that door in a digital way. If it makes sense. 

Silvija: This discussion about the new jobs, new content creation, new value creation, i think is very important, because very often people are scared because there won't be a job for me, but there are new tasks. You have to understand the way that value is created in new ways to find these tasks. And I guess once you encourage people to find this new task, they may get more optimistic about their role in the future as well. 

Frank: 100% agree with you. And just a word that we have sort of chosen to use, digitisation. I mean, just the word is scary, isn't it. It's really… Sounds like we will be overtaken by digital machines, and its… I believe that you're pointing at a very important point. Everyone needs to embrace and realize that changes are happening, and yes, some processes will be taken over by automatic pressesses, but everyone will find even more interesting and exciting things to do. You might change what you've been doing for the last 25 years, but then again, you might actually then be leaving all the automated and repetitive task, and you might actually be doing something much more interesting than what you've been doing for the last 25 years.

Silvija: And the only condition is that you actually are willing to look for new things to do.

Frank: Yes. And that is one of the biggest challenges, that you have to be willing to take the risk and say that yes, I know that i've been working with this for a very long time, and this has been comfortable for me, I know what i'm doing, I'm a professional in what I'm doing, but it might actually be… so it’s kind of taking that step, and step out of what might be comforting, and embracing the fact that you will be learning something new, because that is one of the tasks, or one of the biggest challenges that we see at the moment. Or not challenges, but changes. That you have to be willing to learn new things, and new processes and new learnings, much more rapidly than you may have done before. 

Silvija: Okay, I have a question for you about one dilemma, or paradox, that I see when it comes to IoT. You mentioned to me those problems where people spend so much time discussing which carrier to use for IoT, and the… I don’t understand the problem at all, but the problem I do understand is that there doesn't seem to be a set of standards or protocols for how these IoT things talk with each other. Why can’t we create a protocol like we did for the internet?

Frank: That is a very… So yes, this is one of the dilemmas I see. And the question is not do we have technology enough. We have so much technology. And we have so many protocols. Both protocols for wired things that need something connected to them, but we also have protocols for wireless things. And there are so much discussion within the industry, and of course, we as a vendor, we are to blame as well, because we are always bringing out the best of what we can bring to the table of… This is… If we go 25 years back, we had the same challenge with the internet as well. Because then we had protocols, we had this big war between protocols and interfaces and those kinds of things, and at that time it might be called ATM, it might be called posh, it might be called some words that we have actually forgotten about. Because we… we just standardized into a few levels of protocols. And this is what will happen within IoT as well, and I do believe again that this industry is spending too much time, at the moment, arguing and quarreling about this fact, because I do believe-

Silvija: What I… I’m not sure it's possible to solve it very easily, because i think this is a war of giants, in a sense that they want to own the protocols, and in the world of internet we didn’t let the telco’s define the basic protocols and the old work around domaine names etc, there was an international body. Isn't it about time there is a similar body for internet of things, 

Frank: I do believe that the body’s actually there already, and I do believe that we are developing around that. But there are so many… we are still in the phase where we are too strong, too strong, and you mentioned a war with giants, there is too much money at stake, for someone here. Because the only thing that we know is that going forward we have to be able to share. we have to be able to cooperate, we have to be able to develop services together. Even if we are competitors in day one, we might develop services together in day two. But where we are at the moment, we are still dealing with too much competing instead of working together to develop services and solutions that will create the best value and solve the most of the problems. Because if we are doing that, then we can be cating all of this data with DHL, it doesn’t matter, because the whole thing is that we have to be able to create value for our customers, and patients, and students, and the mayor of the city, we can't do that by just selling a thing. Because we have to be creating value.

Silvija: Frank, you worked on digitalization of the municipalities in Norway and one of your colleagues had the ponínt, which I very much agree with, she said that actually the public sector in Norway is very advanced, and very ambitious in a way that they are digitizing. What are your experiences from this project, that we are very… perhaps can learn from and maybe be inspired by?

Frank: There are a lot of municipalities in cities within Norway that are quite advanced. But in other sectors they are lagging behind as well. And i do believe that the public sector within Norway, they are still a little bit working in silos, so one technical department is talking to some else, or not talking to someone else, they're just solving what they have been asked to solve, but then again we have so many people that are now really picking up and developing advanced services across municipalities, and bringing in sensor data from one department, and presenting them to the public in a public viewable way. They actually have sensors within, let’s say, a water station. That for the guys, or the ladies, that is managing this water station, it makes great value for them. Because it optimizes their job of actually providing water to the municipalities. But at the same time we often now start to take the same sensor data, and then present it to the human, or to the public, in a far different way. We are not saying that “ok so that pump station has been pumping 60.000 gallons of water” because for the public that is uninteresting. But you should then have an idea of the data, saying that in your area, the water is ok to drink, the light is green. Because that’s the water quality. Maybe that is much more important to the public around that area, than how fast the pump is actually pumping water. But the data is actually the same thing. The data is coming from the same sensor. And that process, that is now becoming better and better within Norway, we have so many people that are actually both developing services, but also sensors, and also new solutions and value.

Silvija: So basically what you’re saying is lots of good stuff. We are really good at collaborating, and we have good infrastructure and good tech skills, but we should work less in silos and work more on visualization and user experience, or user friendliness of services.

Frank: Yeah. Bringing value to also the public, not only to the technical running of the municipality.

Silvija: Alright. You say, also, that we have a lot of really good tech developers in Norway, what do you mean by that?

Frank: So there's a lot of companies, both small but also semi large ones, or at least medium sized, that are developing everything from sensors, the physical sensor that is measuring something, to people that is… and of course, we know that we are quite good at connectivity within Norway, I mean, we have service providers and telcare within the kingdom that has been part of developing the whole way of communicating. But at the same time, we also have smaller companies that are quite advanced in application development, in coding, in defining and utilizing the clouds out there. There are so many smaller companies around the country that are now working both together, as in two or three or four companies working together and collaborating and developing new services, but we also have the bigger companies, that are… So we have one example that one of the biggest real estate companies in Norway are now cooperating with smaller app developers, software developers, sensor developers, and actually creating new services for buildings within Norway. And I do believe that we don't have to go to India to get people to do the developing for us. Nothing wrong with India, but we also have so many knowledgeable people within Norway that can do just as good of a job, and even… Lately we’re even seeing that they are actually doing it at the same cost as well.

Silvija: I think if you start looking at the total cost, not only the development but also lifetime of the service, or the product, we are very competitive, simply because we have to find solutions that work really well long term. 

Frank: Correct.

Silvija: Can you recommend somewhere we can go to read or learn about these things?

Frank: So, first of all, of course being from a vendor, we do have our websites.

Silvija: I know you have really good… DevNet, I think Victoria talked about.

Frank: Yes, so we have developer.cisco.com, which is a really good source for how to develop new applications and utilize all the APIs and data sources that are within our solutions. There is also DevNet, and there there is a dedicated section for IoT, where you also see how we are developing both edge-applications but also our utilizing of some of the APIs within our solutions. From my more generic point, there is one, sort of, part of our public website Cisco.com/go/iot where you see everything that we are providing to the market that is described. That goes for hardware and connectivity and a lot of the applications and software that we are now developing. 

Silvija: Very good. Now, relating back to covid, do you have a perspective of the good, the bad, the ugly in terms of how we think about networks and IoT?

Frank: So, first of all, covid has made a dramatic impact on everyone, I guess, when it comes to how to run a digital family life, or digital school life, or digital office life. Because now everyone is trying to work from home, everyone that has the possibility of working from home, are doing that now. Of course there is a tremendous amount of people that are still providing all the services and help from their physical work places, but at the moment we are connecting and we are working closer together at home. So within this household it is me and my wife, and two kids. Trying to work at home at the same time. And of course, what we have seen is it puts some stress on the network when it comes to shared capacity. It’s not only on the connectivity side, but also on all of this fancy and very good collaboration platform, so everything from microsoft teams, to zoom to cisco webex to all of them. It has been putting tremendous stress on those kinds of applications. From an IoT point of view, covid… of course we are trying the best we can to help on the health sector, as much as possible to have people staying at home so they don’t have to be moved into hospitals or institutions, so we are remote taking care of them, and by doing so, there is quite lot of technology in place, not just to provide services, but also to sensor on the patients themselves. 

Silvija: One of the solutions that was aired in the aftermath of, you know, Korea’s really good treatment of this, is that we could put in tracing on people and make sure that we track, you know, the spread of the virus that way. But some of this stuff is impossible to implement in a country that kind of values privacy as much as Norway. What do you think?

Frank: Yeah, I do believe that… So… If we look at it, yes it is possible to put a sensor in a person and figure out if they have covid or not, it is possible. But really, should we do it? That is a big, big question. Because by doing so, you will also be… And we shouldn’t use the word “tracking”, by the way, we should be using the word “monitoring”, it sounds much better even if it’s the same thing. So… I am a little bit reluctant on taking that use of technology, because of the challenges it puts on privacy.

Silvija: I completely agree with you. So, we have to kind of round up this session quite quickly. I’d like to ask you first if you have a quote that... If you were asked to write something next to your bed, this is the first thing you’ll see every day, what would you like to see there?

Frank: “It’s not the lack of technology that is the issue” Hehe.

Silvija: I know exactly what you mean, we have enough technology for everybody’s needs, it’s more about knowing what to do with it, and knowing what is a good thing to do with it.

Frank: Correct.

Silvija: The correct completion of the sentence I started is actually quite sinistary, it is “we have enough technology for everybody’s needs, but not enough technology for everybody’s greed.” And that is as well an important part of... What I think is going on now is, you know, we who develop technology have to make sure it's used not just for commercial purposes and colorization of power and money, but also for good. 

Frank: We have to create some value. We have to solve some problems. By doing so, there will also be… This is in the other end, but to be able to provide service towards market, we have to create some value, some real value, and not only utilize a thing.

Silvija: Yeah, and i think this thing about creating social value versus monetary value is something that markets don’t know how to measure, and that i think is where we come in, and debate, at least

Frank: Hehe. 

Silvija: If you were to summarize our conversation in a sentence or two, what would you say?

Frank: So first of all, I thank you, I think it’s been very interesting to have these kinds of dialogues, and how we are utilizing different parts of technology… To summarize it, I do believe that digitization and also IoT will be… It is big already, but it will be an even bigger part of our daily lives, because more and more measurements and services will be based out of automated readings of some kind of a sensor, and then providing value maybe in a far different location. And I do believe that we haven't seen the tip of the iceberg yet. This will just bring more and more and more value into our lives, and it should be very interesting to actually see how this will go over the years, but it will just continue if you ask me.

Silvija: Very good. Frank Tuhus, thank you so much for joining us here in LØRN, and inspiring us to think about social value in internet of things and networks. 

Frank: Thank you, Silvija. Thank you so much for having me.

Silvija: And thank you for listening.

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