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Waves with Wireless Nerd
Waves Interview: Revolutionizing Business Networks: Unveiling Meter's Bold Journey Featuring Cutting-Edge Hardware & Software Innovations with Anil Varanasi
What if the solution to your business's networking challenges lay in the hands of a single, innovative company? Join us for a captivating conversation with Anil Varanasi, Co-Founder and CEO of Meter, as we unravel the decade-long incognito journey of this groundbreaking company. From its humble beginnings focused on software to its bold expansion into hardware production, Anil shares the behind-the-scenes stories of the risks and rewards that shaped Meter's path to success.
Discover how Meter is capitalizing on the volatile landscape of the networking industry, transforming obstacles into opportunities. Anil reveals the company's unique service-oriented model that prioritizes customer satisfaction over market domination. We shine a spotlight on Meter's cutting-edge LAN and switching technologies, designed to provide unparalleled data and information, reshaping how businesses approach their network infrastructure.
Get ready to rethink your approach to internet connectivity with insights into Meter's innovative products, including 'Connect'—an intuitive tool that simplifies obtaining WAN connections. Learn how Meter's cloud-based control plane and digital twin architecture offer real-time management and visibility, ensuring seamless integration across thousands of devices. This episode promises to enrich your understanding of networking, offering practical solutions and a glimpse into the future of network systems.
what's up nerds? It's drew lintz, the wireless nerd, and this is one of my fun, fun, fun interviews. Today. I have someone, uh, sitting behind the screen here that I got to know over the last couple of weeks. So I'm very excited, not just about the product, but about the person behind the product, the team behind the product and what they've been doing, and it's going to shock you to know that they've been around for about 10 years, but now they're finally jumping into the spotlight. So, mr Anil, I'm going to let you introduce yourself real quick to everyone that's listening. Who are you? What do you do?
Speaker 2:Thanks, drew, for having me. My name is Anil Varanasi. I'm one of the founders and CEO of Meter. Meter makes it really easy for any business to get internet networking wireless security. We do it entirely as a service and we build routing, switching, wireless DNS security, sd-wan, all built into single pane of glass, like you said. We've been around a decade, relatively quiet, just honing in our product and now talking a bit more about who we are and what we do.
Speaker 1:That's awesome. Why in the world would you want to get into this industry? There's so many great solutions already out there. I've had the opportunity to see your product and, for the people that have, there's lots of testimonials. Y'all have online lots of stuff on LinkedIn, but you as a person I mean it's you and your brother, right, and a great team of people what was the moment where you're like you know what we can change, where this is going, Because it is pretty phenomenal what you're doing? What was that moment of impact for you?
Speaker 2:I think with a lot of these things, people want to romanticize how they end up deciding what to work on and they imagine some sort of Newtonian moment where an apple fell on their tree and from that moment on that's what they're working on. I wish I was that embellishing on how we got to it. You know, I studied networking in college. We really care about infrastructure. We really care about networks.
Speaker 2:It just felt like about 12 to 15 years ago things kind of stalled out and we just extrapolated a few things on what does hardware look like over time? What does software and packet processing look like over time? And what does software to help manage this look like? What does cost and pricing look like over time? And how do we really make sure we push the industry forward? And when we started looking at all of these things just felt like nobody else was doing it. Yeah, but it wasn't one day that happened, it was just. We just slowly kept thinking about it and you know, just at the end of the day we're like, okay, maybe it's us that should do it, because it seems like nobody else really is.
Speaker 1:And I think, with your product, with the life of your product, I want to put myself in your head right, because I've tinkered and I've built and I've done all these little things and software and whatever, but to get it to go, from this idea that you can change an entire industry, I mean, where did you start with hardware? Did you start with code? I mean, where did you did you start with hardware? Did you start with code? I mean, the thought was this grand thought, right, but I'm sure it iterated. It's not like you had the idea today of what you know 10 years ago. How did that iterate over time and where? Let me ask you also, what was one of the moments where you're like, oh my gosh, we're on to something like this is the breakthrough we were looking for.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so. So interestingly for us, the documents that people read when they join meter during their onboarding are what we wrote 10 years ago. Almost nothing's changed. That's awesome. We just said this.
Speaker 2:This is what we're doing. This is what we're going to go do. So we did start with software first and really thinking about underneath how is packet processing changing Now? You've had a lot of great teams over the last couple of decades think about this, but particularly in the last 15 years. You think about software defined networking, what Nick McCohen and Martin Casado's teams over at Stanford did, and then building eight at Facebook with Open Compute and other things that I know you were part of too, which is just how are we actually doing packet processing from the ground up? So we started with software, but quickly it turned out that to have really great software alan k was right you need really great hardware yeah and so then we started iterating on hardware here in san francisco, where we're based out of, but it was really slow.
Speaker 2:You know we designed something, send it over, get a PCB wait a few weeks. Yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it was just really slow.
Speaker 2:So, as naive as it sounds, Sunil, my brother and I said let's just go to where it's made, Maybe for a couple months. How hard it could really be. Thanks for the last word.
Speaker 1:This is so great. That's I.
Speaker 1:I do want to hear that story like at least a part of it because I've always, you know, I, I'm working on this fun, this is my little. I've got this little baby project I'm working on, you know, tiny little three layer pcb and at some point it's just like, just I just want to go, because I, you know, even with that, like I just want to go over there and be like dude, just turn it around super quick. How did that work out for you? Yeah, I mean we can go down that rabbit hole.
Speaker 2:It was hard right. So there's two places in the world where really hardware is made at scale. One is Shenzhen, the other one is Taiwan. Shenzhen has this incredible history of going from a fishing village that was 30 000 people to 30 million people in 30 years. Yeah, it's crazy, phenomenal place. It's crazy. If you go to wachang bay and other places, that's just literally where hardware is made. So we just went there. That's awesome and.
Speaker 2:And we, you know, cold emailed folks. People were really gracious. We got a tutor to learn Mandarin and we learned Mandarin while we were there. Wow, every morning for two, two and a half hours we had a Mandarin tutor and then we just built and it turns out it's a little bit harder than just a couple months to even get the base stuff to have really great hardware for testing and other things. We ended up living there for like a year, year and a half.
Speaker 2:Our parents were very concerned on what's going on and then, as we iterated, we moved everything to Taiwan once we're thinking about production, quality, security, supply chains, and we were lucky enough where we're working with the same manufacturers, factories, as every single large networking company that came before us. Great, I just think these other companies, these manufacturers, to their credit, ended up seeing what Meter could be before anybody else could and they started working with us. So that's why, since day one, we've had such a high quality of hardware and components, from Intel to Qualcomm and others, because some folks I don't know how, maybe because they've seen this movie so many times they could tell that we're going to do this for a really long time. So that's how it kind of played out. Today we manufacture all in Taiwan with all the great, amazing manufacturers in the world that do this for pick your vendor. That's the biggest in the world. Yeah, yeah, but that's kind of how it played out.
Speaker 1:Man, but that's so cool, right? Because you did it Like you went out there and you did it. You focused on you doing it. Instead, you went out there and you did it. You focused on you doing instead of instead of someone else putting it together for you. And I can't, I can't imagine the things that you learn, simple things, like the simple things that make huge differences, but then to be able to leverage the experience of these larger man you know, these larger manufacturing facilities and go this is what we have like. Oh yeah, we've, we've done this here. Here's how we can make it perfect for you. You know that's so cool and then? So then the whole time you're doing this, you're doing software. Software wasn't in taiwan, though. Software was was started to be done in bay area.
Speaker 1:Okay, yeah yeah, and you guys are an sf proper, so you know sf yeah, that's awesome entirely.
Speaker 2:Um, and you know, a lot of great networking companies got started here in the bay area, so there's a rich bed of talent here. Oh, oh huge. And super large history of people that help start these companies, invest in these companies, build these companies. Yeah, really, architecture and the other thing is networking is no longer just about networking.
Speaker 1:That's right, right, that's right.
Speaker 2:Networking is about operating systems, distributed systems, APIs, front end dashboards, yes, Machine learning and everybody's favorite word, AI. Now there's like a whole barrier. Has this really rich bed of people that you can learn from, recruit to your company and really build something together?
Speaker 1:And that's where I was going to go, right. Is that now you're doing software in, arguably the software capital of the world, right, doing these incredible things and the talent that you're pulling into this because you're a new company, because you're coming into something is you get to leverage the experience of all these people who've been doing this at different organizations? That now, when you're launching it talk, I mean now you can interact with other pieces of equipment or machinery or whatever, because you have the same group there going hey, this is new and fascinating. I want to be a part of this. So then you start to build your team and your team is nothing to shake a stick at man, I mean how. I don't even want to know how you recruited, but you've got some serious talent over there.
Speaker 1:What, what did you? I mean your. So your hardware is coming up to speed, your software is coming up to speed. You've got this idea that you're going to change networking and one of the things not to fast forward, all the way. But you talked to me about not coming to market until you knew you were ready, and you knew that you were completely ready. Talk to whoever's listening about that, because that, to me, is. It's like the biggest question. Oh, you've been around for 10 years. Why have I never heard of you? That's what everybody wants to know and you have such a cool answer for that. So what is it? Why haven't we?
Speaker 2:heard about you, and I think it's a fair question, by the way, and folks in this industry should be skeptical, because there have been so many companies that have come and gone hundreds and thousands of times. Yeah, yeah, and what we wanted to be careful about is not just being another statistic, if you will, but the framing for us is pretty simple that we are in a very established industry. Yeah.
Speaker 2:With incredible companies that have built great products and really great teams over the last two, three, four, I guess now almost five decades yeah, decades, not years.
Speaker 1:decades, yeah, so when they love change, right, they love, yes, well, but but hold on. I mean, even at that right to jump in is I feel like I feel like the other larger organizations have done a really good job of making people not want to change Like, no, don't worry, you shouldn't have to go over there, we'll do everything for you.
Speaker 1:You want to attack on phones, you want to attack on video, you want to attack on everything else. All of these organizations have done a good job of making you not want to look elsewhere, but it did get stagnant, right, it did get stagnant.
Speaker 2:So I think that's exactly right too. So the usual pitch from incumbents and legacy ones is some new company comes along. The biggest thing they'll point out is two one is that it's an incomplete solution, and two, it's not a mature product line.
Speaker 1:That's right. You don't have everything. Those are the two things.
Speaker 2:Now we knew we were going to work on this for decades. So there's zero doubt in my mind that my brother and I, and a lot of the folks here, will be here for decades at Meter building this into what we hope to be an impactful business for our customers and others. Now if we knew that we just wanted to work backwards from that. So what we hope to be an impactful business for our customers and others. Now if we knew that we just wanted to work backwards from that. So what we did is we said okay, established industry, really good products. We believe things have gotten stagnant. We have opinions on how it could be better. Let show rather than tell. Oh, that's awesome. And showing is always harder and takes longer than telling.
Speaker 1:Ain't that the truth? But slowly along the way, you started to collect talent. I mean, you're recruiting some really good names from some really great companies.
Speaker 1:You've got people that are very interested in what you're doing. There's one that you nailed it on the headlines by getting by, you know, getting investment backed by someone. We won't even talk about him until later, but but you know, it's been so cool to, to learn your story and how you got to where you are and then. So then you get to this point and you say you say we've got the product. We think we're ready to go. We've got the software solution pretty sure we're ready to go. We've got the software solution pretty sure we're ready to go. You're standing at the edge of it and in my mind, right, you're just staying there, going. Okay, when's the right time to jump into this market? And lo and behold, wouldn't you know? Turmoil happens in the industry you know and you and you get.
Speaker 1:You get all these vendors. You've got you know one who's trying to figure out you know how to combine two companies into one and make, you know, get products that are out there and and then going through the layoffs that they have. And then you have another that's acquiring a you know a competitive company and then trying to smash these things together you know like a, like a really dysfunctional looking logo. You know it's like you have all these things that are just happening in the industry and it seems like the timing here is and I asked you this. You don't even you know. I asked you this at Wi-Fi. Now I was like, dude, were you planning on coming into the market, right?
Speaker 2:now, or did the?
Speaker 1:opportunity just present itself and I, you know, I feel like your answer was it was a little bit of both to give it away, but I think it was yeah.
Speaker 2:We did get lucky. We got lucky too right.
Speaker 1:Yeah, when everyone starts, you know when everyone's fighting around you and you get customers going dude, we just came out of the chipset shortage, we just came out of hardware shortage and now these companies don't know what they're doing, they don't know which way is up, and you're standing there going hey, I got this full solution that completely revolutionizes everything that you're doing. Yeah, I mean that's.
Speaker 2:And we hear this from customers and partners all the time, right, yeah, especially, as you know, the large customers and the large partners have a full purview into all of these businesses. Now, some of the things I'm learning through them. Even I'm surprised at like having the same piece of hardware boot into two separate os's, tacking on on a two by two pcd, another two by two to make it four by four. All these different things that I'm learning about, yeah, that some of these legacy providers are doing, um, and you know, we really just think about what are we building that's going to solve a customer's problem?
Speaker 1:yeah, because it doesn't. I don't get, I mean, and call me naive, uh, but I don't get the vibe from you that you're out there to like take over the industry and dominate. I mean, yeah, you want to, you want market share, but you're not trying to be tricky or crafty about it. You're looking at this going. That's great that you guys are fighting with each other. I'm making a product that I'm putting everything into, that. I'm making the best product, regardless of what's going on in the industry, that'll stand the test of everything that's happening. It just happens to be coming to market at a time when people are looking around, going, you know, maybe it is time for a new solution and I know you hear it, I mean it's the elephant in the room in every in.
Speaker 2:You know. The other thing, I think is just land really needs love. Yeah, yes, and we think it's not. What's out there today we refuse to believe is the best version of what's possible.
Speaker 1:Oh, that's a big statement, man, because you're right, land does need love. I mean, switches are switches. Everyone just said, oh, it's just a switch, right. And one of the most transformative things that's happened in the last decade or two decades in switching was Ubiquity put little LED lights behind their switch. What a sign of the times in switching, where it's like that's what we have as an industry, of course speeds are going up and whatever, but it's like that's the thing that people are getting excited about is you can light up the LED port. That really tells you that switching is at a part where it needs some love. And not only that, with some of the other companies focusing their AI, starting in the wireless side, then moving into the switching side, or starting in the switching side you're starting to see more of the love for switching. But one of the things with you all is you do have I'm looking behind you, right, you do have the full suite of things, and this obviously probably wireless. People are listening to this. I'm at least hoping a few of them are. But on the wireless side, I don't want to dig into it yet, but I do want to talk a little bit.
Speaker 1:A larger picture when you got to each one of these individual components. You didn't just look at a switch as a. You're like oh, I just need a switch, just whatever. Put some ports on there, make it happen. You really reimagine the way that network switching happens in a in, in a way that would feed the network better data and more information. Talk to me about about that, because I think that you don't want to overlook. It's not just a switch. What makes a meter switch different than just an off-the-shelf switch?
Speaker 2:So I think there's two big things that happen anytime you're building something new what are the architecture choices you're making and what are your incentives for making them and incentives really matter in building products and building companies.
Speaker 1:Yeah, a lot of people are after money, yeah, so what?
Speaker 2:are our incentives. We're not just trying to build a piece of hardware and then sell it for a margin on top of it. That's not what we're trying to do, and we never sell individual pieces of hard work. We provide a service for networking and IT teams so that they can do more high leverage work and they can have really great networks for their customers. Now that's our incentive, right? We get paid only if we provide a good network. That's awesome, that's awesome, Otherwise meter gets nothing.
Speaker 1:Imagine a world where that is pervasive. I mean, I know you are imagining that world, but imagine, you know, stop and think about that as a service. Not just you're paying, you know the whole network as a service thing. And see, you know campus networking and service and the different acronyms for it. It's this idea that you're going to pay for that service, but a lot of people are just thinking about that like you're renting the equipment.
Speaker 1:You know or whatever, but I think your take on it is a little bit different. So expand on that. This isn't just network as a service. What is Meter? Why the name Meter? It folds right into it.
Speaker 2:You know, yeah, yeah. So I think because you have those incentives and you have architecture choices, so where it's just renting and what people kind of really are making up a lot of things for network as a service, is that they just take a bunch of hardware and they're tacking financing on top. Yeah, and that's not what we're trying to do, right, because of the choices we make and the architecture leads itself to be that way. Because of the choices we make and the architecture leads itself to be that way. So, from how our hardware is designed, how it interconnects between security appliances, switches, access points, how the operating systems are written, how there's a unified firmware image, how is the metrics pipeline built? That's real time from the ground up. Then how is all this taken to the backend?
Speaker 2:In the backend, we've virtualized every piece of our hardware and every single port, and I know the term like digital twin is starting to get too much play these days, but really imagining a full virtual network on the backend as well, and then real-time data that flows to it for configuration, for validation, for scalability. Now we're able to do this from the ground up. Even how we do packet processing is different and I know everybody's architecture and I know what we do and I know the performance we can get, I know the reliability we can get, but we're able to do that because of those choices and the choices lead to exactly what you were asking on simple question of like, even where the name comes from. But I'll pause there if there are questions.
Speaker 1:No, I know it's, it's, it's, this is, you know, wi-fi now, and some of these are conferences and stuff where we talk about being able to leverage the full power of the network.
Speaker 1:The one theme that keeps coming out is exactly and you hit the nail on the head right, this isn't taking a bunch of different pieces of equipment and packaging together and financing them. This is taking a system and putting it out there and leveraging it from top to bottom. Right, because unless you can understand the way that that packet traverses the network from start to finish, there's not a lot you can do with it, because you've got breakpoints that happen over and over. But if you're able to control the entire path, all the way through, of how every single packet is happening on your network, there's a lot of different things you can do with that. We don't even have to talk about the AI stuff, because once you control that network from end to end, now it's like, okay, now I can make a better user experience overall, and I feel like that's part of the secret sauce that you guys have right, is it's all or nothing?
Speaker 1:We're not just going to send you some APs, we're not just going to send you some switches, you know, and I think, conversely, if I think about the rest of the industry, you know, the rest of the industry is like, yeah, you can buy our APs and buy someone else's switches, and it how much of a fan of open Wi-Fi I am Even open Wi-Fi, it's like but if you don't control the handoffs on either side, then really, what can you do and what can you process? So then, well, let me ask you, what benefit do you see there, what benefit as a customer, if I have a full stack deployed from meter? What are the benefits? Is it just I don't want to say speed, but the term that I'm loving is QOE quality of experience. I mean, can you offer a better experience by doing that viably?
Speaker 2:Yeah, so I think I know most of your listeners are engineers. So if we break down experience for an end user, what is it composed of?
Speaker 1:There's three things.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so performance is really important. Yeah.
Speaker 2:From how are you actually processing packets from a security layer from an appliance to the switch to the AP. Then you have reliability, and reliability comes from how does a packet perverse performance through each layer? That's right. Then you have security on top of it. What's even important is how are all these things communicating? And I'm happy to go into our own system on how we build and it'll be a fun thing and we can go into it. But even how securely are each of our hardware communicates? How does it communicate to the back end? What does that look like?
Speaker 1:like a meter ap to a meter, switch like Like yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah yeah. There's an entire system that we built from the ground up. That's fascinating and why it's so performant. Then what you have is control. Can I actually control my networks the way I want? Now there's a mistake. That's happening these days is what people are doing with nas is just saying don't worry about your network, we'll make your network invisible. I don't want my network invisible. I want it to be beautiful, I want it to be visible and I want it to be great and that I think that's a differentiator for you, right?
Speaker 1:and? And there there are a couple companies that have popped up some of them have some pretty big names behind them also, that are that are doing something that if you look at it, if you, if you read the news post or the blog or whatever, it looks like it's similar. It looks like you guys are doing the same thing. It looks like there's some competition out there. I've gotten to see under the hood with you all and I know that that's not true, and the statement that you just made, I think, is the key statement there.
Speaker 1:This isn't just handing someone. You know, here's your equipment, don't worry about it, we're just going to make it work. You expose a lot of that. Talk to me about and you've already mentioned it the digital twin side. So how? I mean, what does the architecture of this look like? You have, I log in, I've logged into your dashboard. It's 100%. You know, on the cloud, I jump in and what I'm accessing there. I'm not accessing the actual equipment, I'm accessing a digital twin and it's pushing the config to the equipment, or how does that work? Yeah, and why? Why did you do that?
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 2:So there's the data plane and then there's a control plane. Control plane is entirely in the cloud and the control plane also has context on the entire digital twin aspect of it and it holds the configuration for all these devices. So the why is very simple. There's two things we really want to give customers. First is visibility.
Speaker 2:We believe in real time data, and I don't mean data that just sits in there. I'm going to hit refresh. What does it look like? Similar to the cloud, can I get real time data into my infrastructure? I might have hundreds and thousands of locations, thousands of switches, tens of thousands of APs. What does real time data look like? It's awesome. And thousands of locations, thousands of switches, tens of thousands of APs. What does real-time data look like? It's awesome.
Speaker 2:On top of that is control. You and I right now can get on a CLI and provision out a bunch of servers on EC2. And they'll have great defaults. But what's incredible about EC2 is you and I can also just SSH into that box and say I want this to happen, or go to the AWS console and say this is how my architecture is. I want it to be this way. So the second big reason for us is we want to do all the hard work and expose beautiful software to our customers, and I don't mean beauty in just a pixel sense, how it works, how it functions. What does it tell me? What is it doing right? There's two important things to be able to show to customers. What do I need to know? What do I need to do?
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:And software that comes from that. So the advantage of experience is security, it's reliability, it's performance, it's control and visibility. That's a great experience. And being this all a single pane of glass from ISP security, routing, switching, wireless DNS security, sd-wan VPN all tied in. That's why we built it.
Speaker 1:And not hiding it right. It's there. It's there if you want to use it. It's there. If's why we built it and not hiding it right. Making it's there, it's there if you, if you want to use it, it's there if you want to see it. But the functionality and making sure that it seamlessly integrates and work together, that's key. I think of. I think of all the people you know. All the manufacturers have come up with with different product and acquired different companies and tried to pull it all together and stick it all in one cloud.
Speaker 2:And it's not.
Speaker 1:It's so kludgy and it's like if only you had it all working together and then having it all work together, which sounds totally redundant, but you know what I mean. That's one of the issues. So it's such a fascinating thing and I know people can't wait to see it and the more people that talk to you, the more people that get exposed to this, the more people that see it, they light up and then on the engineering side, they're like well, show it to me. So we're not going to get into, show it to me right now. But I do want to bring up one thing that you mentioned, because I thought it was fascinating and I don't remember Is it Connect? Is that the?
Speaker 2:name. Yeah, it's called Connect.
Speaker 1:I mean, listen, I just the concept of it blew me away and it was so simple. And this, that's a free product that anyone has access to talk about that real quick, because that's man sure how cool is that and for anyone who wants to use it. Where do they go, is they so?
Speaker 2:yeah, they can go to metercom m-e-t-rcom slash connect and they can just use it. So the idea we had is very simple.
Speaker 1:It's awesome, it's so awesome.
Speaker 2:How does meter work today? Somebody has, let's say, 100 locations. They'll give us a bunch of addresses, give us a bunch of floor plans and then magically, there's great networks that appear for them to use and control and have visibility. But to have a really great network you need a great man connection. That's just a reality. No matter how great of a network you build, if you don't have great isps connecting in, you're not going to have a good experience that's right, and it's so much fun to shop for those great wan connections if only there was a tool that allowed me to see a marketplace of those connections.
Speaker 2:Well, the internal joke on how it started is so we first wrote down Connect even before we wrote down our network product, maybe 15 years ago. That's awesome, but the internal joke at Meter around Connect or not even a joke, it's become like a true thing. That we've been trying to find is the internet has gone really far. I can go buy instantly a bag of bananas to an airplane and even put an order in for spacex, and I can buy anything on internet, but I can't buy the internet on the internet and can we make that happen?
Speaker 2:it's awesome and so we spent years again doing this years. And connect, as you describe it as kayak or expedia. But for isps, yeah, we believe anybody should be able to type in an address and, just like when you type something in into kayaks and I'm flying from here to here, you get a list back and you see the prices and you see the different options. Maybe it's dedicated fiber, maybe it's point to point, maybe it's coax and you can just buy right there. And we're ISP agnostic and we work with everybody from the large top five to the local and regional and small ones that are unique city. So connect is at metercom slash connect, kayak or Expedia. For ISPs Type in your address, buy an ISP.
Speaker 1:That's it, and it's, and it, it's. It surprised me how quick it was. I had a friend and I said hey, let me, let me try this out using your address. He's got some properties and I punched it in and I was like that's it. And then I was with Sarah from your marketing team and I said, so, what's the next step, or no? It was you and you said no, don't click that, because then it opens up a contract. I was like that's really it, like that's how simple.
Speaker 1:You just punch in the address and it gives you that marketplace. And then from there, the next step is defining what to get. That meter experience. So I type in my address, shows me the internet service provider options, I choose one and then it's what?
Speaker 2:Yeah, Then we ask you questions on what are you doing with that space. So it might be a warehouse office, retail school.
Speaker 2:Hotel whatever it is Lab, space, hotel, anything and then we also ask you what are you connecting it to? Do you have colo? Do you have data centers? Where is this all going and what does your architecture look like? And that's it. Then we figure out, working with the ISPs to get the ISP you want. We go do the site surveys, then we design and build racks out that all of us would be really proud of and happy to look at and we can show off in Reddit. It's awesome. And then we do the full testing of the live network that comes up and then we hand the keys off to our customers that are the networking and IT teams with great software to be able to control and have visibility into it. But that's end-to-end what we do and full life cycle of design deploy, configure, upgrade and provide that software and maintenance to our customers.
Speaker 1:And to touch on the software you mentioned, single image. What's the story there?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean software development. There's a lot of choices you can make on how you think about down to the firmware of each of the things you're building. So security appliances, switches, access points, and we have other things coming where we'll come and announce it on your podcast in the next few months. That, I think, will be really exciting. But we have a unified image on how they communicate to each other. That's the underlying base image. We have a unified image on how they communicate to each other. That's the underlying base image. Then, how data traverses from them back to the cloud and from them in between each other as well, and what does access look like? Because of this, I mean, I think you've seen our dashboard right. It's a single pane of glass. You can see all of it, and when you click on something, you aren't just looking at that, you can see the entire thing.
Speaker 3:Yeah, you can see where it's coming and where it's going.
Speaker 2:Exactly. It really enables that to be able to go do Again. That's a very hard choice to make because you have to wrangle in all these different teams.
Speaker 1:That's right. That's right. You got to make them all work together too. And how do you think about the future as well? Where is this going? What other pieces of hardware are you building in the next two, three, four, five, ten years? Yeah, and that's the question, right, what is what is you know now that you solve these problems?
Speaker 1:And it my mind always goes back to symbol technologies, right, my, it always goes back to they weren't selling wireless access points, they were selling scanner guns and all of that stuff that made scanner guns work. You know which, which inevitably became our industry, and you know it's. It's fantastic to think about that and it's great to think that it's going back to that, and so you're proud of. You know, like, like we've said, I've gotten the opportunity to see it. I hope anyone listening gets the opportunity to see it. You can learn more about meter at metercom. What's coming up for you guys? Where can someone see? You've got a couple of trade shows coming up I think you're going to be at, and then your door is always open at the office, right? No, I'm just kidding.
Speaker 2:Yeah, no, no, actually, you're right, we'll be at ONUG and, I think, a couple more, but for anybody that's listening, we would love to show you the product. We really believe if we build a good product, get good feedback, that leads to incredible outcomes for us and for the long term. Easiest way to learn is meter at metercom, but you can always just email me too, anil at metercom. It's super simple, anil at metercom. I'm happy to demo the product to engineers, executives, to really learn. But fundamentally, what we do is again hope to build really great products in this industry and really say, oh man, we pushed it a bit forward. So next for us is there's a bunch of releases that we have coming over the next few months, including in software, including in hardware Nice and other things that are in vogue.
Speaker 1:If you're listening to this podcast and you don't see Anil's face, he's physically biting his lip, I think, and we've got marketing on the line too, and I'm sure she's giving him the no, no, no. But it's always great to talk to you, man, and from the moment I met you, it's been fantastic. I used to think I was special because you gave me the demo yourself on your dashboard, and I learned that you do that for everybody but that's okay.
Speaker 1:But it really is. I'm so happy to see something happening in this industry and what you're doing with it when I've had the opportunity to see is nothing like anybody's doing. It's such a great culmination of all of the great things and the way that's supposed to work coming together and actually doing it. So I appreciate your time today. Thanks for chatting. I try and keep these things short. We went a little bit over, but man, it's just. I really enjoy talking to you and I think anyone listening is probably going to have questions. So, please, I encourage you to reach out to neil. He's, you know you're pretty easy to get a hold of. Got it and got got. You know some kids at home, right, the baby, there's a baby at home, so yeah, we have four month old there.
Speaker 1:Don't call after 5 pm. Pacific, please like be like. Hey, drew told me to call you. You know, um, but listen, it really is. It really is a pleasure to talk to you. Uh, I'll be heading out to the bay area here the week after we're recording this, so, depending on when this plays, so I'm going to be out there hanging out. I'm going to come by your office, come say hi to you guys and test your open door theory awesome.
Speaker 2:Thank you so much for your time drew. This was really fun awesome.
Speaker 1:All right, everyone listening. We'll see you later. Enjoy your week, have a great week and we will talk to you soon, see ya.
