#302 Edge Computing: A New Frontier in Data Processing

Summary

Podcast Summary: Embracing Digital Transformation

Episode #302: Edge Computing: A New Frontier in Data Processing
Host: Dr. Darren Pulsipher
Guest: Chris Pasternak, Managing Director, Cloud Engineering at Deloitte
Date: November 4, 2025

---

Overview

This episode dives deep into the evolving role of edge computing in data processing, especially in public sector contexts like defense, energy, and large-scale enterprise. Dr. Darren Pulsipher and Chris Pasternak dissect why data remains the ultimate driver of digital transformation, the limitations of cloud-only models, and how emergent edge solutions can deliver real-time, mission-critical value. The conversation traverses through the technical, organizational, and cultural shifts needed to embrace edge architectures.

---

Origins and Context: Setting the Scene

[01:00 – 02:35]

• Chris’s background:
  Chris introduces himself as a Midwest native from Green Bay, Wisconsin, with a career spanning consulting, Oracle technologies, and cloud infrastructure.

• Humorous Packers banter:
  Light-hearted exchange about Green Bay Packers fandom provides a relatable and energetic episode opening.

---

The Critical Role of Data

[02:48 – 05:38]

• Edge vs. Cloud: Why Not All Processing Can Happen in the Cloud:

  • Real-time requirements and the sheer volume of modern data (especially video, radar, sensor data) make back-and-forth cloud interactions slow or impractical.
  • Not everything should or can be pushed to central clouds, despite vendor messaging.

• Memorable Quote:

  “You want to do AI. I mean, we're an AI world, right? I mean, everybody's talking about AI. You need a lot of data and you need good data. It's the basis for everything.”
  — Chris Pasternak [00:05 and again at 05:38]

---

Network Myths and the Case for Local Processing

[03:41 – 05:25]

• The Cyclical Nature of Architectures:

  • Chris recalls mainframes, PC revolutions, and now the migration towards distributed edge—highlighting technology’s pendulum swing between centralization and decentralization.
  • Large cloud and network advances (e.g., 5G) haven't eliminated the need for local processing.

• Memorable Moment:
  Dr. Darren jokes about sales boosts from adding Packers content but pivots back:

  “Let’s talk about something I think is more interesting, and that is this whole concept of edge computing.” [02:35]

---

Edge Benefits in Action: Defense, Oil & Gas, and Beyond

[06:10 – 08:37]

• Defense and Contested Environments:

  • Data-heavy, remote environments (battlefields, oil rigs) need instant processing for safety, operational, and cost reasons.
  • Communications may be disrupted (e.g., during conflict), increasing the importance of autonomous edge logic.

• Memorable Quote:

  “It's real world dollars and it’s potentially danger… That applies beyond just the obvious of defense—it’s real everywhere.”
  — Chris Pasternak [07:31–07:58]

---

Why the Cloud-Centric Model? Overcoming Complexity at the Edge

[08:37 – 11:42]

• Previous Barriers:

  • Up until recently, edge devices lacked muscle to run advanced algorithms.
  • Complexity in development, deployment, and management made edge a tough proposition versus the “easy button” of public cloud.

• Shift in Tech Capability:

  • AI, vision, and specialized ASIC/NPU hardware have revolutionized what’s possible at the edge.
  • Improvement in small language models, as cited by Chris, enables more potent on-device analytics.

---

Edge Is Not a Cloud Replacement—It’s a Complement

[10:44 – 11:26]

• Hybrid Reality:
  • Edge processing will not replace central processing; massive tasks still require core data centers or cloud.
  • The challenge is aggregating diverse, distributed edge datasets in meaningful ways.

---

Architectural Complexity and Management Challenges

[11:26 – 13:39]

• Data Mesh and Fleet Management:

  • “Edge adds complexity to your architectures, right?” — Dr. Darren Pulsipher [11:32]
  • Key hurdles: Data mesh intricacies, decentralized architectures, and the need for centralized oversight of a sprawling device “fleet”.

• Industry Appetite:
  While some resist due to perceived complexity and unproven ROI, Chris affirms:

  “I think there is a thirst for it. I think there are solutions for it.” [13:39]

---

The Drive to Simpler Edge Management

[13:42 – 17:02]

• Easy Button at the Edge?:
  Dr. Darren compares the arrival of software-defined infrastructure (SDI) in data centers to a potential SDI-layer for edge.

• Centralized Management, Decentralized Execution:
  Chris points to Oracle’s Roving Edge solution powered by Intel, offering cloud-like APIs and centralized management for edge nodes.

  “The thing that’s hard about the edge is centralization of control in a decentralized world… Fleet management.” — Chris Pasternak [13:11–13:23]

• Memorable Quote:

  “Easy for me to have central management over the edge… That is the beginning of that easy.”
  — Dr. Darren Pulsipher [17:30–17:37]

---

Application Agility and Reducing DevOps Friction

[18:10 – 19:46]

• Faster Development Cycles:
  • The ability to build, test, and deploy cloud-native solutions seamlessly to edge devices offers agility and flexibility.
  • No longer must DevOps teams custom-tailor every solution for every edge device.

---

Data Strategy: Understanding, Prioritizing, and Managing Data

[20:44 – 25:17]

• The Key: Understand Your Data First:

  • Know what data is collect, where it’s generated, which use cases matter, and which data truly needs centralization.

  “I think the starting point… is you got to have a handle on your data.”
  — Chris Pasternak [23:49]

• Edge Can Enable Smart Data Flows:

  • With operational intelligence at the edge, only relevant/processed data flows to the cloud or to other nodes.
  • This is essential for mission-critical scenarios—don’t “flood the pipes” with low-value information.

---

Real-World Edge Scenarios: Military, Retail, SETI@home

[21:21 – 28:50]

• Device Lifecycle Automation:

  • Example: Military use-case where edge devices are updated automatically when connectivity resumes, reducing manual labor and downtime.
  • Edge potential stretches far beyond government—think logistics (FedEx, USPS), retail, agriculture.

• Throwback to SETI@home:

  • Dr. Darren describes SETI@home as a “massive edge cluster” that distributed computation worldwide, an early model for mesh/distributed architectures.

---

The Cycle of Centralization and Lessons Learned

[28:54 – 30:08]

• Will Edge Repeat Cloud’s Mistakes?

  • Chris warns of VM sprawl analogs at the edge—without oversight, organizations risk lost control and excessive cost.
  • Tools like FinOps and improved management layers are essential for sustainability and efficiency.

• Memorable Quote:

  “What was old is new.”
  — Dr. Darren Pulsipher [28:51]

---

Actionable Takeaways & Closing Thoughts

[15:07 – 16:37, 29:35 – 30:08]

• Pitch edge solutions on business value:

  • Identify pain points or opportunities where edge delivers tangible ROI (e.g., predictive maintenance that prevents costly failure).

• Reduce edge adoption friction via easy-to-deploy solutions:

  • Leverage platforms that enable seamless workload movement from cloud to edge.

• Plan for robust data architectures and edge management:

  • Start with deep understanding of data flows, application needs, and management tools to avoid complexity and cost spirals.

• Final note:
  Dr. Darren celebrates discussions that bridge technology, business, and culture to move digital transformation forward in both public and private sectors.

---

Notable Quotes with Timestamps

• On the foundation of AI and Edge:

  “You want to do AI… You need a lot of data and you need good data. It's the basis for everything.”
  — Chris Pasternak [00:05], [05:38]

• On the cycles of IT architecture:

  “Remember how mainframe centralized everything and we all had dummy terminals? And then we all got PCs… Here we are back at the edge.”
  — Chris Pasternak [03:54]

• On edge management:

  “The thing that’s hard about the edge is centralization of control in a decentralized world.”
  — Chris Pasternak [13:11]

• On business value and adoption:

  “It goes back to the business, driving… what is it going to change, what does it really drive in the end? Total cost of ownership, improved revenue streams…”
  — Chris Pasternak [15:23]

• On repeating past mistakes:

  “Edge could easily become that thing too. I need one here. I need one here.” — Chris Pasternak [29:26]

---

Key Segments (Timestamps)

• [02:48] Edge Computing vs. Cloud – Why Edge Matters
• [05:38] The AI Data Foundation
• [07:31] Edge in Defense and Energy
• [11:32] Data Mesh and New Architectures
• [13:11] Edge Management Headaches and Trends
• [17:02] Oracle Roving Edge Example
• [19:12] DevOps and Application Deployment Innovations
• [22:27] Data Mesh & Data Management at the Edge
• [27:48] SETI@home as a Precedent for Edge Architectures
• [28:54] Learning from “VM Sprawl” in the Cloud

---

Summary

This episode argues persuasively for a pragmatic, value-driven approach to edge computing. The journey is not about replacing the cloud, but augmenting it—delivering processing where critically needed without drowning in complexity. The blend of technical depth, real stories, and market insight makes this a primer for CIOs, architects, and change leaders facing the next wave of digital transformation.

Transcript

[Chris Pasternak]

Thing that we handle, right? Everything.

[Dr. Darren]

If we don't have data, we.

[Chris Pasternak]

What's the point?

[Dr. Darren]

What's the point?

[Chris Pasternak]

Yeah, I mean, you think about the critical nature of data. You want to do AI. I mean, we're an AI world, right? I mean, everybody's talking about AI. You need a lot of data and you need good data. It's the basis for everything.

[Podcast Narrator]

Welcome to Embracing Digital Transformation, where we explore how people process power and technology drive effective change. This is Dr. Darren, Chief Enterprise architect, educator, author, and most importantly, your host on this episode, Edge Computing A New Frontier in Data Processing, with Chris Pasternak, Managing Director, Cloud Engineering at Deloitte.

[Dr. Darren]

All right, Chris, welcome to the show.

[Chris Pasternak]

Thanks. Appreciate being here.

[Dr. Darren]

So, Chris, everyone that has listened to my show knows there's something interesting about my guests. Every guest is a superhero, because I wouldn't have anything less. And every superhero has an origin story, a background story. So I'm putting you on the spot here, Chris. You gotta share.

[Chris Pasternak]

All right. Well, from the Midwest, grew up in Little Green Bay, Wisconsin. Go Packers. Go Packers. Actually live there now. You know, started in consulting out of. Out of college, bounced around quite a bit and then had kids and decided to come home, be near family, that sort of thing. So that's kind of how we got the start from a professional standpoint. Been working with Oracle since the day I started work everything from PRPs to technology middleware through the infrastructure and now into OCI and database.

[Dr. Darren]

So you've always been kind of in that. In that space. Technology, space Born bread cheesehead from Green Bay. Do you actually wear the hat?

[Chris Pasternak]

No.

[Dr. Darren]

Then you're not a true Green Bay Factor packers fan.

[Chris Pasternak]

You know, I think it's more the tourists that wear them.

[Dr. Darren]

Oh, you think it's a tourist, all right. Or the. Or the people from somewhere else. Right. That are coming to watch the games.

[Chris Pasternak]

Oh, for sure.

[Dr. Darren]

So you're the guy selling them on the. On the street, as I. I wish.

[Chris Pasternak]

I wish I come up with that idea because I think that guy is plenty rich.

[Dr. Darren]

So let's not talk about the packers today, even though that'll boost my show R ratings quite a bit. But let's talk about something I think is more interesting, and that is this whole concept of edge computing.

[Chris Pasternak]

Right.

[Dr. Darren]

It's an important aspect of everything. Not everything can be in the cloud. Is that true?

[Chris Pasternak]

Yeah, absolutely. I'd agree. I mean, what we're starting to see with the need for real time processing, real time determinations, that sort of thing has to be done where the data is determined Is gathered, is created because frankly, that back and forth of here's my data, put it in the cloud, get a result back. In a lot of cases, it could be faster or cheaper just to do it where the data is.

[Dr. Darren]

Well, I mean, but doesn't that go contrary to what most people think? And even all the cloud service providers will say, no, just put it in the cloud, but we can process it a lot faster and then we'll give you the data back. Why, why am I hearing different stories?

[Chris Pasternak]

Well, you know, it's funny is I was just having a conversation about this with a colleague and he, you know, brought, pulled out the Wayback Machine. He's like, remember how mainframe centralized everything and we all had dummy terminals?

[Dr. Darren]

Yeah, 100. Right.

[Chris Pasternak]

And then we all got PCs and it all came back. Now we went to servers. And so this is just the natural cycle of it. And here we are back at the edge thinking about how do we do processing? Where should we do the processing? I think the, I think the interesting aspect of Edge is the determination of what data really needs to go to a central location. Especially start talking about the volumes and complexity of data. So, you know, take video graphics. That's what I mean. Those are huge payloads. And to try to move them over the line, especially if we're now talking about remote locations, when is that thing going to get there?

[Dr. Darren]

And you know, well, wasn't 5G supposed to fix all that for us?

[Chris Pasternak]

Think about that.

[Dr. Darren]

Isn't it right. It was supposed to, right. Unlock all of this. And I just. Everything's a sensor now in the, in the whole world. I don't need processing at the edge. We were told that.

[Chris Pasternak]

Well, and if I think there are interesting aspects of 5G with the concept that you create your own networks, things of that nature. We've done quite a bit with that, like in the defense and military, space and emergency and some of those types of things. But interesting enough, if it was the end all be all, then why is Elon Musk having so much success with Starlink?

[Dr. Darren]

Yeah, you're right. You're right. So it sounds like data is the issue here.

[Chris Pasternak]

I think it is. It's the most important thing that we handle, right, everything.

[Dr. Darren]

If we don't have data, what's the point? What's the point?

[Chris Pasternak]

Yeah, I mean, you think about the critical nature of data. You want to do AI. I mean, we're an AI world, right? I mean, everybody's talking about AI. You need a lot of data and you need good data. It's the Basis for everything.

[Dr. Darren]

And you mentioned before the types of data that we have are huge amounts of data. Right. Video, radar data. Because I do a lot in public sector, especially Department of war.

[Chris Pasternak]

Yeah, yeah.

[Dr. Darren]

They have so much data at the edge and right now their philosophy is bigger pipes, we just put bigger pipes in.

[Chris Pasternak]

You know I think in some cases that's a remedy. I think in other cases just totally unrealistic potentially thinking about and I do as well much public sector you think about contested areas where we're looking at geospatial data that's got to be collected.

[Dr. Darren]

What's the first thing China's going to do in war situation with us but knock out our comps.

[Chris Pasternak]

Yeah, well and there was, I mean there was just a news article, just a story about that. So remember the publication. But we're pretty well aware that you know, if that was to be the case, there were infiltrated anyway.

[Dr. Darren]

So what that means, what that means then. And I'm kind of playing devil's advocate because I believe the same thing you do is I gotta push more of the processing down to the edge so I can make decisions where the data is collected.

[Chris Pasternak]

Right.

[Dr. Darren]

Because especially if it's tactical edge where the extreme dynamic edge where me and I got a swarm of drones out.

[Chris Pasternak]

There, you can't wait for a response. Yeah, you need an answer now and it needs to be reliable. And I think that's really the critical point now. If you think about a step outside of public sector for a second. Oil. Yes, it's another great one right out on an oil rig when one of those bits fails, I mean that drilling capability is down for a significant amount of time. It's real world dollars and it potentially danger. Yeah. I mean look at the. Was it back in 2009 the explosion failure cost lives. So it's real. So I think it applies beyond just the obvious of defense and those types of things. I think it's real everywhere.

[Dr. Darren]

So why has there been such a push to just move everything up to the cloud then? If I can do this on the edge, has it always been or has it been too complex? The algorithm's too complex to run at the edge. Why didn't we just right up front just hey, we just do this at the edge? Why not?

[Chris Pasternak]

I think yes. Yes to all of it. Yes. I think technology's gotten better. I mean every year, every six months, I mean even faster and faster we start looking at two years ago. Large language models are going to save the world. It's going to be everything to everybody realizing now small language models are pretty powerful now that we understand it and we harness it. That could go out to the edge. That really wasn't a thing we were talking about.

[Dr. Darren]

Or object detection and vision. Absolutely. Can run at the edge, right. On NPUs or VPUs, there's lots of specialized devices.

[Chris Pasternak]

Well, and that's exactly right. The whole world of artificial intelligence and computing is just continuously evolving. And so when you get into that, you know, Moore's Law was great for a while, we've kind of surpassed that world, but it still holds true to the degree that we can pack a lot more to a lot smaller unit and be able to do more. And I think that makes a big difference. I will say, you know, the push to cloud, you know, a lot of that I think had to do with, really has to do and had to do with just technical debt. Organizations are saddled with, with the data centers with, you know, and, and getting to a point where organizations realize that that's not really my business. That's not my core business. It's not really my titan's in to.

[Dr. Darren]

Someone else that can run a data center, manage, make sure I have uptime, all that stuff because. Because I want to focus on what I'm good at. Is that what you're saying?

[Chris Pasternak]

And I think there is, I mean, edge is important. We're talking about edge. Edge is not going to replace central public clouds, of course, or even replace people's data centers, because until we can get to the point where we can process everything at the edge, we're still going to need gobs of processing power to do big, huge tasks.

[Dr. Darren]

Well, it's, it's hard to process everything at the edge because an edge device, one can be in Alaska, the other one could be in Hawaii. And if I need to aggregate their data together, how in the world am I going to do that? Going somewhere, you know.

[Chris Pasternak]

Yeah. The complexity of data mesh. Right. And so that kind of turns out a whole new story.

[Dr. Darren]

So I'm glad you brought that up because the complexity, Edge adds complexity to your architectures, right?

[Chris Pasternak]

Oh, yeah, 100%.

[Dr. Darren]

So do you think that's one of the key factors on why organizations are hesitant to really take advantage of edge computing and these new architectures that are.

[Chris Pasternak]

Out there, I think it's one of them. One of them. I think some of it is, you know, there's a cost benefit to everything. And organizations, companies have a lot of stuff to do. They do their core business and then they got to do all the stuff to support their core business. And you know, there's a trade off to do this or do that. And some of this edge stuff maybe in the trade off world is, well, not as important.

[Dr. Darren]

So I mean we saw this in the data center space at one time where managing your data center or even managing things in cloud were difficult because everything was done manually. And then software defined infrastructure came into play which made that much easier. I could do private cloud or company cloud. Do you see something emerging in the edge ecosystem where there's a simple value? Because software defined infrastructure gave us the ability to create an easy button to manage my data center.

[Chris Pasternak]

Right.

[Dr. Darren]

And all my apps in my data center. Testwalk 5 was so successful in the end because it was easy. Do you see us moving into a realm where I can have an easy button for the edge? Because right now the edge is hard.

[Chris Pasternak]

Well, you know, and the thing that's hard about the edge is centralization of control in a decentralized world.

[Dr. Darren]

Yes.

[Chris Pasternak]

Fleet management. I mean that's, that's what you're justifying a fleet management. It's got to be the case. It has to get easier.

[Dr. Darren]

Are you seeing the industry moving into that space or is it being ignored?

[Chris Pasternak]

I think there's, I think there is a thirst for it. I think there are solutions for it. I think it's just organizations that are working toward their edge strategies. I think it's just when does the groundswell come? Because demand will drive.

[Dr. Darren]

Yeah, you're right.

[Chris Pasternak]

Solutions. That's the nature of human race.

[Dr. Darren]

But there's other demands out there or there's other solutions out there that are saying ignore the edge, just get rid of our data in the cloud. So it's stuck in a, in a weird spot. Right.

[Chris Pasternak]

Well, and you know, part of that as well is the age old. Well, what we do today is good enough. We're doing just fine.

[Dr. Darren]

Yeah.

[Chris Pasternak]

You know, what do we have to. And so that's where you get back to the trade offs. It's all got to be about the business. At the end of the day technology is cool. Right. We're all here because we like technology. But at the end of the day it's got to support the business, got to be driven by was this needed issues. So I think as we start to change and evolve the landscape on some of these things, I think it'll adjust the thinking.

[Dr. Darren]

Is there anything that you would say because we're in the same boat, we're trying to get people to adopt more of these edge architectures. What can we say to customers that are on the fence you have any ideas? Because I need help in this space.

[Chris Pasternak]

Because I'm like, honestly, it goes back to the value story. It goes back to the business, it goes back to really driving the. What is it going to change? What is it going to really drive in the end? Total cost of ownership, improved revenue streams or the things of that nature. So going back to the oil and gas and the rigs and all that kind of stuff, we could do predictive maintenance at the edge and alert right then and there that, whoa, something's wrong. Or something's going to be wrong, stop. Ah. I mean, take an hour to change a bit or take days because he blew it out.

[Dr. Darren]

So I, I see where you're going. So we got to find that, that pain point that they don't recognize might be there yet. Right, right. Find that use case where we can say, we can save you this much in revenue, we can save you this much in liability.

[Chris Pasternak]

And that's. Yeah, it's all about the value. And the end of the day, it's all about what value can you drive that is going to change our business.

[Dr. Darren]

And then we have Easy Bud on the technology side.

[Chris Pasternak]

Well, and then there's that, because if.

[Dr. Darren]

I can convince them and say, yeah, well, that's going to take five years to do, they're going to look at me and go, I don't have patience for that.

[Chris Pasternak]

Well, I mean, and here's the deal, right? I got to say, right? We're at Oracle AI World right now. You talk about the Oracle at Roving Edge, which is powered by Intel.

[Dr. Darren]

That's right. Hey, there's the intel pitch right there.

[Chris Pasternak]

There you go. Got the pitch in. I think what's fascinating to me about the Roving Edge device is the way Oracle has basically packed the cloud into the device. So you have the security, you have the networking, have all those capabilities built in. And it's the same for APIs and how I integrate and interact with it.

[Dr. Darren]

It's easy for me to have central management over the edge that way because the APIs are the same.

[Chris Pasternak]

That's the starting point to it.

[Dr. Darren]

So now it's. That is the beginning of that, is the beginning of that easy.

[Chris Pasternak]

But I think it is, I think it really is. Now what you do with that is where that, again, that's where the value comes in. What do you do? What are you driving? What are you problems, are you solving? But I think that really is the differentiator in my mind to simplifying and actually delivering something that's useful that people can Take advantage of.

[Dr. Darren]

So with the roving edge, this gives me the control plane. It really gives me software defined infrastructure across the edge because I can provision applications at the edge and all that. That's my understanding of the solution stack. Is that right?

[Chris Pasternak]

Yeah. So it gives you the same cloud experience on those devices. You want to provision a virtual server to do whatever it is you want to do. Inferencing at the edge, deploy the virtual server. It works exactly the same as it does in oci. So what we've done, what we've done is we've built a lot of solutions on oci, then test them, validate them, put them at the edge. Yep, they work okay. And so it speeds up the development cycle. I don't need to have all these edge devices.

[Dr. Darren]

I love that because that, that speeds up that application development. Because you and I both know it's hard to know what you're going to have out of the edge. So you're always developing, you know, it's crazy. And my dev, my DevOps is always tailored specifically to an edge device. With this, I don't care.

[Chris Pasternak]

Right.

[Dr. Darren]

So I could build in the cloud, can run on the edge and get the results that I expect because I've already run all of my stuff in large systems, but they'll run on the small systems just as well.

[Chris Pasternak]

Yeah. And I think it's pretty cool from a standpoint of. Now we can start to take a look and say, what data do I not need centrally? Now we start to have a conversation about what's really important centrally, what's really important just at the edge. And if I lose that edge node, that edge device, does not having that data really actually impact me in any way?

[Dr. Darren]

This is cool because this means I can start focusing on the last step, which is the data. Because all the complexity around application deployment and development, all that complexity on working on the edge is taken away. Simplify. So I can focus my efforts on what data is being collected, how valuable it is, where it needs to be at certain times. That's more interesting to me.

[Chris Pasternak]

Yeah, we did a really interesting solution with Oracle a couple of years ago where we took Kubernetes and hooked it all together with Rancher and built it out such that I disconnect my device, I have a push of an update and it just waits for the device to reconnect and says, oh, we're back online. Push the latest updates. So now you're in a situation where prolonged disconnection.

[Dr. Darren]

Does military look quite a bit, you know?

[Chris Pasternak]

Yeah, absolutely. Especially the Contested areas where, you know, we are our own 5G network today. A lot of times what they'll do is go out on a mission, they have their cute devices, whatever it is, they bring that thing back, they get a new one for the next mission. And there's a row of people whose job it is to clean the device, wipe it, you know, put new software on it, do all that stuff. And we just said, why not just wait for it to connect into the network and just push.

[Dr. Darren]

Yeah.

[Chris Pasternak]

So it's a really cool solution.

[Dr. Darren]

That is super cool. So, all right, you talked a little bit about the data. I want to drill down on the data. There are lots of different data architectures. I've identified, like, eight archetypes of data architectures out there. Data meshes, all the rays right now.

[Chris Pasternak]

Complicated.

[Dr. Darren]

Yeah, complicated. So what do I do? Because we've talked about how important data is, how do I start even approaching a managed data plane across the edge? How do I start? Where do I get starving?

[Chris Pasternak]

You know, I think as technology professionals, the first thing we do is we go to the technology and go, all right, let's go try these things, play with these things. I think the thing that isn't necessarily as popular or sometimes not quite as exciting to people is understand the data. Because what you could easily get sucked into is the concept that I need my data everywhere, all the time.

[Dr. Darren]

And which is not true. You and I both know that. Yeah.

[Chris Pasternak]

So I think understanding your data, your data profile, your actual data usage scenario is what.

[Dr. Darren]

You're right. It's no one.

[Chris Pasternak]

Well, you know, there are people who love it too. We have a whole group of data scientists that are just geniuses. They love that stuff, which is cool for them.

[Dr. Darren]

I'm glad there's people out there that love.

[Chris Pasternak]

Yeah, that's cool for them.

[Dr. Darren]

Not.

[Chris Pasternak]

You know, I'm happy to work with them. I'm happy to have them on my side, but I think that's really got to be the starting point, is you got to have a handle on your data. Otherwise, you're again, you're trying to push everything everywhere, and you're wasting a bunch of energy, and you're never gonna. Never gonna have a solution for every possible situation.

[Dr. Darren]

So I like what you said there, because understanding your data sources, what data is collected, the edge, and then also what use cases are most important. So I love this concept because what it does is it turns everything upside down a little bit and says, instead of moving data first, let's transform data, which means I can move applications first and with the OCI now at the edge, I can push an application anywhere and I can do a dynamic. Now I can have some intelligence into my data plane, meaning I'm not pushing everything anywhere, except maybe I'm pushing the analytics out to where the data is collected based on the current operating environment.

[Chris Pasternak]

Absolutely. I think that's super cool. Yeah. I mean it gets back to that conversation point about use the data where it is and then you can actually access, adjust, do the work on the data at the edge and then send back updates. Yeah, only the updated, only what you need.

[Dr. Darren]

And then maybe help you send it to a central place.

[Chris Pasternak]

There might be other nodes. And now here we are at the mesh. So but you got to understand that.

[Dr. Darren]

So you can't just show a mesh from the top and say it'll solve everything. You still have to understand.

[Chris Pasternak]

Right. Because I mean, you know, simplest example, can you imagine flooding the pipes with a ton of data and no one's going to. Well, a, no one uses, or B, you're waiting around for the important data because all the unimportant data is clogging the pipes. You know, and we were just talking about the military. That's life or death.

[Dr. Darren]

And that's their strategy right now, is to push everything around.

[Chris Pasternak]

So I think there's, I think there's new thinking in these spaces. I think there's ideas that are coming to light in terms of being able to do that processing at the edge, really get to the important stuff and then drive that data where it needs to be. Specifically, I think there are those conversations are going on.

[Dr. Darren]

Yeah, no, I finished some of those.

[Chris Pasternak]

So it is fascinating.

[Dr. Darren]

They are changing culture. Right. So, and so it's an interesting space. I, I, I totally enjoy this space and I think it's a lot bigger than most people recognize because it's not just in Department of Defense or Department of War, whatever we're calling it now.

[Chris Pasternak]

Right.

[Dr. Darren]

I can see it in grocery stores, FedEx, great example, FedEx, U.S. postal Service. Or any place farming, agriculture. Lots of edge devices out there already.

[Chris Pasternak]

Yeah, yeah, yes, 100%. And so yeah, this is the reality is edges. Right. We're just as we're Talking about my PC from 30 years ago, that was an edge device.

[Dr. Darren]

But now I can damage that edge through a common control plane. Right. And there's data architectures now that we can actually talk about where before it was, I mean, probably the biggest edge cluster I've ever seen was Setiome. Do you remember Setiome?

[Chris Pasternak]

No.

[Dr. Darren]

No, you don't.

[Chris Pasternak]

Oh, Tell me all about it.

[Dr. Darren]

Oh, SETI at home was high performance computing at massive scale, like 2, 3, 4 million nodes. People put a screensaver on their laptops and it searched for extraterrestrial life. And you want to talk about a distributed. Not everyone got all the data. It was an incredible architecture when you really look at it, because they were sending little bits of data out everywhere to do the processing of the edge and then aggregating the data and data signals as it came back.

[Chris Pasternak]

Okay, well, I'm glad you explained it for viewers who don't remember, especially the youngest, as Sergi said it. Yeah, yeah. I mean this goes back to even botnets, right? I mean malicious, right. Not what we really want to add, but the architecture and the thinking behind it are various.

[Dr. Darren]

Yeah, right.

[Chris Pasternak]

Dangerous.

[Dr. Darren]

So what was old is new.

[Chris Pasternak]

Exactly.

[Dr. Darren]

So like you mentioned at the beginning, the cycle of BT100 dumb terminals hooked up to the mainframe, to your client server, back to centralized, back out to Edge. We're going to see this propagate and maybe the architectures will continue to evolve and get better.

[Chris Pasternak]

Well, and I think the one thing that we have to be smart about, remember VM Sprawl? Remember when everybody went to cloud and all of a sudden we had, oh.

[Dr. Darren]

We got our bill. Oh crap.

[Chris Pasternak]

Hundreds of thousands of servers we didn't know about. Edge could easily become that thing too. I need one here. I need one here.

[Dr. Darren]

So having that management oversight, the control, a common control plane ends up being even more critical as we start distributing our edge devices out there.

[Chris Pasternak]

And frankly, cloud has helped tremendously in that from the standpoint of we've had to think differently about our spend. Of course, with FinOps, now we're tuned into that makes it a little bit easier for us to watch out for tripping over the same mistake we made already multiple times.

[Dr. Darren]

Hey, this has been an incredible. Chris, thanks for, thanks for coming on the show. I've learned more. It's. It's fun to talk to another person that understands some of this stuff and hopefully our audience has enjoyed it as well.

[Chris Pasternak]

I sure hope so. It was great. Thanks so much for having me.

[Podcast Narrator]

Thanks for listening to Embracing Digital Transformation. If you enjoyed today's conversation, give us five stars on your favorite podcasting app or on YouTube. It really helps others discover the. If you want to go deeper, join our exclusive [e-mail] embracingdigital where we share bonus content and you can always connect with other change makers like yourself. You can always find more [e-mail]. until next time. Keep embracing the digital transformation.