Bassam Zarkout with IGnPower
Industrial Talk is onsite at the OMG Quarterly Standards Meeting and chatting with Bassam Zarkout, Executive VP with IGnPower about “Solution to navigating massive data challenges to find business gold“. Tune in and hear more about the importance of data and Bassam's unique insights on this Industrial Talk.
Finally, get your exclusive free access to the Industrial Academy and a series on “Why You Need To Podcast” for Greater Success in 2023. All links designed for keeping you current in this rapidly changing Industrial Market. Learn! Grow! Enjoy!
BASSAM ZARKOUT'S CONTACT INFORMATION:
Personal LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/bassam-zarkout-5081974/
Company LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/ignpower-inc./
Company Website: https://www.ignpower.com/
PODCAST VIDEO:
THE STRATEGIC REASON “WHY YOU NEED TO PODCAST”:
OTHER GREAT INDUSTRIAL RESOURCES:
NEOM: https://www.neom.com/en-us
AI Dash: https://www.aidash.com/
Hitachi Vantara: https://www.hitachivantara.com/en-us/home.html
Industrial Marketing Solutions: https://industrialtalk.com/industrial-marketing/
Industrial Academy: https://industrialtalk.com/industrial-academy/
Industrial Dojo: https://industrialtalk.com/industrial_dojo/
We the 15: https://www.wethe15.org/
YOUR INDUSTRIAL DIGITAL TOOLBOX:
LifterLMS: Get One Month Free for $1 – https://lifterlms.com/
Active Campaign: Active Campaign Link
Social Jukebox: https://www.socialjukebox.com/
Industrial Academy (One Month Free Access And One Free License For Future Industrial Leader):
Business Beatitude the Book
Do you desire a more joy-filled, deeply-enduring sense of accomplishment and success? Live your business the way you want to live with the BUSINESS BEATITUDES…The Bridge connecting sacrifice to success. YOU NEED THE BUSINESS BEATITUDES!
TAP INTO YOUR INDUSTRIAL SOUL, RESERVE YOUR COPY NOW! BE BOLD. BE BRAVE. DARE GREATLY AND CHANGE THE WORLD. GET THE BUSINESS BEATITUDES!
Reserve My Copy and My 25% Discount
PODCAST TRANSCRIPT:
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
data, bassam, digital transformation, organization, people, rolls royce, iot, industrial, sensors, engine, jet engine, business, world, collaborate, supply chain, industry, policy, conversation, debate, transforming
Welcome to the industrial talk podcast with Scott Mackenzie. Scott is a passionate industry professional dedicated to transferring cutting edge industry focused innovations and trends while highlighting the men and women who keep the world moving. So put on your hard hat, grab your work boots, and let's go
Alright, welcome Bill to industrial talk a platform that is dedicated to industrial professionals all around the world like the one that's sitting right next to me, because he is bold. Yes. Brave. Yes, he dares greatly. He collaborates. He solves problems. He is a superhero in my mind about that. Thank you, sir. Great. Yeah, I'm still ready to go. And we're broadcasting here in Austin, Texas. Oh, geez, the organization. And again, they get people like Bassam here who really know what goes on and and they are truly passionate about solving. Many of the challenges businesses have today, putting it on paper making us to succeed. You're a hero. Bassam right there. Let's get cracking. Thank you. Yeah, look at you. This is good. This is good. You're my digital friend that I've never seen in person. You're right here in person. Yeah. All the way down from the Great Northwest. Yes. Yeah. It's good. You have a good conference. Yeah.
Yeah. It's it's good that I mean, it's good to come to these events and see what's what's the state of the art in terms of its
you know, it's not a comprehensive meeting. You guys meet?
Yeah. Yeah. Meet, discuss, brainstorm. Fight, debate debate.
God. I don't know how you guys. Do you go home. Just all worn out?
Yeah, yeah. But but by the end of the third day or fourth day, you just want
like, yeah, you're right. You're right. I don't even want to debate that point anymore. You're right. So for the listeners out there, Bassam give us a little background of who you are.
Yes. So my name is Bassam Zarkout. I'm the founder of a consulting practice called IGnPower. Focusing on digital transformation in IoT industry, digital twins, etc. I'm based in Ottawa, Canada, but I cover the North America as well
as cover more than that. Assam Yeah, everywhere, man. You're like the dude, the Oracle in digital transformation. You think through this stuff? Yeah, he's downplaying it, folks. Just FYI. You knows more. So you come here. And you recognize that you're, I mean, there's the buzzword. It's digital digital transformation. Everybody's saying and what you you actually go through the process? And you understand what that means?
Yeah. Well, digital transformation is not new, obviously, been doing digital transformation for several decades. What is new is that we're doing this now, around machines and physical assets. So we're transforming the physical world around us. And we're tying it to the digital world. And we're optimizing it and we're producing better things. And we are changing the value that we deliver to the marketplace through these machines.
Are we really doing that, let's say industry as a whole? Are we succeeding at that? Do you see a trend that is taking place and say, yep, we're getting it right now. Because there was a lot of people that weren't.
Yeah, I mean, obviously, this is a slow process. But you can see it around you Rolls Royce is selling propulsion as a service. And the foundation of that is digital transformation whereby the airline doesn't buy the jet engine, they buy propulsion as a service, when they use the engine, they pay for the usage of the engine. And Rolls Royce is responsible entirely for the maintenance upkeep and KPIs or the engine and so on. But General Electric is, is doing the same. So you can see you can see these things happening around you slowly, gradually, but surely, as well. Yeah. And
that case, case in point, I mean, Rolls Royce is pulling in data, they're, they're managing that asset in a big way. Yes. And we're very grateful for that.
Yes. And I was told that they are very frustrated, because they'd like and they can do a lot more. But they are limited by the number of sensors that can put inside the engine because of the heat hot conditions inside that engine. The materials to produce the sensors do not exist yet, because it's so hot inside the engine is it's a resource now. It's amazing. Somebody explained it to me, and it's fascinating. They would love to put the 10 times more sensors in the engine and produce so much better results but they can't simply because the material Bill does not exist to produce these sensors.
All right, there's a business opportunity for anybody out there, right there work with Rolls Royce, develop these sensors. And I guarantee I'll be asking for a loan. Yeah. All right, Bassam, you're here, you're having these conversations, you're debating these conversations around digital transformation. What are the challenges there?
Well, the challenges is that because you are transforming environments that cross the physical digital divide, you're now doing transformation. Imagine you're transforming, you're changing the jet engine while the plane is flying. So while the plane is flying with changing the jet engine, and that introduces all kinds of challenges, you can't stop operation, you can't. You can't stop complying with your obligations towards regulations, and so on and so forth. So you need to keep on taking care of all these things, while you're making these changes. And that is not simple.
Okay, I'm gonna have to wrap my head around now. Yeah. So you're saying, Okay, so here's, here's a plane. And we'll just keep on running. I'm using
that as an example. Nobody is going to change a jet engine
during flight. But I want to get the analogy there. Because I think that you're onto something here that it creates a a truly valuable word picture that, okay, you have this asset, it's critical. You can't stop it, you can't stop it. Yeah, thank goodness, and you're pulling in information and data off of that engine real time. And eventually, you're gonna you're gonna get information. So let's do some maintenance.
Yeah. So you know, what is the this is an analogy to a jet engine. But organizations are, are facing this. And there is another problem being created is that the volume of IoT data is going to be exploding. It's already exploding through the roof. And people keep telling us that data is the new oil data is the new oil. Well, that means data has value, what is the value of this IoT data? How do I preserve that value? How do I make sure I'm capturing the tangible and intangible value of that data? And so on, and so forth. So that's another challenge that organizations are facing as well.
It's a tsunami. It says, and maybe it was you, I don't know, it could have been you. But the amount of data that is just pulled off of a plane on a flight is massive, just on a flight.
Yes, the the, I saw a figure last last week, an organization called statistics, they, they estimate that the volume of IoT data in 2025 will be 79 zettabytes. And zettabyte is a million petabyte sheet. So massive amounts of data, some of it, you will not need to store it and maintain it, but some of it, you may need to keep it for a long time and manage it. And, and, and, and manage its lifecycle. Because it may be required for compliance, it may be required, because it has value, a future AI may be so much more powerful, you can extract the value from it and sell
it, see it, but you're bringing up a component. It's so we're still sort of at the beginning of this whole wonderful digital revolution, you know, as we continue on this journey, this train to success, and everybody's saying, yeah, there's, there's gold in that data. And so we're going to just continue to try to get more and more data. I mean, what is it mean? Is everybody going to be a server farm? Is this gonna mean everything? And we're where do we store it?
The problem is physical, the problem isn't only storing it, the problem is maintaining the context. For example, you have a pressure vessel, and there's a sensor that tells you the temperature is 100. Do you want to store 100? Or do you want to store it's 100 degrees from that sensor from that vessel at this time? So you need to store all kinds of information? And in case of accidents, the authorities will want to investigate? Did you do what you are supposed to do? How do you prove that you did what you were supposed to do? So this information has to be that has to be a strategy about IoT data, what you do with it, and this is not about the engineering team or the operational team, legal may be involved, compliance may be involved. Risk management, maybe all of these people may need to be involved and make some risk based decisions because you can never be perfect. And being perfect is extremely expensive.
So you're so you get this this, this data, it's just going to continue to grow if if I'm an organization that is committed to transforming digitalizing my business right? I'm going to want more money. just got one more. And there's gonna be a conversation around all that debt type of data like that we don't need that data. So let's get rid of that one. But we need this data and, and how humans can't make that. You can you can create parameters, whatever those that looks like, but I'm not sitting there going, good data, good data.
I mean, that question you ask is a conversation that can take several hours. But people have been dealing with that on the business side. So for the longest time, people have been dealing in corporations and large corporations have had specialized teams that look at the types of data they have. And they create policies about what you do with that data. Right, because they, they have teams who have analyzed the regulations, and they've analyzed the laws, and they've determined that in order to comply with the law, or, or in order to minimize the risk of noncompliance, speaking like a lawyer, now, you need to apply these policies, and they don't leave it up to the person in the field to make the final decision about what to do, that person in the field doesn't necessarily understand all the requirements. So all they have to do is comply with the law. So the same approach has to be taken for IoT data, because that information is at least as valuable as your business data produced by your back office systems. And, and, and that can be crucial in compliance situations in legal situations. Let me give you an example. You have to comply with data privacy, right. And you are required to delete certain data when you are no longer in need to keep them for data privacy purposes. Well, do you know where all the copies of these data are in your system? No, you do not. So how do you? How do you prove that you've deleted this data?
You tell me? Yeah. Because here's your profits. I have
heard of legal cases where you have a large law firms have technology practices that were days. And they have CTOs and technologists who are also lawyers. My brother in law is a lawyer, I can tell lawyer jokes. So lawyers who are technologists are the worst. They are not easy to deal with, but they fulfill a very important function. And these people sooner or later are going to be involved in major compliance and legal cases where IoT systems fail that somebody, God forbid, got hurt, and you need to be able to prove that you've done what you were supposed to do within reasonable efforts. When you had to do
the same, you're, it's like, Hey, I'm a manufacturer, hey, I got my manufacturer hat on. And I'm, I'm manufacturing these widgets, and you're coming to me and you saying, Hey, Scott, you need to digitalize this more, and whatever, it's like that, that'd be great. Pull the data off of there, pull the data off there, let's analyze it, and you're gonna make some great decisions. And you're gonna, you know, but I'm opening myself up for greater visibility and risk, and I better know what I'm doing, which then I've got another headache to deal with outside of manufacturing or finding my supply or whatever my fees?
Yes, yes. I was speaking with a gentleman yesterday that. Now in Europe, there will be a new law. Well, it's a law that exists, but it will be strengthened, whereby if you have a supply chain upstream and downstream, you are responsible for the behavior of your partners, and that supply chain is of EDI data. Oh, yes. Yes,
I'm never doing business again, I'm just going to stay that guy that
banks, banks have had to do that. For the longest time. If you go to the bank for the first time and you want to open your account, they will pull out a form and they asked you a lot of questions. And basically, they don't want you to be laundering money through your banking institutions, this is called KYC know your customer. So something similar is going to happen with in supply chains. In other words, if you have you operate a supply chain, you cannot accept anybody to become part of that ecosystem because you are responsible to make sure that they are compliant with their obligations. And I say doing
business all of a sudden with this conversation has gone through it well,
maybe initially, but eventually like, like, it settles down becomes part of doing business. It's part of the evolution because it was like that 20 years ago in banks.
Yeah, here you go. So what do we do? I mean, all of a sudden, you've, you've stated a fact, and it is a fact, don't get me wrong. Yeah, I know that data will continue to just continue to grow in and you got to do something with it. And you got to manage it, you got to know where it's at, you know, in when this archive, ID, whatever, you got things around that data. We're how we're still at the beginning of this.
Yeah, yeah. And the approach is to have a strategy about IoT data. And I'm not talking about the technical aspects of interoperability, all of that stuff is a given at this stage, you need to have a strategy about your IoT data in terms of what's the value? What do I need to keep? What do I get rid of? Where are all the copies? How long do I keep them, and so on, and so forth. Because like I was giving you yesterday, the example of I have a Fitbit. And it's been collecting data for the past five years about my running my walking, etc. And I look at my phone, I see all this historic, historical data, and it's fine. It's nice to look at, but it's technically useless at this stage. But I do not know, maybe a future AI will look at this data and give me some insight about my health, I don't know. So in the future, you may get more advanced analytics that if you point it to historical IoT data, it may give you a new a new insight that you could not get before. So all of these, you have to take them into concert. So
the moral of this conversation or this story is one, your organization you need to go down that you need to be in the digital game. It just, yeah, if you want to be competitive, you want to have value coming out of that business, even greater, whatever it is, wherever that you need to be in the game. Yeah, that's okay, too. I know that I need to trust somebody I need to figure out how to take and I need a Sherpa to help me along with that. Because I hear you I see it, but I need a Sherpa to help me along with it. And therefore organization, I need to collaborate with trusted Sherpas, right? Not just any Sherpa, a trusted Sherpa to be able to take me on that journey to make sure that I do it, right. And then of course, I need organizations like OMG. And I see all of these organizations that are built on smart people gathering together and collaborating and debating these, these very difficult.
Yeah, so I look at it. And in a sense, like, like a small commercial, I mean, this is what we do at IGnPower, which is promote ourselves as these Sherpas for organizations. Yeah, help them divide. devise these data strategies for corporations. And again, the problem gets more complex when you're doing digital transformation, because you're making changes and retrofitting, and making changes to the process making changes to your organization. And you want to make sure that things do not fall apart as you don't.
I'm just, I have this is it, I need to find somebody I trust, I need to know where to start. I don't even know where to start. Because I'm too busy doing all of this stuff over here with my business that's been in business for 20 years or whatever. And I do it this way. Yeah. And I'm dealing with my supply chain issues or whatever it might be. It's vital.
Yes, the the the silver lining in all of this is you is the head curled is that the regulating bodies. And again, this is not legal advice, but the regulating bodies and the legal bodies and so on, do not want to run organizations out of business, right? They want to make sure that people are doing the reasonable thing. And, and that what is reasonable will keep on evolving. So what was very difficult to do a year ago will become very easy to do next year because of new technologies, new solutions, new thinking, and so on and so forth.
We haven't even touched upon that. There's a velocity and things change. Yes, yes, tomorrow is going to change.
But they want to see that. You've analyzed what your requirements are, that you've attempted to write a policy, that you've published the policy and had it approved at the highest level board of directors sometimes that you've informed your stakeholders about the policy and that you have consistently enforced these policies.
I'm glad you're in it. That's just me.
Yeah. And again, we've been doing this on the business side for business information. This has been the norm for the past 15 years.
Yeah. I mean, I am I'm so glad that people are like, like you are, are helping sort of that trail I really am. And how do people get a hold of you there?
Well, IGnPower.com website. And there's a lot of information on that website and just send us an email and we'll get back to
you as a user you get you're out there on LinkedIn to read. I am on LinkedIn as well. Okay, we're gonna have his stack card out there to LinkedIn stack card on industrial talk. So you got to reach out to Bassam you will not yes, you can tell until he knows what he's talking about. He's he is the right Sherpa to connect with. You can use that by the way, you can throw that on your way out. But yeah, that's good. All right. All right, listeners. We're gonna wrap it up inside. Stay tuned. We'll be right.
Bye. Bye. Bye, everyone. You're listening to the industrial talk Podcast Network.
Again, thank you very much for joining in dust Real Talk in Absolutely. Thank you for your support. It is a platform that is completely and solely dedicated to you industrial professionals. We are here to collaborate. We are here to innovate. We are here to educate, get engaged, go out to industrial talk.com. And absolutely. Thank you, Bassam for saying yes, being on the podcast, and having the opportunity to talk to you at the OMG quarterly meeting. It was great. And I want to just just reiterate the necessity to get your handle on data. There's gold there, it it can be overwhelming. But then there are people like Bassam and others that can help you with that journey in a jet a second, and be able to navigate and direct your attention to where it needs to happen. That's Bassam I'll have all his contact information out there. You know, that go the industrial talk, you'll find is his LinkedIn connection, reach out, and and have a conversation because we are about that education, he can do it. Well, that collaboration. Bassam is right on the money. And of course, innovation, there are so many options out there for you to consider in the world of data, data analytics, and so on and so forth. Reach out. All right, we're gonna be broadcasting, I think, coming up at the IoT solutions World Congress. And if you're going to be there, that's in Barcelona. We're going to have a spot broadcast. Tell your story. Make it happen, Captain. All right. Be bold, be brave, daring greatly. As I always say hang out with people like Bassam and you're gonna change the world because you do. Industry changes the world. Thank you again for joining. And we're gonna have another great conversation shortly coming from that OMG quarterly meeting.
Transcript
Welcome to the industrial talk podcast with Scott Mackenzie. Scott is a passionate industry professional dedicated to transferring cutting edge industry focused innovations and trends while highlighting the men and women who keep the world moving. So put on your hard hat, grab your work boots, and let's go
Alright, welcome Bill to industrial talk a platform that is dedicated to industrial professionals all around the world like the one that's sitting right next to me, because he is bold. Yes. Brave. Yes, he dares greatly. He collaborates. He solves problems. He is a superhero in my mind about that. Thank you, sir. Great. Yeah, I'm still ready to go. And we're broadcasting here in Austin, Texas. Oh, geez, the organization. And again, they get people like Bassam here who really know what goes on and and they are truly passionate about solving. Many of the challenges businesses have today, putting it on paper making us to succeed. You're a hero. Bassam right there. Let's get cracking. Thank you. Yeah, look at you. This is good. This is good. You're my digital friend that I've never seen in person. You're right here in person. Yeah. All the way down from the Great Northwest. Yes. Yeah. It's good. You have a good conference. Yeah.
Yeah. It's it's good that I mean, it's good to come to these events and see what's what's the state of the art in terms of its
you know, it's not a comprehensive meeting. You guys meet?
Yeah. Yeah. Meet, discuss, brainstorm. Fight, debate debate.
God. I don't know how you guys. Do you go home. Just all worn out?
Yeah, yeah. But but by the end of the third day or fourth day, you just want
like, yeah, you're right. You're right. I don't even want to debate that point anymore. You're right. So for the listeners out there, Bassam give us a little background of who you are.
Yes. So my name is Bassam Zarkout. I'm the founder of a consulting practice called IGnPower. Focusing on digital transformation in IoT industry, digital twins, etc. I'm based in Ottawa, Canada, but I cover the North America as well
as cover more than that. Assam Yeah, everywhere, man. You're like the dude, the Oracle in digital transformation. You think through this stuff? Yeah, he's downplaying it, folks. Just FYI. You knows more. So you come here. And you recognize that you're, I mean, there's the buzzword. It's digital digital transformation. Everybody's saying and what you you actually go through the process? And you understand what that means?
Yeah. Well, digital transformation is not new, obviously, been doing digital transformation for several decades. What is new is that we're doing this now, around machines and physical assets. So we're transforming the physical world around us. And we're tying it to the digital world. And we're optimizing it and we're producing better things. And we are changing the value that we deliver to the marketplace through these machines.
Are we really doing that, let's say industry as a whole? Are we succeeding at that? Do you see a trend that is taking place and say, yep, we're getting it right now. Because there was a lot of people that weren't.
Yeah, I mean, obviously, this is a slow process. But you can see it around you Rolls Royce is selling propulsion as a service. And the foundation of that is digital transformation whereby the airline doesn't buy the jet engine, they buy propulsion as a service, when they use the engine, they pay for the usage of the engine. And Rolls Royce is responsible entirely for the maintenance upkeep and KPIs or the engine and so on. But General Electric is, is doing the same. So you can see you can see these things happening around you slowly, gradually, but surely, as well. Yeah. And
that case, case in point, I mean, Rolls Royce is pulling in data, they're, they're managing that asset in a big way. Yes. And we're very grateful for that.
Yes. And I was told that they are very frustrated, because they'd like and they can do a lot more. But they are limited by the number of sensors that can put inside the engine because of the heat hot conditions inside that engine. The materials to produce the sensors do not exist yet, because it's so hot inside the engine is it's a resource now. It's amazing. Somebody explained it to me, and it's fascinating. They would love to put the 10 times more sensors in the engine and produce so much better results but they can't simply because the material Bill does not exist to produce these sensors.
All right, there's a business opportunity for anybody out there, right there work with Rolls Royce, develop these sensors. And I guarantee I'll be asking for a loan. Yeah. All right, Bassam, you're here, you're having these conversations, you're debating these conversations around digital transformation. What are the challenges there?
Well, the challenges is that because you are transforming environments that cross the physical digital divide, you're now doing transformation. Imagine you're transforming, you're changing the jet engine while the plane is flying. So while the plane is flying with changing the jet engine, and that introduces all kinds of challenges, you can't stop operation, you can't. You can't stop complying with your obligations towards regulations, and so on and so forth. So you need to keep on taking care of all these things, while you're making these changes. And that is not simple.
Okay, I'm gonna have to wrap my head around now. Yeah. So you're saying, Okay, so here's, here's a plane. And we'll just keep on running. I'm using
that as an example. Nobody is going to change a jet engine
during flight. But I want to get the analogy there. Because I think that you're onto something here that it creates a a truly valuable word picture that, okay, you have this asset, it's critical. You can't stop it, you can't stop it. Yeah, thank goodness, and you're pulling in information and data off of that engine real time. And eventually, you're gonna you're gonna get information. So let's do some maintenance.
Yeah. So you know, what is the this is an analogy to a jet engine. But organizations are, are facing this. And there is another problem being created is that the volume of IoT data is going to be exploding. It's already exploding through the roof. And people keep telling us that data is the new oil data is the new oil. Well, that means data has value, what is the value of this IoT data? How do I preserve that value? How do I make sure I'm capturing the tangible and intangible value of that data? And so on, and so forth. So that's another challenge that organizations are facing as well.
It's a tsunami. It says, and maybe it was you, I don't know, it could have been you. But the amount of data that is just pulled off of a plane on a flight is massive, just on a flight.
Yes, the the, I saw a figure last last week, an organization called statistics, they, they estimate that the volume of IoT data in 2025 will be 79 zettabytes. And zettabyte is a million petabyte sheet. So massive amounts of data, some of it, you will not need to store it and maintain it, but some of it, you may need to keep it for a long time and manage it. And, and, and, and manage its lifecycle. Because it may be required for compliance, it may be required, because it has value, a future AI may be so much more powerful, you can extract the value from it and sell
it, see it, but you're bringing up a component. It's so we're still sort of at the beginning of this whole wonderful digital revolution, you know, as we continue on this journey, this train to success, and everybody's saying, yeah, there's, there's gold in that data. And so we're going to just continue to try to get more and more data. I mean, what is it mean? Is everybody going to be a server farm? Is this gonna mean everything? And we're where do we store it?
The problem is physical, the problem isn't only storing it, the problem is maintaining the context. For example, you have a pressure vessel, and there's a sensor that tells you the temperature is 100. Do you want to store 100? Or do you want to store it's 100 degrees from that sensor from that vessel at this time? So you need to store all kinds of information? And in case of accidents, the authorities will want to investigate? Did you do what you are supposed to do? How do you prove that you did what you were supposed to do? So this information has to be that has to be a strategy about IoT data, what you do with it, and this is not about the engineering team or the operational team, legal may be involved, compliance may be involved. Risk management, maybe all of these people may need to be involved and make some risk based decisions because you can never be perfect. And being perfect is extremely expensive.
So you're so you get this this, this data, it's just going to continue to grow if if I'm an organization that is committed to transforming digitalizing my business right? I'm going to want more money. just got one more. And there's gonna be a conversation around all that debt type of data like that we don't need that data. So let's get rid of that one. But we need this data and, and how humans can't make that. You can you can create parameters, whatever those that looks like, but I'm not sitting there going, good data, good data.
I mean, that question you ask is a conversation that can take several hours. But people have been dealing with that on the business side. So for the longest time, people have been dealing in corporations and large corporations have had specialized teams that look at the types of data they have. And they create policies about what you do with that data. Right, because they, they have teams who have analyzed the regulations, and they've analyzed the laws, and they've determined that in order to comply with the law, or, or in order to minimize the risk of noncompliance, speaking like a lawyer, now, you need to apply these policies, and they don't leave it up to the person in the field to make the final decision about what to do, that person in the field doesn't necessarily understand all the requirements. So all they have to do is comply with the law. So the same approach has to be taken for IoT data, because that information is at least as valuable as your business data produced by your back office systems. And, and, and that can be crucial in compliance situations in legal situations. Let me give you an example. You have to comply with data privacy, right. And you are required to delete certain data when you are no longer in need to keep them for data privacy purposes. Well, do you know where all the copies of these data are in your system? No, you do not. So how do you? How do you prove that you've deleted this data?
You tell me? Yeah. Because here's your profits. I have
heard of legal cases where you have a large law firms have technology practices that were days. And they have CTOs and technologists who are also lawyers. My brother in law is a lawyer, I can tell lawyer jokes. So lawyers who are technologists are the worst. They are not easy to deal with, but they fulfill a very important function. And these people sooner or later are going to be involved in major compliance and legal cases where IoT systems fail that somebody, God forbid, got hurt, and you need to be able to prove that you've done what you were supposed to do within reasonable efforts. When you had to do
the same, you're, it's like, Hey, I'm a manufacturer, hey, I got my manufacturer hat on. And I'm, I'm manufacturing these widgets, and you're coming to me and you saying, Hey, Scott, you need to digitalize this more, and whatever, it's like that, that'd be great. Pull the data off of there, pull the data off there, let's analyze it, and you're gonna make some great decisions. And you're gonna, you know, but I'm opening myself up for greater visibility and risk, and I better know what I'm doing, which then I've got another headache to deal with outside of manufacturing or finding my supply or whatever my fees?
Yes, yes. I was speaking with a gentleman yesterday that. Now in Europe, there will be a new law. Well, it's a law that exists, but it will be strengthened, whereby if you have a supply chain upstream and downstream, you are responsible for the behavior of your partners, and that supply chain is of EDI data. Oh, yes. Yes,
I'm never doing business again, I'm just going to stay that guy that
banks, banks have had to do that. For the longest time. If you go to the bank for the first time and you want to open your account, they will pull out a form and they asked you a lot of questions. And basically, they don't want you to be laundering money through your banking institutions, this is called KYC know your customer. So something similar is going to happen with in supply chains. In other words, if you have you operate a supply chain, you cannot accept anybody to become part of that ecosystem because you are responsible to make sure that they are compliant with their obligations. And I say doing
business all of a sudden with this conversation has gone through it well,
maybe initially, but eventually like, like, it settles down becomes part of doing business. It's part of the evolution because it was like that 20 years ago in banks.
Yeah, here you go. So what do we do? I mean, all of a sudden, you've, you've stated a fact, and it is a fact, don't get me wrong. Yeah, I know that data will continue to just continue to grow in and you got to do something with it. And you got to manage it, you got to know where it's at, you know, in when this archive, ID, whatever, you got things around that data. We're how we're still at the beginning of this.
Yeah, yeah. And the approach is to have a strategy about IoT data. And I'm not talking about the technical aspects of interoperability, all of that stuff is a given at this stage, you need to have a strategy about your IoT data in terms of what's the value? What do I need to keep? What do I get rid of? Where are all the copies? How long do I keep them, and so on, and so forth. Because like I was giving you yesterday, the example of I have a Fitbit. And it's been collecting data for the past five years about my running my walking, etc. And I look at my phone, I see all this historic, historical data, and it's fine. It's nice to look at, but it's technically useless at this stage. But I do not know, maybe a future AI will look at this data and give me some insight about my health, I don't know. So in the future, you may get more advanced analytics that if you point it to historical IoT data, it may give you a new a new insight that you could not get before. So all of these, you have to take them into concert. So
the moral of this conversation or this story is one, your organization you need to go down that you need to be in the digital game. It just, yeah, if you want to be competitive, you want to have value coming out of that business, even greater, whatever it is, wherever that you need to be in the game. Yeah, that's okay, too. I know that I need to trust somebody I need to figure out how to take and I need a Sherpa to help me along with that. Because I hear you I see it, but I need a Sherpa to help me along with it. And therefore organization, I need to collaborate with trusted Sherpas, right? Not just any Sherpa, a trusted Sherpa to be able to take me on that journey to make sure that I do it, right. And then of course, I need organizations like OMG. And I see all of these organizations that are built on smart people gathering together and collaborating and debating these, these very difficult.
Yeah, so I look at it. And in a sense, like, like a small commercial, I mean, this is what we do at IGnPower, which is promote ourselves as these Sherpas for organizations. Yeah, help them divide. devise these data strategies for corporations. And again, the problem gets more complex when you're doing digital transformation, because you're making changes and retrofitting, and making changes to the process making changes to your organization. And you want to make sure that things do not fall apart as you don't.
I'm just, I have this is it, I need to find somebody I trust, I need to know where to start. I don't even know where to start. Because I'm too busy doing all of this stuff over here with my business that's been in business for 20 years or whatever. And I do it this way. Yeah. And I'm dealing with my supply chain issues or whatever it might be. It's vital.
Yes, the the the silver lining in all of this is you is the head curled is that the regulating bodies. And again, this is not legal advice, but the regulating bodies and the legal bodies and so on, do not want to run organizations out of business, right? They want to make sure that people are doing the reasonable thing. And, and that what is reasonable will keep on evolving. So what was very difficult to do a year ago will become very easy to do next year because of new technologies, new solutions, new thinking, and so on and so forth.
We haven't even touched upon that. There's a velocity and things change. Yes, yes, tomorrow is going to change.
But they want to see that. You've analyzed what your requirements are, that you've attempted to write a policy, that you've published the policy and had it approved at the highest level board of directors sometimes that you've informed your stakeholders about the policy and that you have consistently enforced these policies.
I'm glad you're in it. That's just me.
Yeah. And again, we've been doing this on the business side for business information. This has been the norm for the past 15 years.
Yeah. I mean, I am I'm so glad that people are like, like you are, are helping sort of that trail I really am. And how do people get a hold of you there?
Well, IGnPower.com website. And there's a lot of information on that website and just send us an email and we'll get back to
you as a user you get you're out there on LinkedIn to read. I am on LinkedIn as well. Okay, we're gonna have his stack card out there to LinkedIn stack card on industrial talk. So you got to reach out to Bassam you will not yes, you can tell until he knows what he's talking about. He's he is the right Sherpa to connect with. You can use that by the way, you can throw that on your way out. But yeah, that's good. All right. All right, listeners. We're gonna wrap it up inside. Stay tuned. We'll be right.
Bye. Bye. Bye, everyone. You're listening to the industrial talk Podcast Network.
Again, thank you very much for joining in dust Real Talk in Absolutely. Thank you for your support. It is a platform that is completely and solely dedicated to you industrial professionals. We are here to collaborate. We are here to innovate. We are here to educate, get engaged, go out to industrial talk.com. And absolutely. Thank you, Bassam for saying yes, being on the podcast, and having the opportunity to talk to you at the OMG quarterly meeting. It was great. And I want to just just reiterate the necessity to get your handle on data. There's gold there, it it can be overwhelming. But then there are people like Bassam and others that can help you with that journey in a jet a second, and be able to navigate and direct your attention to where it needs to happen. That's Bassam I'll have all his contact information out there. You know, that go the industrial talk, you'll find is his LinkedIn connection, reach out, and and have a conversation because we are about that education, he can do it. Well, that collaboration. Bassam is right on the money. And of course, innovation, there are so many options out there for you to consider in the world of data, data analytics, and so on and so forth. Reach out. All right, we're gonna be broadcasting, I think, coming up at the IoT solutions World Congress. And if you're going to be there, that's in Barcelona. We're going to have a spot broadcast. Tell your story. Make it happen, Captain. All right. Be bold, be brave, daring greatly. As I always say hang out with people like Bassam and you're gonna change the world because you do. Industry changes the world. Thank you again for joining. And we're gonna have another great conversation shortly coming from that OMG quarterly meeting.
About the author, Scott
I am Scott MacKenzie, husband, father, and passionate industry educator. From humble beginnings as a lathing contractor and certified journeyman/lineman to an Undergraduate and Master’s Degree in Business Administration, I have applied every aspect of my education and training to lead and influence. I believe in serving and adding value wherever I am called.
