Fast Forward: Super Computing With Lenovo's Brian Connors

Welcome to Fast Forward, where nosotros have conversations about living in the future. I'g coming to you this calendar week from the SAP Sapphire Now Conference. My guest is Brian Connors, the VP of Strategic Technology Alliances and Development for Lenovo's Data Center Group.

Fast Forward Bug Art Information centers are one of the things that are making the world the astonishing place it is today and Brian tin tell us all almost them. He is also going to speak to the history of the PC industry, artificial intelligence and automation. Read and scout our full conversation below.

Dan Costa: Nosotros should probably commencement by talking well-nigh where nosotros are. People who are watching video can see that we're in a briefing heart, at that place are a lot of people around. SAP Sapphire At present is actually a huge testify hither in Orlando. Why don't you explain a little bit about what's going on?

Brian Connors: This is my 3rd event here in Orlando. Information technology'south what I would consider the premier bear witness of business organisation, business organisation leaders, business procedure, enterprise business. Ii years ago at the keynote, you lot could stand in the back and watch. Today, it was similar 10 people deep standing, plus it was being watched past everybody via streams. I recollect in that location was 30,000 people here today. For us equally a information center group, nosotros're a strategic partner of SAP and a platinum partner here at the show.

Only a little bit of history here, IBM x86 business came over to Lenovo in October of 2022. I was part of that transition. Prior to that, Lenovo acquired the notebook and PC business from IBM back in 2005. ThinkPad, equally you lot may know, is role of Lenovo. Information technology hitting 25 years in beingness this twelvemonth and information technology's still a premier product. Lenovo has done an incredible job, No. ane in the PC industry.

It's actually one of the best success stories in the PC industry. Everybody worried well-nigh that transition. Everybody wondered what was going to happen. Merely the ThinkPad brand continued and the products just kept getting better.

I was a young engineer working for the executive in Nippon that was in accuse of [the ThinkPad line.] Information technology was a very interesting time. TFTs came into beingness and the technologies really changed people'due south lives. Back in 2022, Lenovo made two acquisitions— i of Motorola, the Motorola telephone, handset, mobile phones, and so on. They too bought the information center group from IBM. We actually have three core businesses: the PC and clients, which is our core base of operations business organization, we take mobile phones, and we have the data center.

Within the data middle, nosotros have storage, we have networking, we take server, but we also have solutions. We accept hyper-conversion, a lot of software defined. We believe we are open, and nosotros're really working to disrupt the status quo. We take cypher to lose. Nosotros're coming in looking at really software defined and how we move things forward, leveraging the capability that we accept.

This prove is critical as function of our solutions. Back in 2022, we worked closely with SAP to develop HANNA. We had a small development team that still sits inside of Waldorf, Federal republic of germany. They worked on information technology, obviously SAP'southward code, but nosotros were a partner since then. The first [HANNA] appliance delivered in 2022. Nosotros ship well over 7,500 appliances now.

Let's explain a little bit nigh what HANNA is and how information technology works. What made information technology different?

HANNA is an in-memory database. You basically bring all your information in-memory and do analytics on it in-memory, every bit opposed to going off the deejay. That'south the simple view of it.

This show, as you lot look around, is very professional. I go to a lot of the shows and a lot of events. I manage HPC [Loftier Functioning Computing], who's a very different clientele, but this i is really business concern getting washed. You see the fashion the tables are set up upwards, you exit on the floor, and people are actually talking business, talking business outcomes, talking about "how can we move and transform enterprise into the digital world?" That's what'south heady near this show. Information technology'southward actually around real business in all the outbreak meetings as well equally all of the sessions. It's all around business.

SAP is building software solutions. Lenovo is providing a lot of the backend hardware to run and power all those solutions.

Infrastructure, yes. In our relationship with SAP, we look at it as a partner and a customer in a strategic alliance. Equally a customer, SAP is a large customer of ours. They run their HANNA enterprise clouds and their I.T. clouds on our platforms. They say that publicly, they run information technology. In addition, nosotros run SAP. By the style, they besides employ our ThinkPads and everything else. We run SAP. We've got one of the largest instances in Red china, in Asia-Pacific, all of Asia-Pacific.

Last year at Sapphire, we won an award for customer innovation. Bringing multiple companies together created a lot of IP challenges from different disparate systems. One of them was in our price forecasting and our vendor direction. Working with SAP, we invented some new engineering science. Lenovo was not on HANNA at the time, but we moved over to HANNA on our platforms, development forecasting. Where is that tornado going to land? What's the threat and the need for emergency response vehicles in this area versus in other areas and so that y'all can optimize it?

When yous look at the span of what HPC is doing, rubber, a good instance. We call it a racing arm of Lenovo, where we can advanced technologies. You await at Formula One. ABS brakes came from Formula One. The fiddling push button starting time came from racing. Airbags came from racing. All that stuff was modeled and simulated using high-functioning computer systems.

It has been democratized. It's not just big companies.

Not just big companies, because the cost to compute is downward. You'll see more than and more cloud-based. You'll run into more and more of the Googles and the Amazons, and the IBMs providing compute clouds for HPC. Merely go run a batch, and go run your workload.

Since I have never bought any compute and I don't industry my own, could you talk a little bit near the differences between purely cloud-based solutions and then having your own organization in-house?

In HPC, information technology's like a tool. Fiscal service is a practiced example, likewise. They run their grid, their credit risk analysis stuff. They want to keep that themselves. It'south like the laboratory. It's similar the erstwhile calculator. "I own it, it's mine." That's a big challenge.

They're afraid anybody else is going to get access to it.

Typically they like to run what'due south chosen bare metal. They don't want any software in the middle that's going to slow things down and virtualize information technology. They desire to run right to the metal. More and more, virtualization - the shared usage model to run temporary jobs and the cost of information technology to go do simulations and modeling--is democratized for people to use it much more broadly. You'll outset to encounter it in research and the dev op area, looking at how y'all can use the technology and the algorithms to go do things.

AI is a fundamental case. As GPUs become faster and faster and y'all take the learning needed from a lot of data and building learning models, more and more of this volition be cloud-based.

I of the things I've heard hither at the conference is that SAP's building machine-learning and AI into their unabridged line, frequently in very pocket-size means. It'due south non like "this is our AI production and it's going to solve all these problems." It's "this is our HR direction product, and this specific task tin be made better with machine learning, so we're going to deploy it in that location."

Leonardo, SAP Leonardo, is their platform. If you lot recall nigh the different areas that SAP software is with Success Factors, with Ariba, with Hybris, and you wait at that entire landscape. The more than y'all tin automate, the more you can speed upwardly results and do good yourself. The more y'all automate, the more you tin can learn, and the more you can predict. Predictive analytics is a full-circle element going forward. SAP is started in analytics. This is in their bike-firm, to go operate this way, and automate the best they can. Having those services available to exist able to have advantage of those insights and and then acting on those, just more chiefly learning as a outcome, [SAP] volition build very, very potent successful models.

You lot tin feel that desire amongst the people attending the show. They sense that there's great opportunity there and they want to figure out how to harness it. One of the things we've talked almost a lot on the show is that the downside of AI and of automation is that in that location could be job loss. There are a lot of processes that used to be done by human being beings that are now going to be done much faster and much better past algorithms. Is that a trouble, or is it not?

I remember information technology'south development. That could be said well-nigh any engineering science through history. I come from Buffalo, a steel mill city. When I was growing upwardly, it was all steel mills. Lower price manufacturing moved it all out. Thank goodness. Bad at the time, only information technology's reinvented. In that location'south a lot of cities along the Rust Belt - Cleveland and other cities as well that did the same thing. Y'all basically reinvent and become stronger and better and better. When all the outsourcing work occurred in the finance industry and fifty-fifty tech writing and everything, that all kind of went-

No, not tech writing! Please, non tech writing! Although information technology is happening...

It is happening. It kind of moved, just people reinvented themselves. Automation of those big batch areas are occurring every bit nosotros speak. More importantly, it is going to help companies lower their costs merely amend their results going forward. I think it'south just evolution. People volition keep to move.

The nature of employment is definitely shifting, but we also have to go on our eyes on the fact that overall quality of life is going up. Our healthcare outcomes are better, our businesses are more efficient. We're living in a amend world day by day, in part because of these technologies.

Absolutely. I think this has changed everyone's lives, this is kind of an obvious affair. The smart phone is sometimes a pain in the butt, because you're always looking at it and yous're kind of addicted to it. Only some of the new applications with SAP saved well-nigh $50 million in actual transition costs that we would have had to pay to the mother companies.

More chiefly, we are taking cost calculations that were in the 11-hour timeframe downwardly to vi minutes. Nosotros're taking forecasting - we transport over 100 meg things a year, so we're a big company from a transactional base of operations - from days to hours. Very, very successful. [Lenovo] won the innovation award concluding year at this peak, and it's how nosotros use and partner with SAP.

You hear that story a lot, where you go out looking for a customer or a customer, you current of air upward using them and incorporating them into your own company. Then you're a customer of theirs at the same fourth dimension they're a customer of yours. It creates an interesting synergy, where you air current up understanding their platform almost too as you know your own.

That's where it comes in. As yous look at the future, we nonetheless have that aforementioned squad, grown, in Waldorf - as well equally back in Raleigh, N Carolina - that are working on the next generation with SAP. We've pioneered Evora with them. We're out there now selling those products. As we expect to the hereafter, we're in there on the side by side generation intel platform that you heard Diane talk well-nigh earlier. They're using our platforms to develop them. We're besides in there with the cantankerous-point technology. We retrieve that will exist a game-changer. It won't be bachelor at the initial launch, simply information technology will be bachelor later. Again, our platforms are in there working with SAP on the development side on these new innovations with them.

Let's talk a little bit near that. When Lenovo took over the PC business, I recollect everybody intuitively understood, "Lenovo is going to have advantages to edifice PCs that IBM didn't have." Are there like advantages in the information center that Lenovo has, that IBM just didn't have?

IBM is a cracking company. Information technology goes end-to-terminate, very vertically integrated. Expect at Lenovo as a broad visitor, a wide company. One of the things that nosotros have at Lenovo is manifestly scale. Shipping 100 million things a year is logistically important. Our vertical manufacturing capability, bar none, is improve than any of our competitors in the industry. We're also very open. Nosotros have the permission to not be biased of any specific technology in middleware, I'll call it, operating systems. As we go to customers, information technology's very much like loftier-performance computing. When we were at IBM nosotros could talk about Ability, X86, whatever. When we went to customers, nosotros talked about their problem. Nosotros could determine what schedule would work best, what technology would work all-time.

Very like hither at Lenovo. Nosotros can get into a customer and say, "Look, this environment is best suited for Azure or for VMware." We tin can understand and we piece of work very closely with our strategic partners, which are VMware, Microsoft, SAP, SUSE, Cherry Lid, in a very not-threatening way to them. Virtually importantly to our customers, we're not leaning one way or another with a bias of "you need to use our storage because of X, Y, Z, or our open stack because we're on this version of Linux considering we're part owners of this company or the other."

You mentioned loftier-performance computing a couple of times. Really it seems like some people maybe want that broken down into what exactly that means. All calculating is high functioning at this point, correct?

All things first with high-performance calculating.

Ever.

People are sometimes agape of HPC. When I was running HPC, nosotros were actually focused on the democratization of high-operation computing. If you look at it historically, y'all had to be a PhD. Y'all had to be doing research in science. It was meant for the national labs. It was very expensive. I remember installing a 10 teraflop arrangement in 2022. You'll run into double, triple that coming out now.

As the cost of computing comes down dramatically, customers take a job to get done. They take insatiable need for computing. But getting more than and more calculating. If you look at information technology now, information technology'due south become very democratized. It's very low toll. The artificial intelligence elements of it is an adjacent space to HPC, doing a lot of analytical work. It came from batch jobs. You'd submit something, and somebody would practice an analysis, and it's all parallel processes to just go attack that trouble. At present it's all real-fourth dimension. The faster you lot can get it done, the more than you can get the results. It's really around time-to results and and then interim on those results.

Can you give me some examples of how that process has changed? What can we can do today we weren't able to do three years ago?

In the science world, it's pretty straightforward. At that place's project over in Europe around the homo brain project. With Lawrence Livermore, we have washed things with the human heart, to model information technology. Drug interaction. Drug design. Cancer research. The practiced matter about HPC - and that's why it's then warming to Lenovo and what we do, because we are the fastest growing HPC player on the market correct now. We have 99 of the top 500 [Supercomputers] listing in the concluding go-around and some of the largest installs. We're installing some of the largest systems right now over in Barcelona supercomputer called Mare Nostrum. When you look at this, information technology really applies itself to practiced things. It applies itself to cancer research. People call this [points to phone] an appendage to me, simply information technology does improve your quality of life. You can do things that you used to have to go sit down in front of a computer to do. You can practice information technology more casually. It changes it.

What was your starting time calculator?

It wasn't an Apple. It was a PS1, I think. Actually I call back it was probably an XT, the second generation. I was on the development team for the tertiary generation PC.

You went directly into development?

Yeah, I went straight into development.

You had the PC, just it was too you were building the platform. Yous were a architect equally much as a consumer.

I was a builder of it and understood it from command line prompt, DOS.

Now we've got portable computers in our pockets that are constantly connected.

And and so some, connected. I retrieve the connectivity of computing is the core, the textile, the network. Basically that is the figurer. That'southward what evolved and basically created the internet. Having it connect to those. Our first PCs were never connected. They were only standalone client devices. Great productivity, simply they weren't connected.

Kids today have never not been connected. I'm right on the borderline. I recall when I used to accept to dial up to get the internet. There was a handshake procedure, and I knew what information technology sounded similar.

The modem?

Aye. I knew through the sounds whether or not it was going to go through or not because information technology didn't always go through.

That however happens with fax machines.

You lot can tell when it's falling off and yous're like, "I'm not going to become the connection." Kids have no appreciation of that whatsoever. Either they accept wifi indicate or they don't.

I think 5G is going to change the globe again. You expect at 5G and you look at the capabilities of 5G, and that whole transformation is going to occur in the telephone and what'south going to happen in service provider data center. It's going to be another big enablement for new platforms.

What'due south Lenovo'south office in the deployment of 5G?

Very good. We're part of the Open Compute project, Open Compute platform, but nosotros're likewise very focused and we have the workbench with an open stack distribution that we're working on with Crimson Hat as a partner. It's a workbench for infrastructure and then that partners and clients can come up and test VNFs on information technology. They can test their overall management. We piece of work very closely with the telco industry in doing this. Think open up stack, think about a trusted, hardened infrastructure that can support it, and and then usa partnering - not competing - with partners that create their own VNFs and system integration capabilities.

How confident are yous that the 5G in the United States, here in Orlando, is going to be the same 5G in Barcelona, the same 5G in Shanghai?

I think they piece of work pretty hard on it, but anything goes. Everyone likes to differentiate. The suppliers like to differentiate. I know this phone works everywhere, but some places it draws a lot more power considering of the network that it's on. I call back getting it to a level of standardization will be cardinal.

Obviously WannaCry just hitting the web last week. We're still feeling the fallout. The first infection managed to be somewhat contained, but I recall we all know that something like is going to come up over again. To me it just points out the vulnerability we take in our overall. We talked nearly the upside of the networked globe. This is the downside of information technology. From a data middle perspective, what do businesses need to do? What do consumers need to exercise?

Definitely in that location are going to be bad actors out there, continually doing what they're doing. They're going to exploit vulnerabilities and maybe in extreme circumstances create vulnerabilities. It's going to happen. Layers of security, plain, are going to assist in that area. Isolation is going to help in that surface area. I retrieve you're seeing a lot of enterprise customers at present, the number one business organization is security - especially with the cloud, public cloud. For our platforms, we went through an atrocious lot as we moved into Lenovo. We know where information technology comes from, how information technology compounds. We build information technology in 1 physical location, which three people accept access to. We do secure boot all the way upward the stack. We utilise TPMs.

A lot of problem happens when you don't have the right patches. Some people wait for maintenance windows. What we can do is effigy out how to all-time enable with our partners patch upgrades, without taking down systems, without having to require maintenance windows. Yous want to get this stuff done existent-time, fifty-fifty though information technology may have been critical to do. A critical, somebody may have decided "permit's practise it during a maintenance window."

Yeah, and yous can't necessarily expect.

You tin't necessarily wait. It's a risk, Dan.

I want to become some of the questions I ask all my guests. First of all, what are you lot reading correct now? For fun or for pedagogy.

Yous know, I signed upwards for Audible. It was a free month or something, and I all the same get billed every month. I can't effigy out, it comes through Amazon at present. I think I have like v books downloaded and five more prepare. At some point you got to cut it out. Actually what I'one thousand reading right now is a hard copy book. It'due south called Eat to Live.

The hard cover books are coming back. Digital sales are actually coming down, and physical book sales are tipping upwards. Not by a lot, but a little bit. People nonetheless like their books.

Yep, the concrete is expert to have. I practice accept a Kindle, and I practice have, evidently, this, but the physical books are better. Especially at the beach.

A lot safer that mode. When nosotros're looking into the technological future and everything that's going on, are there any technology trends that concern you and proceed y'all up at dark?

I'm excited most technology. I'm an optimist when it comes to applied science. I don't come in saying that'southward non going to piece of work. I'm like, "How practise you effigy out how to brand it work?" I'chiliad an engineer. How do you take that to market place? What are you going to practice? I met with a few companies here today thinking, "How do you become do that? It looks good." That's role of the challenge, because everything looks skillful. I'1000 not seeing annihilation that'due south threatening or a claiming. I recollect it'due south all pretty exciting. I think the biggest challenge is people wanting to stick to the old way and not disrupt the condition quo. Clearly in that location'due south a natural evolution to when products will mature and go successful. Y'all can be as well far in front of the curve, and then if you lot don't take the persistence to stay with information technology, you lot kind of fall back. But I think I'chiliad pretty optimistic.

Is there anything in particular that y'all call back y'all should be really optimistic about, that's really going to transform humankind?

The cloud is a computer. That is the infrastructure, simply that'south kind of cliché because everybody knows that. I think individually, personally, binge-watching Netflix, Amazon Prime number. I started to get into that with all my travel. The capability to stream, get access to technology or amusement someday, anywhere, any identify on your dime, not wait a week, I think is pretty cool. Now, where will that take us comes to a level of personalization now and how we want to human activity and interact with technology.

We're about the same age. We came through that generation of the P2P era, where you had the cyberspace, and so y'all could get pretty much all the media in the world, equally long as y'all were willing to steal it. For a lot of that media, the only manner you could go it was to steal it considering the record companies wouldn't let information technology go, and the movie companies wouldn't make it bachelor.

Napster, yeah.

Napster was on its run. I'm not maxim BitTorrent is expressionless at present. It'due south yet very popular; nevertheless, there are lots of legal channels for media - for music, for movies.

It's one of those things, if you can't shell them you lot bring together them. You figure out a way to monetize it. That'southward what the music industry and the media has done well.

It's worked out pretty well for Amazon, for Netflix, for Hulu. They're finding ways to make this work. They're using convenience and a shine user feel to exercise it.

The content that's out at that place now is only incredible, if yous look at Netflix making their own movies, their own shows. It is incredible. You have to arrange. You have to embrace information technology and then figure out how to go forward versus fight it. That's what they did.

Right now Lenovo'south got products, notebooks and desktops, mobile phones, and the data center and the cloud. Where's this company going to exist in x years?

Our objective is to exist the well-nigh trusted partner in the data heart. If you look at our heritage and our legacy in the data center and PCs, we're number one in quality. We accept continuous innovation. We take 32 of the elevation benchmarks in our information eye group. We're number 24, I think, as a visitor of all supply concatenation, not simply in our domain of technology. If you look at where nosotros're headed, it is the device to data center. We want to look at this as a seamless environment.

We likewise are very focused on artificial intelligence and AI. You meet that our chairman pledged a $1.2 Billion dollar investment in this expanse. In that location volition more and more than to come up on information technology, the power to basically use AI and machine learning with a company like ours that touches then many customers out there, and how nosotros can bring insights from the data center infrastructure to help customers, out to the end user's client.

It'due south interesting, when you talk almost it y'all say, "We ship 100 million things." The number could get up, but also the diversity could change, likewise, over time.

It'll evolve. It'll evolve a corking bargain. We kind of look at our businesses and our PC business is kind of what we swallow in the basin today. It'due south our core business. Yous've got to protect it. Our data middle, our mobile business concern is actually the growing part of the business organisation. Then in the future, we were making bets, we're doing innovation, we're investing in companies that we think are going to have some long-term payoff in this development of technology.

Splendid. If people want to find out more about the data center, find out more than well-nigh where Lenovo is going, how can they get in touch with you, follow what yous're doing?

I am on Twitter @BrianJConnors. That's the best identify to find me. The hashtag is #LenovoDataCenters. Go to Lenovo'south site, and the data heart group is a articulate group that'southward in there. A lot of consumer stuff upfront because it's a lot of what yous see is our public site, merely you go in and you can run into everything we have in the data eye. You can also follow us on Facebook and on Linkedin, and you tin see everything that nosotros've got coming out, all of our social media campaigns.

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