IEN Europe: What does the shift towards AIoT and 5G bring as a change in the industrial landscape?
A. Po: AIoT and 5G technologies are unleashing staggering efficiency gains and exciting opportunities for innovation in automation, ushering in a new era of manufacturing. This industrial renaissance will have enormous positive implications for both manufacturers and consumers, and we're only at the very beginning of this monumental shift toward smart automation.
At the center of all this exciting innovation is data—the generation and processing of vast amounts of data. With 5G and the vast volumes of data it will bring, the demand for effective data processing abilities will rise even further, which in turn demands higher-performance components, faster and higher-capacity storage, and smarter edge devices. All of which also require exceptional security and reliability.
IEN Europe: In which sense is Innodisk "Building an Intelligent World" through its AIoT Ecosystem?
A. Po: We take the word "World" quite literally in our slogan. To bring AIoT technologies to the factories, vehicles, and homes around us—while an important goal—realizes only a fraction of AIoT's full potential. Instead, we have designed our ecosystem to bring AIoT to even the most remote, harshest, and most demanding applications around the world. Think, for example, of what AIoT could do for a research station in Antarctica or a solar farm in a remote part of the Sahara. We design our solutions with such applications in mind. The result is that our solutions are well-equipped to take on challenging applications anywhere in the world. We believe that only then can AIoT reach its full potential.
But our work doesn’t stop there. For Innodisk, building a full AIoT ecosystem is absolutely central to our mission. Since AIoT challenges are highly complex, they also require comprehensive solutions that can fully address these challenges. Our vision of “Absolute Integration” is central to our company culture, and we work tirelessly to unite our hardware, firmware, and software expertise with the knowledge and expertise of our partners and clients to push the world toward the AIoT industrial revolution.
IEN Europe: Why embedded technology is playing an increasingly important role today?
A. Po: As we can pack more power in smaller and smaller form factors, it allows embedded technology to be deployed in applications that would have been unthinkable only a few years ago. This technological leap, combined with increasingly sophisticated software and rugged technologies, is about to make businesses' creativity the last limitation to where we see embedded systems getting deployed. And we expect limitless creativity.
Picture, for instance, a smart city. Everything we encounter in our daily lives will be connected and smarter: transportation infrastructure, factories, retailers, and even medical services will be powered by connected AIoT technology.
IEN Europe: What did you showcase at this year's Embedded World? Is this show a benchmark for the sector?
A. Po: We always have a great time at Embedded World, and this year was no exception. For Innodisk, it's as much an opportunity to showcase our latest solutions as it is a chance for us to learn more about how our colleagues are helping us push the industry forward.
Some of the solutions that attracted the most interest this year were our InnoAGE SSD—a smart SSD that can be managed through an independent communications channel; our AI accelerator modules—which bring exponential performance gains to AI on the edge; and our high-performance DDR4-3200 DRAM modules—ideal for any application requiring exceptional performance.
This year, we also worked closely with our ecosystem partners to demonstrate how we're bringing our technologies and expertise together to advance AIoT and bring the future of intelligent devices to the present. For example, we presented solutions from our partners at ASUS and DFI, each incorporating Innodisk's cutting-edge InnoAGE SSD.
IEN Europe: How does AI, 5G and edge technology contribute to the technological progress?
A. Po: At Innodisk, we believe that AI, 5G, and the intelligent edge will prove some of the most important driving forces behind economic and social development in the next few decades, and we are planning our priorities and placing our investments accordingly. Perhaps the most important reason that we see these technologies as representing such a massive shift is that they hold so much promise for virtually every industry and type application.
With these technologies, it won't just be massive factories or the world's largest companies that find new ways to increase efficiency and profitability. More importantly, we see these technologies as the democratization of computing power and connectivity, giving individuals and small and medium-sized companies access to top-of-the-line equipment and data processing abilities, and in turn, unleashing a wave of creativity and innovation.
Things that were only possible to achieve with massive computer farms, industrial-scale data centers, and an army of staff will be well within reach for anyone with a good idea and AIoT tools widely available to anybody. This is where we expect AI, 5G, and intelligent edge technologies to have the most significant impact on technological progress.
IEN Europe: Where is Innodisk positioned on the market? What are your future objectives?
A. Po: We are doubling-down on our 15 years of experience in industrial-grade integrated solutions as we move into the age of 5G and AIoT. We are reorienting ourselves into an even more full-fledged solutions provider. We have made substantial investments in ensuring that we can provide customers with 360-degree solutions to their 5G and AIoT challenges. What this means in practice is that we have expanded our software teams to allow even greater hardware-software integration and even more sophisticated software solutions. This vision has also been a driving force behind our acquisitions of companies like Aetina, Antzer, Millitronic, and Sysinno.
Looking forward, we are focused on expanding our AIoT ecosystem even further through strong partnerships with other industry leaders—both by working even closer with our current partners, like Microsoft, and by welcoming new partners into our ecosystem. We strongly believe that working together as an industry is vital to advancing these technologies, and we are more than happy to spearhead these industry collaborations.
Sara Ibrahim
