Advancing Industrial IoT: Vikram Chopra on Shibodi’s Role in the Telecom Revolution

Ever wondered how mobile communication has evolved from the simple calls of 1G to the transformative power of 5G? Join us for an enlightening conversation with Vikram Chopra, co-founder and CEO of Shibodi, as he takes us through this technological journey. We'll dive into the evolution of mobile networks, from 1G's rudimentary cellular calls to 4G's real-time, on-demand services, and explore the promise of 5G's network programmability. Vikram shares how Shibodi's platform is leading the way in creating network-aware applications, setting the stage for the next wave of telecom industry innovations.

But that's not all. We also explore the massive potential of programmable networks and automation across various sectors. Discover how cutting-edge technologies like drones, AGVs, and robots are revolutionizing safety and efficiency, particularly in dangerous environments such as mining. Learn about the critical role of 5G and Wi-Fi advancements in the industrial IoT landscape and digital transformation. We emphasize the need for a collaborative ecosystem involving operators and technology providers to fully leverage these advancements. Tune in to grasp the future of programmable networks and the limitless possibilities they offer.

More at https://linktr.ee/EvanKirstel

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:02

Hey everybody, really exciting topic today about unlocking the power of advanced communication networks with Shabody Vikram. How are you? I'm doing great, my friend. Pleasure to be here, pleasure to have you here. Happy Friday everyone, and this is a topic near and dear to my heart as someone who's watched the evolution from 1G or 0G actually, to 5G over the decades. You're doing really exciting work. Before that, maybe introduce yourself and your mission at Shibodi.

Speaker 2: 0:35

So Vikram Chopra, co-founder and CEO of Shibodi, if I think about it, let me add say a non-business lens to it. Shibodi is probably the culminative journey of not just myself, heartbeat, my co-founder, cto Ramesh, our president, and actually anyone in our company, whether it's investors, advisors or key employees. All of us have, I would say, long careers in telecom. Most of my colleagues, even me I always joke I'm still the relatively young gun on the team, but between all of our key team members there's several decades of experience just working in the telecom industry. So, as you said, you mentioned right 1G to 2G, we're at 5G, we're already talking about 6G. There's been an evolution.

Speaker 1: 1:25

And so a lot of it, some of the body of work we've all done over the last few decades, kind of brought us together for this mission of Shibodi. That's a wonderful journey, and maybe start by explaining your mission, your platform, an application enablement platform. What is it and how does it sort of enhance network-aware applications.

Speaker 2: 1:40

Sure, and before I do that, let me kind of take you to a timeline, right, because it's a whole 1G thing, right? What does the G really mean? So, if you think about it, what 1G gave us what I call was the smartphone. Now, back then, the phone was bigger than my face. I always joked, I've always had a bit of a Pac-Man head, minus the intelligence but it allowed you and I to make cellular calls. What was 2G? Well, 2g gave you the ability to split voice and data. What that meant in English is well, a bunch of very intelligent people out of Waterloo built a device called the BlackBerry that allowed you and I to send and receive encrypted emails. Palm did the same. If you think about it, what 2G really did was transform and enable, for the first time, a truly mobile workforce. I can, on the go, send and receive emails, send SMSs, communicate in real time, change how we work to communicate it. Today, 3g took it forward.

Speaker 2: 2:28

Now, I went to college in the early 2000s, so I kind of remember I wanted internet. I had to go to the local radio shop. I wanted my Microsoft Office. Same thing, I wanted my QuickBooks and I put it into something called a CD-ROM. So if you think the revolution, that 3G bought it, we didn't have smartphones, we didn't have tablets, we just had smartphones, desktops and laptops, but any on-premise business application can be now downloaded to an internet-enabled device. In some ways, completely dinosaur the CD-ROM.

Speaker 2: 3:00

Now we go to 4G and let's put it this way. And let's put it this way Zoom, uber, netflix, doordash, skip the Dishes. Just naming Instagram, snapchat, just naming a bunch of applications that probably kept us mentally occupied during the pandemic. That was a revolution for us. We take something like Uber and it actually applies kind of like what Shibu did. What made Uber so successful? Because a 4G and LT network gave you the ability to get on-demand geolocation data and a bunch of smart engineers were like, hey, can I take that network and create an application that allows users to call a taxi on-demand and track it in real time? And then now again it's about how do you enable network services? Well, the problem was back then, and the killer use case for this was push to talk. Whether I'm Uber, whether I'm on, say, lyft, skip the dishes, doordash, push to talk, push to SMS, was a killer use case. Whatsapp did the same thing, but the problem back then was holy.

Speaker 2: 3:59

If I'm on WhatsApp and jumping onto a call or I'm on Uber and I want to communicate with my driver, am I on a T-Mobile network? Is it a landline? Is it SDN? Is it long distance? Is it voice over IP? Is it a local T-Mobile land? But then I'm actually calling someone in Europe that could be a British telecom. The point is there's a lot of complexity and a company by the name of Trulia is like don't worry about that, don't worry about if it's an AT&T network, a T-Mobile network, don't worry about the operator anywhere in the world. Just integrate Twilio's very simple APIs and now you WhatsApp user can do push to call. Now you Uber user, you can call directly your taxi bed or send a message. That's a value of that's exactly how I call it 4G did.

Speaker 2: 4:43

It made streaming, on-demand, dual-dutation, real-time and enabled a whole bunch of useful services used today. Which brings us to 5G and why 5G is so critical. 5g represents something called network programmability. Now, network programmability didn't actually begin with 5G. It actually began with something called Release 14, advanced LTE. What network programmability very simply means?

Speaker 2: 5:04

I'll give you two examples. I'm going to give you a very basic, simple consumer use case example. Then I'll give you an enterprise example. Let's take someone at home. You and I are right now on this video call. I'm doing it in the office but let's say hypothetically I was doing this at home. My wife also is in the mental health industry, so she does a lot of online sessions. She's also on a Zoom call Babysitting my nephew. So let's say he's watching Netflix. So I would say, in terms of network priority, my nephew, because if he can't watch Netflix no one's getting peace. Then let's say you know what my wife, let's say her Zoom calls.

Speaker 2: 5:38

The point is the internet network is finite. Now you know what the good thing is. My nephew needs the internet for the next three hours, but my Zoom calls actually at one o'clock, my wife's at two o'clock. Is there a way to tell my network? Can you prioritize the network traffic at one o'clock for Vikram's online call and then, at two o'clock, do the same and in parallel, whatever network resources, prioritize it for my nephew to watch Netflix? We can't do that today.

Speaker 2: 6:10

Now apply that in a manufacturing setting where you've got thousands of devices and sensors that are 5G enabled, you've got basically robotic assembly lines, you've got AGVs and then you've got technicians walking around with laptops and iPads where they're getting a real-time view. How does a network know what to prioritize in real-time? So this is the beginning of 5G and a term we call network programmability. Is that okay? In real-time, can the network be programmed? Can the applications tell the network in real-time what I need at that specific instance?

Speaker 2: 6:38

Without that, it's what we call something called best effort. You're guessing? Okay, I think these robotic arms need X bandwidth. These AGVs sitting on the side, I would say they need this much latency. You're guessing it? Great. But in a real-time environment, when everything's going from the network, even though you're dedicating and you're assuming that this robotic arm needs X bandwidth, does the network even have resources to give them that level of network coverage? We don't know. So this is what happens is either your network's going to crash or going to keep deploying more and more radios and expanding your network, which gets expensive, and it's one reason why the industry has struggled to find the ROI. So that's why you said the value isn't in 5G being a bigger pipe. The value is that's an intelligent pipe.

Speaker 2: 7:21

So that same robotic arm that's, let's say, assembling a vehicle, that robotic arm ran out of a part. Now there's 20 AGVs sitting idle. All of a sudden, can we task two AGVs One's going to go to point A, pick up a part and deliver it to point B where the robotic arm is waiting. If that robotic arm doesn't get that part, well, we're going to have to shut down a production, cost us business, cost us productivity, we're behind schedule, we're going to lose revenue. So can we in real? So okay, robotic arm needs bandwidth in real time. Can we prioritize latency for that ADB to deliver that part just for the next 20 minutes. Once it delivers a part, we can give that network resource back to a different application. So the ability to do that in real time is what 5G provides.

Speaker 2: 8:06

Now the only thing I'll add is that network programmability is not just restricted to 5G, obviously LTE, but even non-3GP standards such as Wi-Fi and even satellite network programmability. So the challenges today is networks are multi-vendor. So it could be an Ericsson network, could be a Nokia network, could be a hybrid. In an enterprise it's usually hybrid where you can have a core from one vendor and a radio from another. So networks are multi-vendor. All of them provide their own APIs. So if a developer builds an application on one network, how does he assume that the application will work on a different network? Number two networks how does he assume that the application will work on a different network? Number two networks are not just 5G, especially in, say, in manufacturing, mining. It's hybrid, at least for the next decade.

Speaker 2: 8:50

You're not going to see too many pure play 5G networks. For example, in manufacturing it's a combination of Wi-Fi, 5g and LTE. Most of the deployments we've seen are hybrid. So, hey, in that same network, can I assume my app, my network-aware application, works on Wi-Fi, 5g and whatever network. And three, the network might be the same but multi-operator. So if I'm a manufacturer, I might deploy my network with one carry in one region, but in a different part of the world. It's a different network. Can the applications be consistent?

Speaker 2: 9:22

And on the fourth piece, I'll talk about standardization. You've got 3GP, you've got Camaro, you've got GSMA, you have TMF form. All of them, in their own ways, are trying to find some level of standardization. The problem is for the end developer, this is way too complicated. So what Shibuti is simple and we're the first to market. We've been doing this since 2020, is we provide a very simple, trivialized API, very similar to what Twilio did a decade ago to the end developer. Now the developer doesn't care. It's a 5G network, it's Wi-Fi, it's satellite. Is it a vendor network with a specific core radio combination or a different networking configuration? Three in respect of the standards. I built an application on Shibuti. Now it'll work across the board. That, I would say, is kind of like the challenge in our industry and what Shibuti is specifically solving. Does that make sense?

Speaker 1: 10:12

Yeah, very well said, really intriguing. So you're bridging the gap between application developers and network engineers, typically two different camps who didn't necessarily talk to each other. You're doing that through APIs, and so what's happening behind the scenes in your platform and your technology? How does that work exactly?

Speaker 2: 10:33

Well, I always like the bugs. It's funny. I was having dinner with my grandma yesterday, so I tried to explain to my grandma what I do as an API. That too, in Hindi and Punjabi. It was quite the same. So it's very simple, right? I gave my grandmother the comparison. The chef is the network. He's cooking something up. The consumer is just a person's order. Someone's ordered a nice filet mignon. I need a quality of demand API to power my robotic arm. Well, the waiter, the one who delivers the services, is the API.

Speaker 2: 11:07

So, if you think about it, we've got these very complex networks and, as you said, historically developers have built applications in a vacuum, irrespective. They just take what the network gives you. Now, for the first time, that developer can build an application that can dynamically request network resources from the network Latency, latency, bandwidth, packet flow, security. In some ways, latency, bandwidth is a term we all started with. There's up to 20, 30 different standards and protocols you can manipulate in real time based on the application. So, if you think about it, shibuti, really is that magic wand? It's kind of like the Harry Potter world. We can teach you to use magic, but you still need that magic wand to actually tap into magic. Think of the Shibuti API as that bridge where the application developer can tap into the power of these programmable networks, but he doesn't have to be an expert.

Speaker 2: 11:57

And why this is critical is that, yes, there are companies in the world, whether if you're someone from a Cisco or a Nokia or a Dell, you'll probably understand networks and applications. But you're an enterprise. Your bread and butter is you build seats for some of the biggest manufacturers in the world. You know manufacturing, but you're not necessarily a networking group. How many engineers would you have to have on staff that can both understand networks and applications? And then they might be experts in one network. Hey, this guy is an expert on any Nokia core. So-and-so is really good on any Samsung radio, but do you have a developer who knows all that skill set? So either you're going to have to have teams of developers, hundreds of developers, trained on both application and networks, and then you're manually hard coding, or you use something like Shibuti that takes care of all of that other complexity.

Speaker 2: 12:44

Another example I'm giving, which is a non-Telco example, is Square and Stripe. 15 years ago, if you're a payment engineer, integrating payments was a nightmare. I mean, it was a great income for a lot of payment engineers. You had to integrate the MasterCard API, you had to integrate the Visa API, you had to be PCI compliant. A lot of complexity. Square and Stripe came on and said don't worry about that, integrate our three, four APIs. We will take care of all the integration, all the upgrades, with any payment vendor. But now, if you're an e-commerce store, you can enable online payments in hours, if not days, before it takes weeks, if not months.

Speaker 1: 13:22

Wow, it's a mic drop moment there. So you talk a lot about manufacturing, where the benefits of network-aware applications, as you call them, are pretty profound, but there must be many other use cases in different industries and verticals. Different use cases. What are you seeing there outside of traditional manufacturing requirements?

Speaker 2: 13:45

So, yeah, definitely, manufacturing is, I would say, an early adopter for 5G, but the adoption has been slow because in manufacturing it's not just a network. You've got a lot of legacy equipment. So as manufacturers start becoming more and more automated, you'll have the need for 5G. That's why I would say it's a need that's emerging, but it's not fully there. But I'll give you some other. So, basically, if you think about any industry that requires a certain level of automation and is deploying whether they're deploying drones, agvs and more and more robots and I'm not saying the robots replaced me human example in the mining industry, it's like you don't want to send a human into a mine again because unfortunately there's a human cost in terms of a life. But more importantly, if, for example, there's a, if you lose a life in a, the mine shuts down for years, if not indebted, wow. So there's a major economic but human cost. So we're not saying let's get rid of the miner, we're saying, okay, can a miner sit above ground, control an AGV 30 kilometers down into a subterranean mine? So driverless vehicles, but the driver is still controlling it above ground. That's another use case and that's again where you need these kind of programmable networks.

Speaker 2: 14:55

Another use case that I really like is actually emerging and this is an example of hybrid networks is in stadiums, right? So a lot of stadiums it's a use case you're working on. You have a sports team, let's say in this case it's a racing car. This stadium's got a private network, it's a public. This stadium's got a private network, it's a public. They've got Wi-Fi, 5g and satellite. Because the problem when you've got 30,000 fans, they're all streaming, they're ordering food, there's a lot of load on the network. But when these race cars, they're doing their race, they come to that pit, they have 30 seconds for the data uplink and download.

Speaker 2: 15:29

How does a network know, okay, over all of the internet traffic at that moment? How do we prioritize in real time that for those 30 seconds, the quality on demand? And we've got a 5G network, we've got satellite, we've got Wi-Fi, maybe whichever network is available, can you prioritize those resources for that point? Because the race and, more importantly, the human safety, the car vehicle, all that is critical. So this is an example of one use case where it's multi-vendor, multi-network, where Shibuti adds a value. Another one, actually. I'll go back to the mining vertical. It's simple, right, there's a lot of heavy level automation in mining. So when you have a vehicle in a mine and this is something we've seen when a driver is sitting above ground controlling an ATV in their mind, he actually has to count until three seconds.

Speaker 2: 16:19

The reason why he's counting three seconds is because that's the latency lag. Wow, he's kind of like hey, my little ATV is in a tunnel, I need it to go right, I'm going to turn One, two, three, because that's what he's assuming. Now can you use these programmable networks like 5G, which Shibuti's ability to prioritize the network traffic in real time, to solve that problem, Because that's how you can deploy a fleet of autonomous or driverless vehicles in a mine site where the drivers above ground are controlling it. Another use case we've seen again in both the supplies, both in a mining and even in a port setting, is use of drones.

Speaker 2: 16:51

A drone in a mine site has many use cases surveillance. The trick, though, is when you're deploying more than one drone, it's in the top world will be called best effort, but when you've got a fleet of these and they're all doing different tasks, how do you prioritize a network in real time? That's where you need some kind of intelligence APIs that Shibori provides. So that's another example where we're helping certain sites deploy multiple autonomous assets in real time without it having to be best effort.

Speaker 1: 17:21

That's an amazing example. Many incredible success stories there. And talk about the commercial side. Obviously, there's more value than just the operational efficiencies you bring. You also talk a lot about accelerating 5G monetization something that's been kind of slow to materialize and helping with business commercial outcomes. Maybe talk about those as well.

Speaker 2: 17:47

Sure, let me talk a little bit about the ecosystem, because it flows with that, because, if you think about it, what 4G to what 4G was to consumer? 5g and these programmable networks are to enterprises? So a lot of. It's kind of funny, right, because so a lot of carriers and operators have invested tens of billions of dollars into spectrum, and so now you're not going to get that ROI by getting you and I to get 5G enabled phone just because there's not the use case, applications aren't available today. I would say in a couple of years, in gaming and maybe online retail, you'll see that trend, but right now, the use cases are in the heavy industries.

Speaker 2: 18:22

The challenge is that an enterprise doesn't want a network. He doesn't even want Shibuti. But hey, mr Enterprise, you've got a digital transformation strategy in your smart mind. Hey, mr Enterprise, you've got a digital transformation strategy in your smart mind and over the next three years, your plan is to add a higher level of automation for human safety and more productivity. Well, to do that, these are then. Well, there's a whole bunch of it becomes from a digital transformation to industrial IoT play. Well, to enable both your digital transformation, digital IoT, well, you're going to probably need more sophisticated networks you can't do this with, say, just a basic 4G LTE network. Well, this is where you need 5G, this is where you need Wi-Fi, wi-fi 6 and 7. And then you need something like Shibuti as the glue. So what we found is that for the last couple of years, the industry the big guys tried going on his own.

Speaker 2: 19:12

The problem is, no one player can completely own the 5G value chain, because if you're part of, let's say, a digital transformation initiative for any customer, whether it's a mining in manufacturing oil and gas you're going to need an operator, because the operator is going to provide you the network. Then you're going to need a network group provider. It could be a Cisco core and a Samsung radio, it could be a Druid core and an Airspan radio. And third, you're going to need a system integrator an Accenture, a Deloitte or a Booz Allen that's actually going to help deploy the network. Fourth, you're going to need an application developer. In this case it could be, let's say, it's a autonomous vehicle from John Deere. The applications are going to have to be refactored and where Shibuti comes in, they're actually worth the glue that brings it all together. And when you bring all these parts together, you deliver a complete end-to-end solution for the customer.

Speaker 2: 20:04

We're like no, that's why I need 5G, because if I want to deploy a fleet of unmanned vehicles in my warehouse and I don't want the robots to go on a predetermined path and this is actually a problem in warehousing today If you notice any warehouse, you'll see these smart robots. They're on a predetermined path. The reason why they are is with Wi-Fi coverage. The only way they can guarantee that coverage is by on a predetermined path. You have to be hey if you can combine both 5G and Wi-Fi in a warehouse environment. The robot is now wireless. But for the robot to be wireless, the network is infinite. So in real time you still need the ability to program the network based on the runtime needs of the application, and that's where Shibuti comes in. So this is kind of like how our go-to-market model is, and we spent the last four years just building an ecosystem of partners in all these categories, and this is how we then go into an end customer we deliver them a complete end-to-end solution.

Speaker 1: 21:00

Fantastic and your engagement across the industry spectrum is really impressive. Just looking through your social profiles, you just got back from the TM Forum in Denmark. Would love your feedback from that event. Hot off the heels, I think, a week or two ago you were at a T-Mobile tech event. You're participating in various CPaaS forums. Exciting times look like for Shiboti. How do you see yourself in this whole new emerging category and what else can we expect from you over the next couple of months?

Speaker 2: 21:33

No, and if you highlight two very critical events, I'll start with the first one, the T-Mobile Hub event. And thank you again to T-Mobile, my co-founder and CTO, Harpreet so we always joke he's the geek, my nickname for in the office, Grandmaster Yoda, because it's a rare skill set for someone who's basically navigated every journey from literally zero G to five G. That's Heartbreed. So the T-Mobile event was talking about network programmability and I'm glad we're doing that, because for the past four years we've been saying 5G, 5G, 5G. We're doing that because for the past four years we've been saying 5g, 5g, 5g. But what is 5g? Just a network, but it's a network that could be an intelligent asset which can leverage correctly to deliver solutions. So what I like about it's tm forum or t-mobile hub we're finally not talking about networks, we're talking about solutions. What kind of? Why should you care as an enterprise for 5g? You shouldn't, unless they can solve an actual business problem. So at the T-Mobile Hub it was a really good showcase for us to showcase the market how different player, whether it's Nokia, T-Mobile, Postman, Shibuti we're all coming together to enable these services for the industry. Same with TMF Forum is where the operators are realizing is that to our enterprises. We realizing is that to our enterprises we have to enable new services. These are new revenue models. How do I do that and go beyond just selling you 5G phone? And then so there's a lot of initiatives also realize that for us to deliver the promise of 5G we need a certain level of standardization. So this is where I log. Whether it's TMF, Forum, GSMA, Camara, is all these initiatives coming together where we need to provide some level of standardization across the API stack. The only challenge I'll see in the industry is that we've got lots of initiatives that sometimes cooperate, but they're still a little siloed and this is where I think the small role that Shibuti brings at more that endpoint.

Speaker 2: 23:18

There's a lot about CPaaS. The challenge with CPaaS today is CPaaS provides you voice and communication APIs but they don't solve the problem for cellular network. But Shibodi, combined with CPaaS, can deliver that promise of network APIs. Same thing with Camara. It's a great initiative. It's getting the operators on a single table.

Speaker 2: 23:35

But for enterprises to leverage Camara, this is where we come in. We're an actor contributor in Camara. Actually, at Mobile World Barcelona a couple of months ago, we announced the first reference enterprise implementation for Camara APIs. So anyone that's built, say, a quality demand API, can leverage that across any operator for any enterprising using Shibori's API. So that's kind of like where it's excited. We're seeing lots of these initiatives, so it's actually good because the industry is coming together and I'll actually suggest you check out a really good white paper and I kind of want to steal the thunder, but there's actually a great white paper written on this topic by Dean Bubly on CPaaS versus network API, so I'd encourage everyone to check it out. It was a co-sponsor with us and Shibuti specifically talking to this topic and how Shibodi fits in this value chain.

Speaker 1: 24:25

Well, certainly a great follow-up to this discussion, and as we enter the summer, I'm guessing things aren't quieting down for you and the team Normally a little bit of a quiet period. You have your plate full, but what are you looking forward to? Not just the summer, but the fall season. We've got Mobile World Congress, las Vegas and all kinds of meetups and get-togethers. What's on your radar?

Speaker 2: 24:48

Well, we're excited. So, as I said, tml Forum was really great. It was a very intimate setting to just connect with the industries and, as I said, what's exciting is that now the industry is coming together and focusing on the solutioning. We're no longer talking about the hype of these networks, we're like what can actually be done and I think over the next six months leading up to Mobile World next year in Barcelona, you're going to see a lot more solutioning, and stay tuned for some announcements we'll be making with our partners as well. But yeah, and how do I keep myself busy? As I said, scale up life. I sleep on a plane. So the good news is my body has now been programmed my own internal apis where I can sleep on any flight, any plane, because basically, we live, we're across all time zones and read geographies well, that's a superpower and, of course, you can get to anywhere in the world from toronto with almost one flight, so it's a great place to be these days.

Speaker 1: 25:42

thanks so so much, vikram, for sharing the vision and the mission, and it's really amazing to hear it unfold. Appreciate the time and the opportunity to chat.

Speaker 2: 25:53

Evan an absolute pleasure. Thank you so much.

Speaker 1: 25:56

Thank you, vikram, and thanks everyone for watching. Have a great weekend.