Tuesday, February 26, 2019

How BT Makes IT and Technology Sustainability a Business Advantage


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sustainability
Transcript of a discussion on how more companies are seeking sustainable resources improvement by adopting circular economy principles to make the most of their existing IT and business assets.

Listen to the podcast. Find it on iTunes. Download the transcript. Sponsor: Hewlett Packard Enterprise.

Dana Gardner: Hello, and welcome to the next edition of the BriefingsDirect Voice of the Customer podcast series. I’m Dana Gardner, Principal Analyst at Interarbor Solutions, your host and moderator for this ongoing discussion on digital transformation success stories.

Gardner
Our next use of sustainable resources improvement interview examines how more companies are plunging into the circular economy to make the most of their existing IT and business assets. We’ll now hear how more enterprises are optimizing their IT kit and finding innovative means to reduce waste -- as well as reduce energy consumption and therefore their carbon footprint.

Stay with us now as we learn how a circular economy mindset both improves sustainability as a benefit to individual companies as well as the overall environment. Here to help us explore the latest approaches to sustainable IT is William McDonough, Chief Executive of McDonough Innovation and Founder of William McDonough and Partners. Welcome to the show, William.

William McDonough: Thank you, very much.

Gardner: We are also here with Gabrielle Ginér, Head of Environmental Sustainability for BT Group, based in London. Welcome, Gabrielle.

Gabrielle Ginér: Hi, there.


Gardner: William, what are the top trends driving the need for reducing waste, redundancy, and inefficiency in the IT department and data center?

McDonough: Materials and energy are both fundamental, and I think people who work in IT systems that are often optimized have difficulty with the concept of waste. What this is about is eliminating the entire concept of waste. So, one thing’s waste is another thing’s food -- and so when we don’t waste time, we have food for thought.

McDonough
A lot of people realize that it's great to do the right thing, and that would be to not destroy the planet in the process of what you do every day. But it's also great to do it the right way. When we see the idea of redesigning things to be safe and healthy, and then we find ways to circulate them ad infinitum, we are designing for next use -- instead of end of life. So it's an exciting thing.

Gardner: If my example as an individual is any indication, I have this closet full of stuff that’s been building up for probably 15 years. I have phones and PCs and cables and modems in there that are outdated but that I just haven’t gotten around to dealing with. If that’s the indication on an individual home level, I can hardly imagine the scale of this at the enterprise and business level globally. How big is it?

Devices designed for reuse

McDonough: It’s as big as you think it is, everywhere. What we are looking at is design is the first signal of human intention. If we design these things to be disassembled and reusable, we therefore design for next use. That’s the fundamental shift, that we are now designing differently. We don’t say we design for one-time use: Take, make, waste. We instead design it for what's next.

And it's really important, especially in IT, because these things, in a certain way, they are ephemeral. We call them durables, but they are actually only meant to last a certain amount of time before we move onto the next big thing.
Learn How to Begin
Your IT Circular Economy Journey
If we design your phone in the last 25 years, the odds of you using the same phone for 25 years are pretty low. The notion that we can design these things to become useful again quickly is really part of the new system. We now see the recycling of phone boards that actually go all the way back to base materials in very cost-effective ways. You can mine gold at $210 a ton out there, or you can mine phone boards at about $27,000 a ton. So that’s pretty exciting.

Gardner: There are clearly economic rationales for doing the right thing. Gabrielle, tell us why this is important to BT as a telecommunications leader.

Ginér: We have seen change in how we deal with and talk to consumers about this. We actually encourage them now to return their phones. We are paying for them. Customers can just walk into a store and get money back. That’s a really powerful incentive for people to return their phones.

Gardner: This concept of design for reuse and recovery is part of the cradle-to-cradle design concept that you have helped establish, William. Tell us why your book, Cradle to Cradle, leads to the idea of a circular economy?

Reuse renews the planet

McDonough: When we first posited Cradle to Cradle, we said you can look at the Earth and realize there are two fundamental systems at play. One is the biological system of which we are a part, the natural systems. And in those systems waste equals food. It wants to be safe and healthy, including the things you wear, the water, the food, all those things, those are biological nutrients.

Then we have technology. Once we started banging on rocks and making metals and plastics and things like that, that’s really technical nutrition. It’s another metabolism. So we don't want to get the two confused.

When we talk about lifecycle, we like to refer it to living things have a lifecycle. But your telephone is not a living thing -- and we talk about it having a lifecycle, and then an end of life. Well, wait a minute, it's not alive. It talks to you, but it's not alive. So really it's a product or service.

In Cradle to Cradle we say there are things that our biology needs to be safe, healthy, and to go back to the soil safely. And then there is technology. Technology needs to come back into technology and to be used over and over again. It's for our use.

https://www.hpe.com/us/en/services/asset-lifecycle.html

And so, this brings up the concept we introduced, which is product-as-a-service. What you actually want from the phone is not 4,600 different kinds of chemicals. You want a telephone you can talk into for a certain period of time. And it's a service you want, really. And we see this being products-as-services, and that becomes the circular economy.

Once you see that, you design it for that use. Instead of saying, “Design for end-of-life. I am going to throw it in a landfill,” or something, you say, “I design it for next use. That means it’s designed for disassembly. We know we are going to use it again. It becomes part of a circular economy, which will grow the economy because we are doing it again and again.

Gardner: This approach seems to be win-win-win. There are lots of incentives, lots of rationales for not only doing well, but for doing good as companies. For example, Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) recently announced a big initiative about this.

Another part of this in the IT field that people don't appreciate is the amount of energy that goes into massive data centers. The hyperscale cloud companies are investing billions of dollars each a year in these new data centers. It financially behooves them to consume less energy, but the amount of energy that data centers need is growing at a fantastic rate, and it’s therefore a larger percentage of the overall carbon footprint.

William, do carbon and energy also need to be considered in this whole circular economy equation?

Intelligent energy management

McDonough: Clearly with the issues concerning climate and energy management, yes. If our energy is coming from fossil fuels, we have fugitive carbon in the atmosphere. That's something that's now toxic. We know that. A toxin is material in the wrong place, wrong dose, wrong duration, so this has to be dealt with.

Some major IT companies are leading in this, including Apple, Google, Facebook, and BT. This is quite phenomenal, really. They are reducing their energy consumption by being efficient. They are also adding renewables to their mix, to the point that they are going to be a major part of the power use -- but it's renewably sourced and carbon-free. That’s really interesting.
Learn How to Begin
Your IT Circular Economy Journey
When we realize the dynamic of the energy required to move data -- and that the people who do this have the possibility of doing it with renewably powered means – this is a harbinger for something really critical. We can do this with renewable energy while still using electricity. It's not like asking some heating plant to shift gears quickly or some transportation system to change its power systems; those things are good too, but this industry is based on being intelligent and understanding the statistical significance of what you do.

Gardner: Gabrielle, how is BT looking at the carbon and energy equation and helping to be more sustainable, not only in its own operations, but across your supply chain, all the companies that you work with as partners and vendors?

Ginér: Back to William's point, two things stand out. One, we are focused on being more energy efficient. Even though we are seeing data traffic grow by around 40 percent per year, we now have nine consecutive years of reducing energy consumption in our networks.

Ginér
To the second point around renewable energy, we have an ambition to be using 100 percent renewable electricity by 2020. Last year we were at 81 percent, and I am pleased to say that we did a couple of new deals recently, and we are now up at 96 percent. So, we are getting there in terms of the renewables.

What's been remarkable is how we have seen companies come together in coalitions that have really driven the demand and supply of renewable energy, which has been absolutely fantastic.

As for how we work with our suppliers like HPE, for example, as a customer we have a really important role to play in sending demand signals to our suppliers of what we are looking for. And obviously we are looking for our suppliers to be more sustainable. The initiatives that HPE announced recently in Madrid are absolutely fantastic and are what we are looking for.

Gardner: It’s great to hear about companies like BT that are taking a bellwether approach to this leadership position. HPE is being aggressive in terms of how it encourages companies to recycle and use more data center kit that’s been reconditioned so that you get more and more life out of the same resources.

But if you are not aggressive, if you are not on the leadership trajectory in terms of sustainability, what’s the likely outcome in a few years?

Smart, sustainable IT

McDonough: This is a key question. When a supplier company like HPE says, “We are going to care about this,” what I like about that is it’s a signal that they are providing services. A lot of the companies -- when they are trying to survive in business or trying to move through different agendas to manage modern commerce -- they may not have time to figure out how to get renewably powered.

But the ones that do know how to manage those things, it becomes just part of a service. That’s a really elegant thing. So, if a company like HPE says, “Okay, how many problems of yours can we solve? Oh, we will solve that one for you, too. Here, you do what you do, we will all do what we do -- and we will all do this together.” So, I think the notion that it becomes part of the service is a very elegant thing.

As we see AI coming in, we have to remember there is this thing called human intelligence that goes with it, and there is natural intelligence that goes with being in the world.

Gardner: A lot of companies have sustainability organizations, like BT. But how closely are they aligned with the IT organization? Do IT organizations need to create their own sustainability leaders? How should companies drive a more of the point of the arrow in IT department direction?

McDonough: IT is really critical now because it’s at the core of operations. It touches all the information that’s moving through the system. That's the place where we can inform the activities and our intentions. But the point today is that humans, as we see artificial intelligence (AI) coming in, we have to remember there is this thing called human intelligence that goes with it, and there is a natural intelligence that goes with being in the world.

We should begin with our values of what is the right thing to do. We talked about what's right and wrong, or what’s good and bad. Aristotle talked about what is less and more; truth in number. So, when we combine these two, you really have to begin with your values first. Do the right thing, and then go to the value, and do it all the right way.

And that means, let’s not get confused. Because if you are being less bad and you think it's good, you have to stop and think because you are being bad by definition, just less so. So, we get confused.
Circular Economy Report
Guides Users to 
Increased Sustainability
What we really want to be is more good. Let’s do less bad for sure, but let’s also go out and do more good. And the statistical reference points for data are going to come through the IT to help us determine that. So, the IT department is actually the traffic control for good corporate behavior.

Gardner: Gabrielle, some thoughts about why sustainability is an important driver for BT in general, and maybe some insights into how the IT function in particular can benefit?

Ginér: I don't think we need a separate sustainability function for IT. It comes back to what William mentioned about values. For BT, sustainability is part of the company’s ethos. We want to see that throughout our organization. I sit in a central team, but we work closely with IT. It’s part of sharing a common vision and a common goal.

Positive actions, profitable results

Gardner: For those organizations planning on a hybrid IT future, where they are making decisions about how much public cloud, private cloud, and traditional IT -- perhaps they should be factoring more about sustainability in terms of a lifecycle of products and the all-important carbon and energy equation.

How do we put numbers on this in ways that IT people can then justify on that all-important total cost of ownership and return on investment types of factoring across hybrid IT choices?

McDonough: Since the only constant in modern business life is high-speed change, you have to have change built into your day-to-day operations. And so, what is the change? The change will have an impact. The question is will it have a positive impact or a negative impact? If we look at the business, we want a positive impact economically; for the environment, we would like to have a positive impact there, too.

Since the only constant in modern business life is high-speed change ... for the environment we would like to have a positive impact there, too.
When you look at all of that together as one top-line behavior, you realize it’s about revenue generation, not just about profit derivation. So, you are not just trying to squeeze out every penny to get profit, which is what's leftover. That’s the manager’s job; you are trying to figure out what’s the right thing to do and bring in the revenue, that’s the executive’s job.

The executives see this and realize it’s about revenue generation actually. And so, we can balance our CAPEX and our OPEX and we can do optimization across it. That means a lot of equipment that’s sitting out there that might be suboptimal is still serviceable. It's a valuable asset. Let it run but be ready to refurbish it when the time comes. In the meantime, you are going to shift to the faster, better systems that are optimized across the entire platform. Because then you start saving energy, you start saving money, and that’s all there is to it.

Gardner: It seems like we are at the right time in the economy, and in the evolution of IT, for the economics to be working in favor of sustainability initiatives. It’s no coincidence that we are seeing at HPE that they are talking more about the economics of IT as well as sustainability issues. They are very closely linked.

Do you have studies at BT that help you make the economic case for sustainability, and not just that it's the good or proper thing to do?

Ginér: Oh yes, most definitely. Just last year through our Energy Efficiency Program, we saved 29 million pounds, and since we began looking at this in 2009-2010, we have saved more than 250 million pounds. So, there is definitely an economic case for being energy efficient.

Gardner: I’m afraid we’ll have to leave it there. We have been exploring how more companies are plunging into the circular economy to make the most of their existing IT and business assets. And we have learned how a circular economy mindset both improves sustainability as well as enhances the ability of companies to adapt to change and put in more of a hybrid IT-factored economic benefit.
Circular Economy Report
Guides Users to 
Increased Sustainability
So please join me in thanking our guests, William McDonough, Chief Executive of McDonough Innovation and Founder of William McDonough and Partners. Thank you, sir.

McDonough: Thank you.

Gardner: We have also been joined by Gabrielle Ginér, Head of Environmental Sustainability for BT Group, based in London. Thank you, Gabrielle.

Ginér: Thank you, very much.


Gardner: And a big thank you to our audience for joining this BriefingsDirect Voice of the Customer digital transformation success story. I’m Dana Gardner, Principal Analyst at Interarbor Solutions, your host for this ongoing series of Hewlett Packard Enterprise-sponsored interviews.

Thanks again for listening. Please pass this on to your IT community, and do come back next time.

Listen to the podcast. Find it on iTunes. Download the transcript. Sponsor: Hewlett Packard Enterprise.

Transcript of a discussion on how more companies are seeking sustainable resources improvement by adopting circular economy principles to make the most of their existing IT and business assets. Copyright Interarbor Solutions, LLC, 2005-2019. All rights reserved.

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Friday, February 22, 2019

Industrial-Strength Wearables Combine with Collaboration Cloud to Bring Anywhere Expertise to Intelligent-Edge Work

https://www.realwear.com

Transcript of a discussion on how workers in harsh conditions are gaining ease in accessing and interacting with the best intelligence thanks to cloud-enabled, hands-free, voice-activated, and multimedia wearable computers.

Listen to the podcast. Find it on iTunes. Download the transcript. Sponsor: Hewlett Packard Enterprise.

Dana Gardner: Hello, and welcome to the next edition of the BriefingsDirect Voice of the Customer podcast series. I’m Dana Gardner, Principal Analyst at Interarbor Solutions, your host and moderator for this ongoing discussion on digital transformation success stories.

Gardner
Our next industrial-edge innovation use-case examines how RealWear, Inc. and Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) MyRoom combine to provide workers in harsh conditions ease in accessing and interacting with the best intelligence. We’ll now learn how a hands-free, voice-activated, and multimedia wearable computer solves the last few feet issue for delivering a business’ best data and visual assets to some of its most critical onsite workers.

Here to describe the new high-water mark for wearable augmented collaboration technologies are Jan Josephson, Sales Director for EMEA at RealWear. Welcome to BriefingsDirect, Jan.

Jan Josephson: Thank you, very much. I’m happy to be here.

Gardner: We’re also joined by John “JT” Thurgood, Director of Sales for UK, Ireland, and Benelux at RealWear. Welcome, JT.

John “JT” Thurgood: Thank you, Dana, it’s good to be here.


Gardner: A variety of technologies have come together to create the RealWear solution. Tell us why nowadays a hands-free, wearable computer needs to support multimedia and collaboration solutions to get the job done.

Hands-free help

Thurgood: Over time, our industrial workers have moved through a digitization journey as they find the best ways to maintain and manage equipment in the field. They need a range of tools and data to do that. So, it could be an engineer wearing personal protective equipment in the field. He may be up on scaffolding. He typically needs a big bundle of paperwork, such as visual schematics, and all kinds of authorization documents. This is typically what an engineer takes into the field. What we are trying to do is make his life easier.

Thurgood
You can imagine it. An engineer gets to an industrial site, gets permission to be near the equipment, and has his schematics and drawings he takes into that often-harsh environment. His hands are full. He’s trying to balance and juggle everything while trying to work his way through that authorization process prior to actually getting on and doing the job – of being an engineer or a technician.

We take that need for physical documentation away from him and put it on an Android device, which is totally voice-controlled and hands-free. A gyroscope built into the device allows specific and appropriate access to all of those documents. He can even freeze at particular points in the document. He can refer to it visually by glancing down, because the screen is just below eye-line.

The information is available but not interfering from a safety perspective, and it’s not stopping him from doing his job. He has that screen access while working with his hands. The speakers in the unit also help guide him via verbal instructions through whatever the process may be, and he doesn’t even have to be looking at documentation.
Learn More About Software-Defined
And Hybrid Cloud Solutions
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He can follow work orders and processes. And, if he hits a brick wall -- he gets to a problem where even after following work processes, going through documentation, and it this still doesn’t look right -- what does he do? Well, he needs to phone a buddy, right? The way he does that is the visual remote guidance (VRG) MyRoom solution from HPE.

He gets the appropriate expert on the line, and that expert can be thousands of miles away. The expert can see what’s going on through the 16-megapixel camera on the RealWear device. And he can talk him through the problem, even in harsh conditions because there are four noise-canceling microphones on the device. So, the expert can give detailed, real-time guidance as to how to solve the problem.

You know, Dana, typically that would take weeks of waiting for an expert to be available. The cost involved in getting the guy on-site to go and resolve the issue is expensive. Now we are enabling that end-technician to get any assistance he needs, once he is at the right place, at the right time.

Gardner: What was the impetus to create the RealWear HMT-1? Was there a specific use case or demand that spurred the design?

Military inspiration, enterprise adoption

Thurgood: Our chief technology officer (CTO), Dr. Chris Parkinson, was working in another organization that was focused on manufacturing military-grade screens. He saw an application opportunity for that in the enterprise environment.

And it now has wide applicability -- whether it’s in the oil and gas industry, automotive, and construction. I’ve even had journalists wanting to use this device, like having a mobile cameraman.

He foresaw a wide range of use-cases, and so worked with a team -- with our chief executive officer (CEO), Andy Lowery -- to pull together a device. That design is IP66-rated, it’s hardened, and it can be used in all weather, from -20C to 50C, to do all sorts of different jobs.

There was nothing in the marketplace that provides these capabilities. We now have more than 10,000 RealWear devices in the field in all sorts of vertical industries.
The impetus was that there was nothing in the marketplace that provides these capabilities. People today are using iPads and tablets to do their jobs, but their hands are full. You can’t do the rest of the tasks that you may need to do using your hands.

We now have more than 10,000 RealWear devices in the field in all sorts of industrial areas. I have named a few verticals, but we’re discovering new verticals day-by-day.

Gardner: Jan, what were some of the requirements that led you to collaborate with HPE MyRoom and VRG? Why was that such a good fit?

Josephson: There are a couple of things HPE does extremely well in this field. In these remote, expert applications in particular, HPE designed their applications really well from a user experience (UX) perspective.

Josephson
At the end of the day, we have users out there and many of them are not necessarily engineers. So the UX side of an application is very important. You can’t have a lot of things clogging up your screen and making things too complicated. The interface has to be super simple.

The other thing that is really important for our customers is the way HPE does compression with their networked applications. This is essential because many times -- if you are out on an oil rig or in the middle of nowhere -- you don’t have the luxury of Wi-Fi or a 4G network. You are in the field.

The HPE solution, due to the compression, enables very high-quality video even at very-low bandwidth. This is very important for a lot of our customers. HPE is also taking their platform and enabling it to operate on-premises. That is becoming important because of security requirements. Some of the large users want a complete solution inside of their firewall.

So it’s a very impressive piece of software, and we’re very happy that we are in this partnership with HPE MyRoom.

Gardner: In effect, it’s a cloud application now -- but it can become a hybrid application, too.

Connected from the core to the edge

Thurgood: What’s really unique, too, is that HPE has now built-in object recognition within the toolset. So imagine you’re wearing the RealWear HMT-1, you’re looking at a pump, a gas filter, or some industrial object. The technology is now able to identify that object and provide you with the exact work orders and documentation related to it.

We’re now able to expand out from the historic use-case of expert remote visual guidance support into doing so much more. HPE has really pushed the boundaries out on the solution.

Gardner: It’s a striking example of the newfound power of connecting a core cloud capability with an edge device, and with full interactivity. Ultimately, this model brings the power of artificial intelligence (AI) running on a data center to that edge, and so combines it with the best of human intelligence and dexterity. It’s the best of all worlds.

JT, how is this device going to spur new kinds of edge intelligence?

Thurgood: It’s another great question because 5G is now coming to bear as well as Wi-Fi. So, all of a sudden, almost no matter where you are, you can have devices that are always connected via broadband. The connectivity will become ubiquitous.
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Now, what does that do? It means never having an offline device. All of the data, all of your Internet of Things (IoT) analytics and augmented and assisted reality will all be made available to that remote user.

So, we are looking at the superhuman versions of engineers and technicians. Historically you had a guy with paperwork. Now, if he’s always connected, he always has all the right documentation and is able to act and resolve tasks with all of the power and the assistance he needs. And it’s always available right now.

So, yes, we are going to see more intellectual value being moved down to the remote, edge user.

At RealWear, we see ourselves as a knowledge-transfer company. We want the user of this device to be the conduit through which you can feed all cloud-analyzed data. As time goes by, some of the applications will reside in the cloud as well as on the local device. For higher-order analytics there is a hell of a lot of churning of data required to provide the best end results. So, that’s our prediction.


Gardner: When you can extend the best intelligence to any expert around the world, it’s very powerful concept.

For those listening to or reading this podcast, please describe the HMT-1 device. It’s fairly small and resides within a helmet.

Using your headwear

Thurgood: We have a horseshoe-shaped device with a screen out in front. Typically, it’s worn within a hat. Let’s imagine, you have a standard cap on your head. It attaches to the cap with two clips on the sides. You then have a screen that protrudes from the front of the device that is held just below your eye-line. The camera is mounted on the side. It becomes a head-worn tablet computer.

It can be worn in hard hats, bump caps, normal baseball caps, or just with straps (and no hat). It performs regardless of the environment you are in -- be that in wind, rain, gales, such as working out on an offshore oil and gas rig. Or if you are an automotive technician, working in a noisy garage, it simply complements the protective equipment you need to use in the field.

Gardner: When you can bring this level of intelligence and instant access of experts to the edge, wherever it is, you’re talking about new economics. These type of industrial use cases can often involve processes where downtime means huge amounts of money lost. Quickly intercepting a problem and solving it fast can make a huge difference.

Do you have examples that provide a sense of the qualitative and quantitative benefits when this is put to good use?

https://www.realwear.com
Thurgood: There are a number of examples. Take automotive to start with. If you have a problem with your vehicle today, you typically take it to a dealership. That dealer will try to resolve the issue as quickly as it can. Let’s say the dealership can’t. There is a fault on the car that needs some expert assistance. Today, the dealership phones the head office and says, “Hey, I need an expert to come down and join us. When can you join us?” And there is typically a long delay.

So, what does that mean? That means my vehicle is off the road. It means I have to have a replacement vehicle. And that expert has to come out from head office to spend time traveling to be on-site to resolve the issue.
What can happen now using the RealWear device in conjunction with the HPE VRG MyRoom is that the technician contacts the expert engineer remotely and gets immediate feedback and assistance on resolving the fault. As you can imagine, the customer experience is vastly improved based on resolving the issue in minutes – and not hours, days, or even weeks.

Josephson: It’s a good example because everyone can relate to a car. Also, nowadays the car manufacturers are pushing a lot more technology into the cars. They are almost computers on wheels. When a car has a problem, chances are very slim you will have the skill-set needed in that local garage.

The whole automotive industry has a big challenge because they have all of these people in the field who need to learn a lot. Doing it the traditional way -- of getting them all into a classroom for six weeks -- just doesn’t cut it. So, it’s now all about incident-based, real-time learning.

Another benefit is that we can record everything in MyRoom. So if I have a session that solves a particular problem, I can take that recording and I have a value of one-to-many rather than one-to-one. I can begin building up my intellectual property, my FAQs, my better customer service. A whole range of values are being put in front here.

Gardner: You’re creating an archive, not just a spot solution. That archive can then be easily accessible at the right time and any place.

Josephson: Right.

Gardner: For those listeners wondering whether RealWear and VRG are applicable to their vertical industry, or their particular problem set, what are couple of key questions that they might ask themselves?

Shared know-how saves time and money

Thurgood: Do your technicians and engineers need to use their hands? Do they need to be hands-free? If so, you need a device like this. It’s voice-controlled, it’s mounted on your head.

Do they wear personal protectant equipment (PPE)? Do they have to wear gloves? If so, it’s really difficult to use a stylus or poke the screen of a tablet. With RealWear, we provide a totally hands-free, eyes-forward, very safe deployment of knowledge-transfer technology in the field.

If you need your hands free in the field, or if you’re working outdoors, up on towers and so on, it’s a good use of the device.

Josephson: Also, if your business includes field engineers that travel, do you have many traveling days where you had to go back because you forgot something, or it wasn’t the right skill-set on the first trip?

If instead you can always have someone available via the device to validate what we think is wrong and actually potentially fix it, I mean, it’s a huge savings. Fewer return or duplicate trips.

Gardner: I’m afraid we’ll have to leave it there. We have been exploring how RealWear and HPE MyRoom combine to provide workers in harsh conditions ease in accessing and interacting with the best intelligence.
Learn More About Software-Defined
And Hybrid Cloud Solutions
That Reduce Complexity
And we have learned how a hands-free, voice-activated, and multimedia wearable computer is solving the last few feet issue for delivering a business’ best data and visual assets to some of its most critical on-site workers.

Please join me in thanking our guests, Jan Josephson, Sales Director for EMEA at RealWear, and JT, Director of Sales for UK, Ireland, and Benelux at RealWear, which is based in Vancouver, Washington.

Thurgood: Anytime, Dana. Thank you, very much.


Gardner: And a big thank you to our audience as well for joining this BriefingsDirect Voice of the Customer digital transformation success story. I’m Dana Gardner, Principal Analyst at Interarbor Solutions, your host for this ongoing series of Hewlett Packard Enterprise-sponsored interviews.

Thanks again for listening. Please pass this on to your IT community, and do come back next time.

Listen to the podcast. Find it on iTunes. Download the transcript. Sponsor: Hewlett Packard Enterprise.

Transcript of a discussion on how workers in harsh conditions are gaining ease in accessing and interacting with the best intelligence thanks to cloud-enabled, hands-free, voice-activated, and multimedia wearable computers. Copyright Interarbor Solutions, LLC, 2005-2019. All rights reserved.

You may also be interested in: