Edge Transformation
In this week's episode, Ken Forster speaks with Nikhil Chauhan, Digital Transformation Officer at Wind River Systems, a global leader in delivering software for mission-critical intelligent systems. The company has powered billions of devices and systems that require high security, safety, and reliability for 40 years.
At Wind River, Nikhil leads Industrial, Energy, and Health Tech industries globally. He is a business and technology executive with over 25 years of worldwide multi-functional experience. Over his career, he has yielded $4B+ value, step-change digital transformations, strategic pivots to SaaS, cross-portfolio solutions from 50+ products, unique thought leadership such as defining “software-defined machines” at GE, scalable operating mechanisms, and top-graded center of excellence at GE, Hitachi, Cisco, Philips, Teradata, and Ericsson. He holds an MBA from Henley Management College and a Bachelors's in Electronics & Telecommunication engineering.
Discussion Points:
- What would you consider to be your 'Digital Thread'?
- What would you consider to be your 'Digital Thread'?
- As a level-set, how do you define 'digital transformation?
- Between the book ends of your time with Wind River, you've had a long track record of leading roles ranging from head of Edge-to-Cloud and Director at GE Digital to leading product marketing at Cisco IoT Cloud BU, to Head of Portfolio at Hitachi Vantara, to VP Product Portfolio Management at Teradata, to seeding the IoT strategy at Wind River in the early 2010s, and now the Digital Transformation Officer. What did this experience teach you about industrial edge computing?
- In your role, you lead Industrial, Energy, and Health Tech industries globally. Given your Digital Transformation Officer title, how do you approach and engage with these companies on behalf of Wind River?
- What key use cases and wins are you seeing your industrial clients use intelligent systems and software?
- With the semiconductor shortage, we've seen an acceleration of so-called software-defined automation, substituting gateways and software for traditional Programmable Controllers or PLCs. The difference in this wave is that the soft control is distributed, running in containers or on bare metal at the edge. To what degree do you see the same?
- Given your holistic perspective across cloud and edge, what would you predict for the next five years in terms of industrial intelligent systems?
- In closing, what are you reading or watching these days?
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