Transcript
Vegas stays in Vegas. But I would love for us today or this week to change that around to what happens in Vegas doesn't stay in Vegas. Let's take what we forge today, this week, in the conversations that we have, the partnerships that we create, the opportunities that we discuss and make sure that it doesn't stay in Vegas, that we don't leave it behind and we go and capture what I believe is lining up to be a really exciting opportunity for all of us in the room. My name is Jonny Smith and I'm the CEO of Simply Nook. Our computing solutions, and you've seen some of them on screen, are small in nature, but they're not small in delivery, and they're certainly not small in the opportunity. And coupled with scale platform, businesses can achieve enterprise edge computing deployments like never before. So first of all, what is a Nook? What does it do? And why is it so great? I know you've seen some on screen, but to give you an idea of size, this is one of our Nook platform units. Now, they are typically a four by four inch PC unit. They're an entire PC in a four by four inch device. We also at Simply Nook develop some products that are much smaller. We've just recently created a much significantly smaller unit. We've got larger units that are compatible with external graphic card units. But we're talking about the next unit of compute, Nook, which is actually a phrase coined by Intel back in the day, and I will talk a little later about the Intel transition in the presentation. But today I want to talk to you about compute. I want to talk to you about small form factor compute. I want to talk to you about Simply Nook compute, being able to deliver solutions anywhere because of its compact size. I actually bumped into a solutions architect from scale in the lift on my first morning. I introduced myself. He said, where are you from? I said, I'm from Simply Nook. He says, oh, we love you guys. And I said, well, tell me, why do you love us? He said, we can't believe that we can deploy to enterprise on a unit that is so small but is yet so powerful. So that's great, Johnny, but what's the opportunity? What's the opportunity for us in this room? And I think it's amazing. It's great for all of us in this room, whether it's delivering solutions for a client or whether it's the opportunity around, and we've looked at it, where compute is going. We really want to talk about the opportunity for growth in compute form factor. And at Simply Nook, industrial applications are really a major focus for us, and we've lots and lots of clients in that space. The forecast in that is 10% compound annual growth rate. In the commercial applications, it's even greater. So we see the market is growing significantly for compute and compute power, and Simply Nook is a very strong part of enabling that business. Companies like Tesla, companies like Chick-fil-A, like Starbucks all rely on our compute solutions. It was great to hear from Brian just now, and it's been great to partner with Brian in providing that technology to him and his team. We're really talking about the opportunity at edge, and the reason why compute is so important at the edge is because of the applications that are arising from cloud computing and from AI. The requirement for companies means that compute architecture will grow up to triple the compound annual growth rate from small form factor. Harnessing that challenge along with latency and inference, and having that compute delivered without latency at the edge is important to have that compute on site. And we can deliver that for any custom application, combining that with skills platform layered on top. Let's get a wee bit into the nitty gritty here on small form factor PCs and what are their benefits. I would love for you to go away from here being really excited about what we can do together, and it's not just that we've taken computers and made them smaller, but actually what our solutions together can deliver. Computers are small enough to be anywhere that you can think of. They're already being used in lots of solutions, from kiosks to digital signage, to powering manufacturing equipment, to running the tables actually downstairs on the casino floor, and in quite a few of the casinos on the Strip. The space is fantastic, but also that we can have space without compromising. It's exceptional. Speaking with one of the great team members at scale, and somebody who's become a great friend, he's been looking at some of his customers and their current infrastructure, and what would happen if they moved that to simply NUC infrastructure. And he's been able to show that it is providing 25 to 40% power efficiency savings, and while doing that, also providing sustainability, and all of this at a much reduced cost. These devices can be used for anything, anywhere. They're dexterous, they're versatile, they can deliver the solutions that you need in any place. Now, what we don't want to do is just be giving you hardware off the shelf. We could do that, but at Simply NUC, we actually pride ourselves on the services and the solutions that we wrap around the unit that's fit for enterprise, and that's delivered by our partners, by scale's partners, to be able to make sure that you've got a deployment solution that's fit for purpose on the entire platform, giving the performance that you need in the right place at the right time. We want to make sure that you've got that performance at the right cost as well, so it's fit for purpose for your application, and we believe that Simply NUC is well suited to be able to do that without having to go at times to higher end server infrastructure. It makes it scalable so that we can take small form factor compute and mount them on a wall or on a table, or actually even rack mount them. One of our customers is actually doing this to power one of the largest digital signage solutions in the world. It means that scalability on maybe a one or two U rack mount server style solution can give you a unique proposition that you wouldn't be able to get for the price, for the power, for the maintenance anywhere else. The real unique part of Simply NUC is its unique ability to build custom solutions for specific requirements, and we've done that for many, many customers already. Let me go a little deeper into Simply NUC for a second, because I'd love for you guys to go away knowing more about us and how together with scale we can deliver a great solution. I often talk in the company about three things, products that we have, products we can get, and products that we create. Products that we have that are on our shelf that we have developed and created, and they're there, they're optimized and qualified by scale. Our Onyx is one of those recent units that we've brought to market that's on our shelf. It's an i9 in a four by four inch box with exhaust cooling, taking up to 96 gig of RAM. We've Onyx Pro that is in scale's hands at the moment that they're looking at, and that's products that we are creating. Products that we have, they're on our shelf. We've also got deep OEM, ODM relationships that allow us, with our 10 year experience with these ODMs and OEMs, to procure products and then customize those or configure them specific to your requirements. The unique part of the products that we can create and design, we've done that for opportunities at scale, and it could be for other custom MOD or military requirements, or it could just be that it's specific for artificial intelligence in a quick serve restaurant environment like Chick-fil-A. But we know that compute can be required for very specific needs, and at Simply Knock, we can build that. We'd love to talk to you more about some opportunities that you may have. We've got a booth here. We'd love for you guys to come and chat with the team. We're really excited. We've got quite a few of the team here, so please come and see us at the booth when you get some time. I'm also excited to share, I know there's a theme running through of history, and we looked at the history of Jeff's life and what he's achieved in cutting grass and then building computers. We've looked at the history of Simply Knock, but great to actually show a bit of history of what we've been doing, and Aaron, who's the founder, who's in the audience somewhere, we'd love for you to come and have a chat with him. Aaron was actually part of a company that helped build the first mini PC in the form that it's in now. This is it. It's more of a cube, and Simply Knock has continued from this on that same theme, taking the technology to new levels. We've worked there with Intel as they launched the Knock Compute, and since then, we had grown to be Intel's number one Knock provider on a global basis. We'd been doing that right up until the ASUS acquisition, or maybe not an acquisition, but the ASUS transition. From that transition, it probably scared some people. Are Intel exiting the Knock business? They're not exiting the Knock business. It's still there. It hasn't gone away. They're just enabling their partners to be able to create products like Simply Knock, like us, and for ASUS to continue on some of the products that already existed. What really used to say Intel Knock just now says ASUS Knock. Whilst ASUS has a different proposition from Intel, we believe that our partnership at Simply Knock with ASUS can help us scale small form factor compute even further into the future. We're working really closely with ASUS on some of that to help make sure that we deliver the solutions for our partners and our customers, and delivering them regardless of where they are in the world or where their customers are in the world. Simply Knock is a global company. We have facilities across the globe, one in Austin, Texas, one in the UK, and one in Europe, just north of Dublin. We're global. Simply Knock is here, and we're here to support you globally. I was talking to one of the enterprise sales leaders at Scale recently, and he described software without hardware is like a soul without a body. Really, that is very much representative of our partnership with Scale. It's very important for us and how we support Scale's partners and Scale's customers, how we support you. We're delivering Scale-certified solutions that delivers an appliance that can have virtual solutions provisioned out of the box in less than 30 minutes. We want to make sure that the platform is delivered for you as customers and partners. It stands just not the test of the requirement, but it also stands the test of time and helps you scale from a cost point of view. We build it together with Scale, and that's why we've released a solution together. You can, if you want, scan the QR code. We'd love to talk to you a bit more about it. The QR code would take you to our website, where that is where you can buy pre-configured solutions of Simply Knock hardware and Scale software together. That really shows the strength of the partnership we're building on with Scale. Where do we fit in the Scale story? Where do we fit? Because, hey, do you know what? I could stand up here and tell a great story, but we can't do everything. We don't want to do everything, but we want to be the specialists for compute at the edge. Compute capacity being a constant requirement currently with AI inferencing driving the extreme edge compute requirements. We're seeing that especially in retail, in QSR, and in multi-site environments where compute is required in an environment that traditionally have a lot of compute or don't have a lot of compute. So computer rooms on site, really that compute requirement is increasing and increasing. While there's many reference customers that we already use the Knock platform, you saw Brian show earlier on the Knocks that are being used in Chick-fil-A. I want to call out Harrison Steele just to talk about their previous computing needs and how they've been leveraging the Knock with Scales platform. And it's great to have them in the room today. So we talked about the industrial manufacturing requirements and what compute can deliver to that. So it's really great to see that we're not just delivering cost efficiencies, but we're helping augment the business by giving it some digital transformation by gathering data and helping them interpret that data for the future to be able to grow and have insights, and reducing the time to manage the solution on the floor. So really, this is technology at its best, being able to deliver insights, cost reductions, and help them focus on the business that they're really around to do. In summary, what I've been really excited to share with you today is to talk about small form factor and the versatility, where it can be used at the edge, really driving AI and the need for AI to transform the competitive nature for enterprise customers. If you're not using AI or you're not thinking about using AI, you're likely to lag behind, and that's across all industries. We want to be able to deliver digital signage, AI applications, and cloud solutions that can help customer experience or transform the digital nature of any business. NUCs or mini PCs are not a light solution. In fact, they're much more than that. They are cost effective, but they're very powerful. They can deliver what you're looking for, and really creating with our extreme edge solution a pathway to go from NUC right through to data center solution and filling in the gap of what might be a rather expensive or maybe overly powerful solution that is required at the edge right now. We want to help people to be able to do that with scalability. So the cost of delivering AI or the cost of delivering applications on the edge is reduced significantly, and the cost of managing and maintaining those solutions at the edge doesn't require a highly technical support team. We saw that. Craig's wonderful five-year-old daughter, Elizabeth, we saw her being able to swap it out. It doesn't require a high technical support team, but can be managed remotely and at the right cost effective solution with scales platform on top. We believe that together, going to the market with a great partner like scale gives body and soul with software and hardware delivered together to help transform opportunities for our customers and for our partners in all of the key industries that we've listed here. I'd love to talk to you guys more about this. I know the team would love to talk more about this. As I said, we've got a booth. We're around all week. Quite a few of us are from Ireland. You know what people from Ireland like to do. Not necessarily drink Guinness, but we love to talk. We would have the odd Guinness from time to time. But if we don't get a chance to meet this week, please reach out and have a chat with us. We'd love to talk to you about how we're delivering for some partners, how we can deliver for some partners, and then what the future looks like in some products that we're developing. We've been chatting with scale this week with some of the new technology that we're about to bring to market. We're really excited about it. Scale are really excited about it. That partnership together, we believe we're extending that roadmap and making sure that we're providing solutions for you right out into the future. I want to thank Jeff and his team at scale for putting on a fabulous event. It's been great to be here. We've loved being part of it, Jeff. We love the partnership with you guys. We're excited. We feel part of it. We feel part of the scale family. Thanks for having us in Vegas. What happens in Vegas? What happens this week? Let's make sure it doesn't stay in Vegas and we go and grab the opportunity that is in front. Thank you.
