S2E23: Brewing Beer at the Edge Pt. 1

March 15, 2023

MIN

S2E23: Brewing Beer at the Edge Pt. 1

This episode features an interview with Matthew Steinberg, Co-founder of Exhibit 'A' Brewing Company, and Pierluca Chiodelli, Vice President Engineering Technology & Edge Portfolio Product Management and Customer Operations, Dell Technologies.

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Matthew Steinberg

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Pierluca Chiodelli

Episode Transcript

Episode Summary:

In this episode of Over the Edge, Matt Trifiro interviews Matthew Steinberg, Co-founder of Exhibit 'A' Brewing Company, and Pierluca Chiodelli, Vice President Engineering Technology & Edge Portfolio Product Management and Customer Operations, Dell Technologies.

Matthew has been brewing beer for almost 20 years. After brewing a wide variety around Massachusetts, including Belgian styles, highly hopped ales, and barrel aged offerings, he founded his own brewery: Exhibit 'A'. Here, he creates his own modern takes on traditional beer styles.

Pierluca has been with Dell Technologies since 1999, and is currently VP Engineering Technology & Edge Portfolio Product Manager and Customer Operations. He’s responsible for Edge Enterprise Dell Technologies roadmap, and strategic technical partners engagement across Dell Technologies.

Matthew and Pierluca represent a partnership between Dell Technologies and Exhibit 'A' brewing to bring edge computing and complex technology to small, locally-owned businesses.

In the first segment of this interview, Matthew dives into the details of beer making, from start to finish. He describes how edge technology has helped Exhibit 'A' gather data and monitor processes for a more perfect brewing process, and how it can fix problems and save money (and beer) for the brewery. In segment 2, Pierluca gives his definition of the edge, describes the importance of connectivity in a setting like Matthew’s brewery, and explains how Dell Technologies is using this project as an example of their core value of promoting human progress.

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Key Quotes:

Matthew Steinberg

“The exciting part for me is actually beyond this first project, which is to really dig deep into our pain points as a brewery and what we can do to add to this technology. Not just make better beer, but create better processes, create more consistency, give our staff the tools they need to do these jobs, right? And so it's incredible. Like for a small craft brewery like us, that's like producing you know the equivalent of maybe 70,000 cases a year, to be able to have this technology is ridiculous. I mean, it's kind of a dream.”

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Pierluca Chiodelli

“There is no necessity to have all these different silos because with our experience, we can run multiple things on the same infrastructure. We can manage that infrastructure in different way, but what we are doing is basically also simplify the edge. There is no reason why certain application, they cannot run with other applications. So that's the technology we bring, with the security and with the simplification. So basically, it's democratize the edge and make sure that people can manage from one to thousands of devices with always security in mind and with zero touch capability.”

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Matthew Steinberg

“We have this art that is like my creative outlet for making, conceptualizing a beer. Whether it's the ingredients or the process or even what the label looks like. There's a lot of that art that goes into its. Science is like the yeast doing its thing, the malt being delivered properly, and it's, and I thought about it as like, the great, the art of the beer relies on the science to do what it's supposed to do. The technology actually allows us to control it. It allows us to, what was the word I used? Uh, you know, The tech helps us realize and observe the connection between the art and the science.”

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Matthew Steinberg

“So all of this temperature probes and, and controllers and the interface that Dell has installed here is allowing us to study that to just make better beer. I mean, that's literally the simplest way I can put it. The exciting part for me is actually beyond this first project, which is to really dig deep into our pain points as a brewery and what we can do to add to this technology. Not just make better beer, but create better processes, create more consistency, give our staff the tools they need to do these jobs.”

Pierluca Chiodelli

"One of the core value of Dell is really about human progress. It's very humble goal. It's also very difficult to connect you to directly to human progress. Now, when I start to look at the edge, I can say that because it's based on outcome, most of the things that we do are most impactful."

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Pierluca Chiodelli

"We've been selling at the Edge for many years. Uh, about 30 years. But, um, what is new at the edge is the data. Um, so I think, um, If you look at, so the brewer example, there are a lot of data that they've been collected. What is changing from the past is that everything needs to be connected now. What is changing also that the data they are producing at the edge, they need to be accessed at the edge."

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Pierluca Chiodelli

"You don't have an army of people and so you need to optimize. Optimize is important and have the ability to connect things and access those data immediately is very important. So the shift really why you need more compute, why you need more things at the edge is because the data are there. More data need to be processed there and the edge is different, is outside of the normal data center. So to me, that was the excitement to enter in the space that was not a familiar space, understanding the constraint of that space and understanding what we can do."

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Show Timestamps:

[03:41] Matthew’s entrepreneurial start

[07:41] How beer begins

[09:55] How beer is made

[14:38] The art of balance in beer

[17:26] The fermentation process

[19:56] Why cans are the best package

[23:12] How to store your beer

[23:32] How Matthew maintains quality

[25:31] What does beer have to do with edge computing?

[28:29] How Matthew uses data to solve problems

[33:17] Pierluca’s start in technology

[36:09] Dell and Edge

[40:06] The edge is about constraint

[41:52] The edge and security

[44:29] Helping everyone understand edge

[49:08] Dell’s goal of advancing progress

[53:20] Constraints of the edge

[56:40] How Dell and Exhibit A work together

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Sponsor:

Over the Edge is brought to you by Dell Technologies to unlock the potential of your infrastructure with edge solutions. From hardware and software to data and operations, across your entire multi-cloud environment, we’re here to help you simplify your edge so you can generate more value. Learn more by visiting DellTechnologies.com/SimplifyYourEdge for more information or click on the link in the show notes.

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