Carrie Charles (00:00)
Thanks for joining me today on Let's Get Digital. I'm Carrie Charles, your host, and I am absolutely thrilled to have with me today, Yazz Krdzalic. He actually, I met Yazz at the YOTTA Conference, I believe it was in Las Vegas last year. And he was so impressive, company was impressive, and I said, you have got to come on the show. So let me introduce Yazz to you briefly.
He is a visionary leader specializing in high-performance computing, renowned for architecting tailored solutions across edge deployments, enterprise, industrial, and defense sectors. With over a decade of expertise, Yazz excels in driving innovation and scalability by integrating technologies such as private 5G, advanced cooling, AI, ML systems, and sustainable data center infrastructure.
In his current role, Yazz is the vice president of market development for Equus Compute Solutions. We are going to be referring to his company as ECS today. So Yazz, so excited you're here.
Yazz Krdzalic (01:09)
likewise. Thank you so much for having me, Carrie. and happy to be here and happy to be talking about all the things that I'm passionate about. A heck of an intro too. I love it. but, you know, just, just really excited to, you know, when we met at Yotta, you were looking at the immersion tank, that we were sporting there and a lot of people were looking at it too. And that's just part of the transformational technologies that we're diving into here today, just to give, the listeners here a little bit of a sneak.
preview kind of the cool things that we're working on for our customers and some of the deployments that we have going on out there.
Carrie Charles (01:43)
Yes, I'm excited to get into it. actually first just introduce ECS and what problems do you solve? Who are your customers?
Yazz Krdzalic (01:55)
Yep, sure, of course. So ECS or Equus or Equus Compute Solutions, whichever one you prefer, we are a, what I like to call a global solutions innovator. And that means we aggregate, we integrate and we innovate these different technologies from a broad ecosystem of partners that come together. And then we formulate comprehensive solutions. So we're kind of in that little sweet spot where you combine these.
multiple three-letter acronyms and OEM and ODM and ISV and bringing it all together to finally give the customer something that they can deploy in rapid fashion. And then the other tidbit that ECS does, we're also a managed services and security services provider. So what that really then tells you is not only do we deploy the digital infrastructure, we also service, support and warranty it and ensure that the customers have that one hand to shake and one back to pack.
Carrie Charles (02:50)
All right, so then how is your approach different or what makes you, I bet what you just said makes you unique, but is there anything else that makes you unique in the market?
Yazz Krdzalic (03:00)
So
one thing, we're an ESOP, so an employee-owned company. really what, I've been with the company almost a year now, and the big differentiator here, and I'll touch a little bit on culture, but it's also the secret sauce, is everybody's here got an owner's mindset. And with that comes the accountability piece, and then team camaraderie, and ensuring that, I call it passionate engineering, and even though I'm on the sales front of the business,
I still consider myself a geeky engineer and I love the technologies. Why? Because we're passionate about solving the full, the complete problem. And that can really span from the different technologies that you've described that I have experienced from, you know, in the public as well as the private sector. You're bringing these things and I'll try to keep it as simple as possible, multiple things to one gigantic thing. You deploy it and then you say, hey, I'm here when and where you need me.
And the where is also the big differentiator. We're not only local, we are a global corporation, a company. We have global forward stocking locations for multiple customer deployments that we can ensure we meet stringent SLAs. Now you've got an innovation center, you've got labs within this innovation center, you've got a manufacturing facility. We're ever expanding and we'll touch briefly on that later in the conversation as well, I'm sure.
So all of this together is really the unique differentiator where we're hand holding the customers from start to finish.
Carrie Charles (04:34)
So what really caught my eye at Yotta was the, it's an emergent cooling tank.
Yazz Krdzalic (04:40)
Yep, immersion, yeah, a liquid cooling, immersion cooling tank.
Carrie Charles (04:43)
Can you describe it in detail? think for some people who we don't have it in front of us and some people are listening only, there's no video.
Yazz Krdzalic (04:53)
Of course. Yeah, I know. And, you know, when I showed up there, it was really cool because I actually wanted to, I come from a heavy hardware focused space, specifically on the DOD side. So I'm used to handling hardware with care. You know, you have to make sure that electrostatic shock isn't there. You have to really make sure that you're putting it all together appropriately. And here I am at YOTTA taking this liquid and dumping it all over.
these very expensive servers inside of what I would, for the listeners here, just picture a tiny little fish tank for high-end performance computing solutions. And that's essentially what it is. So the one we've had was with our partners and we put in a OneU server, but it's kind of pizza box server with GPUs on the bottom. And inside is this liquid that you then throw onto the server and you fully immersed, hence the
immersion cooling and it's a two-phase immersion cooling system. So what it does is anytime the heat dissipates, it creates these bubbles that you saw in the front of that as the computer and the components heat up, it creates bubbles, those bubbles turn into gases, those gases are collected in on the back of this unit and condensed back down into the water. So it's this closed loop system. And what it does, it really condenses the
You're able to put in a lot more compute power in a smaller space and you're able to run a lot more compute. When I say compute, mean CPU as well as GPU inside of a constrained space. So the water is consistently cooling it for you. Something that an air-cooled solution simply cannot do.
Carrie Charles (06:41)
Do you any other exciting use cases to share? Maybe something new you're working on?
Yazz Krdzalic (06:49)
yeah, always. Talk about your differentiators. The one thing, when I hopped ship over to ECS, there's never a dull moment there. Really, when I say we are market agnostic and being at the helm of this market development, I get to kind of play, it's how my personality is too. I want to be able to be involved in a little bit of everything and seeing just how many of these different use cases there are.
but then also finding out the common denominator. our goal and our job at ECS is finding the solution that will fit multiple markets and that we are then able to scale that across public and private sector. I'll tell you some of the things, you saw this liquid cooled immersion tank, but what was also in that booth, what most people miss, when we were in Vegas, they were actually taking down one of the buildings and it knocked down everybody's wifi.
And so we have a tiny little, think of it like a small form factor box and it's got private 5G backhaul capability with wifi. So if you were by our booth, you could actually connect to it because it picks up cellular signal using one of our partners secure SIM cards. So the moment you connect it to it, you had the internet, you have instantaneous zero trust cybersecurity.
That's just one of the solutions we're also working on. And it's teeny tiny. wouldn't, you didn't look for it. So when I say we really work on something very small embedded computing edge AI to the full stack modular data centers, even traditional data center deployments.
Carrie Charles (08:30)
So one thing that really interested me when we were talking was your growth through partnerships. you know, can you get into this a little bit about how you, you know, leverage your partnerships? And, you know, I just, the way you explained it was just really fascinating.
Yazz Krdzalic (08:53)
Sure, that's a, if you really want to find the passion of mine, that's where it sits right now. And if you follow me on LinkedIn and if you are reading the same type of news that I am, there's a statistic that they just released, 2025 and forward for the foreseeable future, the way companies will grow from a revenue standpoint. The number one is through partner sales. And it really resonated with me.
Cause that's something that I'm passionate about bringing multiple partners to the table. And this is, I say I'm fighting the lonely Island approach. Just I am, I am great over here by within our own little bubble. have, say whether you're a software company or a hardware OEM, but coming together and bringing these different partners, this large ecosystem. And I've been tasked to keep growing it to them, bring them to the table and say,
Why don't we make you part of this comprehensive solution because you're solving a specific customer pain point. And when you're combining it with the amalgamation of all these different partners, now all of a sudden one plus one equals three. And that's what we're passionate about at ECS to ensure that we can introduce the right technologies for the right use case slash deployment. And that's been a mission of mine since I've joined.
Carrie Charles (10:16)
What opportunities do you see right now in digital infrastructure?
Yazz Krdzalic (10:23)
Great question. What I see right now, we just got off of a phone call talking about it, it really computes density. And that's been, even while I was working heavily in the DoD space, it's always, this is great, but can we make it smaller and more powerful? So everybody essentially wants to squeeze as much compute and processing power into this as small of a possible box from a hardware standpoint, and then offload whatever they can.
And on the DOD side, they said, can you make it man packable? can, you know, putting it inside of a rack, can I carry it in my backpack? I see that same trend here across the private sector. And, know, from the liquid cooling solution that you saw at YOTTA to what we have today is essentially even across private 5G, which is a passion of mine. Four years ago, we developed
a private 5G network in a box solution inside of a three-use server. Today, we can do the exact same thing inside of a one-use server with even more capabilities. And now when you start thinking about for deployment purposes, let's take critical national infrastructure. You can put that inside of a much smaller transit case so that let's say disaster relief, they don't have to say, now I need a Humvee to carry my equipment. I can have a one-man or two-man unit
and they carry it on each of their, next to them, and they just get it into the field, stand up the mast, and they've got private 5G connectivity. And not only that, with all the partnerships, with all the different technologies, you can start scaling that to how do you protect the critical data? How do you get it back to command and control or headquarters? How do get it to another data center? So distributed architecture, a mesh network. The military, I really like the term JADC2.
which is joint all domain command and control, which essentially all that means is ubiquitous or continuous connectivity anywhere. That's really been kind of the trend, which is how do we connect the edge remote locations to the main grid? And then you start getting into, well, everybody's fighting for power. How do you make it more sustainable? Which is another trend.
That's where you saw that liquid cooling solution come into play as well. You can take a certain amount of power, squeeze it into this footprint, and then you're not using as much, and whatever is being dissipated is actually being put back to use to repurpose it. That's kind of the, and I would say sustainability, compute density, and then the how...
far can you deploy it for on-prem and edge use cases?
Carrie Charles (13:19)
So you talked a bit about private 5G. Can you first define it and then go a little bit further because if I maybe talk about how it is a solution for the future and maybe a use case.
Yazz Krdzalic (13:37)
Yeah, no, I'd be happy to and I gotta be careful how I define it. There are people out there that will disagree with me, but how I define private 5G is really, the way you have it today on your phone, you look at the top corner left, whichever one you have, it'll say 5G and that's by our ISPs that's being provided, that's public, that's available to everyone. But what about the locations? say AgroTech, let's pick that instead of, I'll try to not always talk about the DoD.
But how does a farmer that wants to be connected to the main grid or to main comms, how do they get connectivity? Or let's say an auto distribution center in the middle of nowhere, they've got multiple scanners, multiple devices that they, know, people are out there scanning these things, these parts, pieces, components, and they need it to go back and communicate back home. How do you do that seamlessly? Sometimes just public 5G is not available.
So the way I define private 5G is enabling remote areas to be connected in a seamless fashion, but also increasing the security posture and enabling multiple devices to be connected. So you've got the latency is down, the bandwidth is up. And on a non-remote standpoint, you can, there was a really funny use case happened a couple of years ago, the autonomous vehicles,
I think it was a San Francisco area. They ended up creating luckily only 15 minute traffic backup because the autonomous piece of it stopped working because the network was overloaded due to a concert nearby. So now you start thinking about these little cases and you say, well, how can I now deploy a private network, a private 5G network or this venue?
So anybody connected to it is not using public 5G, they're using private 5G. And this is where ECS comes into play and says, with our partnership ecosystem, we can look at the site, figure out where you need to locate the radio units to cover the entire area, what sort of compute requirements you have, and then what sort of ongoing use case specs do you maybe need to consider
to then keep adding to this mix. And this is, I know it was a long winded answer to what is 5G, but that's what it is, the enablement of multiple devices being connected seamlessly without overloading what already exists.
Carrie Charles (16:19)
Great answer. Crystal clear. So, Yazz, there's definitely a convergence of multiple technologies and markets, even industries, really. Can you talk about some examples of that?
Yazz Krdzalic (16:39)
Yes. And that's really now that I'm, you know, for almost a decade, I've spent all things DoD public sector side. Now that I'm out in the private sector, like I said, there's a lot of overlap with these different technologies. And you've heard the term convergence of IT and OT. The reason we're even talking about it, and we're starting to see the convergence of multiple technologies that may have competed at one point or another to start formulating these
Co-op petition solutions to say, look, I think us coming together might actually help the end customer. They can go back to partners. But to answer your question, the convergence I see really, of course, AI everywhere and being able to utilize what AI is doing and where it's going into. So we think of AI, I everybody nowadays uses chat GPT where a few years ago we, you
It'd be almost taboo to say, yes, I'm reaching out to some AI machine to tell me the answers on XYZ. Now it's just part of our lives, whether on your phone or your laptop, doesn't matter. We're having the same exact thing on the digital infrastructure side on how do you utilize AI? How does it converge into everyday life? Think anomaly detection. Think even private 5G. You're getting a lot more use cases where AI is coming into it and saying, you know what?
Instead of having somebody do this manually, AI could start being a layer on top of it to extrapolate this data and make sense of it, and then make real-time decisions of that data and deploy it. And so now, again, take that same template and spread it across the ether. And you have a multitude of use cases to say, where's this convergence coming into?
and how do we best position the solutions to ensure that we have readily available for customers.
Carrie Charles (18:42)
So you mentioned that there's a convergence of IT and OT. Can you go a little bit deeper into that?
Yazz Krdzalic (18:48)
Yeah, sure. So IT infrastructure and then operational technologies.
Carrie Charles (18:53)
Or did you say AI and OT? was it? Okay, all of it. Let's talk about all of it.
Yazz Krdzalic (18:57)
all of the above.
And that's what this is, you know, I think at the end of the day, I always jokingly say the industry is desperately fighting to create the equivalent of a phone of a smart phone, because it's get it, get something that can compute a lot, get me comms connectivity anywhere in a secure fashion and make it as small as possible. And, know, when you're looking at.
OT equipment, let's say sensors and whatever else is out there, and then you've got IT equipment that we're thinking about today. How can those work? mean, before those were two separate universes, and that makes sense. It still somewhat is, but now you're seeing an overlap. How can they come together and work together? You've got edge compute devices now next to these OT devices, and they're working in conjunction with one another.
Bridging the gap between how that happens takes two different worlds to come together and say, okay, well, what's your pain point? What's my pain point? How do we come together and what do we need to do in order to solve this issue that's in front of us? You may be looking at it from position X, I may be looking at it from position Y, but we're still looking at the same problem. And that to me is really the exciting part. That's again, back to my point.
partner sales. It's not just about sales, it's about solving future problems today. You can't, I think we're way past the stage where I'm saying I'm going to create widget A and it's going to address this specific pain point and that's all I do. There's still a place for that, but you, as organizations evolve and as problems evolve,
or challenges, we have to come together and say, you know, maybe the specific thing that I'm working on could be repurposed in something I haven't even thought about yet. And that's why, you know, from the government side or DOD, they always turn to industry. They want to get commercial solutions for DOD deployments because they don't have to reinvent. They simply just reach out to what already exists.
and put it all together and now you've got something that works for all.
Carrie Charles (21:29)
Yeah, I'm curious about what the future looks like with what you just discussed with the convergence of technologies with the partnerships. I mean, what is it? What are we going to look like in 20 years from now?
Yazz Krdzalic (21:44)
The scary question, I know I'm going to be a whole lot grayer, that's for sure.
I spend a lot of time thinking about this. Part of my role is I always say I get to worry about challenges three to five years from now, we're trying to predict where we are going to be. The future, in my humble opinion, what it looks like is, again, removing roadblocks. We have the technologies and we have gotten to a point, just even on the recent news, how somebody utilized existing ...
what they wouldn't consider the next gen products to optimize using software AI algorithms. And now you're thinking about it going, well, yes, you can do that across the board, across a multitude of technologies. And I think it's really, the future will be optimization of what we currently have, not only focusing on the, do we...
get one more core into the CPU. How do we get this, you know, a little more rugged product? No, how do we optimize what we have today to improve what we're trying to solve? And it's really getting granular and being able to understand what is my neighbor's issue that I may be able to solve. And again, partnership ecosystem coming together and solving
problem so that the future self, the future computing needs can start working. It's almost like the, you know, both parties benefit. And it's a, the best example that I'll use that, that I like to talk about because it's a true depiction of where I see the future going. never in my, you know, I would say over a decade of experience in this field would have considered
something like agriculture and technology having that sort of relationship. To me, it's like, you've got nature and then you've got machine and they're usually at constant odds with one another. But there are already technologies out there that are cooling computing power and the heat that's being dissipated from it is going to the farm right next door and providing the exhaust, the mist, the whatever.
for the plants that are growing right next to it. So now all of a sudden the excess heat, the excess everything that's being created is a benefit. So now in the future, I'm seeing a data center in whatever shape or form with high-end transformational liquid cooling technologies, extrapolating heat, and you've got agriculture right around it growing the next wave of tomatoes. that's what I'm
And you've got tractors and whatever is scooping it up with 5G, technology, future G. And you're doing this in a remote desolate area. Now you're thinking about repurposing what wasn't even, what was out of reach or what is out of reach for us today.
Carrie Charles (25:07)
So I think you mentioned something about computing innovation. What are a few types of computing innovations? also, I think when we spoke, I heard you mention innovation as a service.
Yazz Krdzalic (25:23)
great question. I'm happy to talk about this one. I sort of thought about that when you asked what else is the trend that I'm seeing. It's I'm seeing X as a service. It's anything as a service and Y not, you've got great organizations out there that are ready to tackle a challenge, but they don't have, you know, the, they're not ready to whatever it takes to spend, to get all this infrastructure trends, set it up, deploy it, blah, blah, blah.
Well, now you're coming back to the platform as a service, innovation as a service, software as a service. What if I just packaged all of this for you? To the very beginning of your question, what does ECS do? I said, know, hand holding from front to back. What if I did that as a service? And that's what we consider innovation as a service. Take whatever device you may need, whatever use case scenario deployment. I always like to say form fit function, parts piece component.
put it together, we bring this to life with our partner ecosystem and put the services, I call it the warm fuzzies around it, and then we deploy it for you, but you're using it as a service. You no longer have to worry about owning the infrastructure if you do not want. Now I can take all that headache away from you and say, you know what, hold on a second, I'll deploy it, I'll manage it.
I'll tweak it, all you have to tell me is my scope changed, my challenge changed, how can you help me? And that's it. And so all of a sudden the customers just point at something and say, I'd like that please, and I'm gonna pay a monthly, annual, whatever fee, but the rest, they don't have to worry about it.
Carrie Charles (27:16)
That's a business model that really any company can utilize.
Yazz Krdzalic (27:22)
Yes, it is. And you'll see, you see a lot of it and you'll see a lot more of it, especially with the proliferation of AI and what it takes to run true AI inferencing, machine learning, deep learning workloads. You're, you're, you're seeing multiple data center sites pop up and you're seeing a lot of people going into that field and saying, I've got a site. I've got an idea of what I want. I just, I don't know what I need from an infrastructure standpoint.
Help me. And that's where this model is also quite powerful, where we say, okay, now I can take that and hand it off to you and you go do what you do best, which is ensure that your customers are taken care of while we're gonna take care of the infrastructure piece for you.
Carrie Charles (28:09)
What roles do you see that are in the highest demand in digital infrastructure? I mean, obviously, there's a massive labor shortage in the data center world. I mean, I know there's been some challenges in technology with quite a few layoffs. mean, and from where you sit, what roles are in highest demand?
Yazz Krdzalic (28:35)
From where I sit, always say it's the tip of the spear team and that's slightly biased because I'm there. And when I mean sales, it's also technical sales. So sales engineers, somebody that can speak both languages, tech, business and sales. really becoming as versatile as the technologies themselves will take somebody that understands it at a technical level enough.
but also knows the customer's pain points enough to be able to articulate correctly or point them in the right direction to say this is what it is. So I see a need for subject matter experts from the sales standpoint, solutions architecture standpoint, and engineering standpoint across these different technologies. Immersion cooling, liquid cooling is starting to, you know, it was one of those 2020,
emerging coin, yeah, you know, that's a next year thing, that's a next year thing. And then all of a sudden, oh God, it's here. And now we need that expertise and we need to understand, you know, sustainability is another one. How do you, on the power grid, I mean, we're all struggling. We need more power. And back to my point, how do we not always worry about how do we get more power? We should start asking ourselves, how do we utilize what we have today?
by optimizing the technologies that we're working with. And that's, again, it takes somebody that is at a granular level to understand that. So those are the needs that I see in the future, which is give me the team that, tip of the spear team that isn't afraid to talk tech. Give me the solutions architects that know how to architect the entire solutions. And then give me the engineers that are in the nitty gritty details.
I'm talking experts specialists in this one field that will be able to break it down on a molecular level and say, I know this is how we've done it for decades, but why don't we try it this way now? And that'll give us an X percent improvement in let's say thermal usage.
Carrie Charles (30:49)
So with emergent cooling, it's a new technology and there's not just a line of people who in techs who really understand how to use these tanks, right? So would you say that, is this something that the, let's say the data centers are going to need to hire a certain type of skill set and train these people on,
utilizing these tanks and monitoring these tanks. mean, obviously we could, this applies to all technology and everything that we're facing right now because a lot is so brand new. But with this specific skillset, what are your thoughts there? Like what's a transferable, let's say, role that where someone could be hired to maintain these tanks?
Yazz Krdzalic (31:42)
Yep. Great question. I you've got a multitude of companies that specialize in these, in the tank manufacturer and they're training their staff, their, employees to ensure that yes, they know what they're doing and how they're doing it. But from a transferable and emergent cooling has been around for a while. It's just hasn't been at the forefront as much as it is today based on the proliferation of AI. So you have a lot of individuals that may have been in that space.
that have been kind of flying, not to say solo, but they've been under the radar. And now all of a sudden, like, hey, we actually need that skillset. So brushing off whatever you're doing now and then really diving deep, pun intended, into all things immersion cooling, that's something that future data centers will have to start doing. And talk about data centers, you've got...
I think the US, last I read, has got the majority of the world's data centers. Now we need to figure out how to, we're talking tech refresh. And that's not just a tech refresh on an infrastructure standpoint, like on the digital infrastructure side. We have to change the facilities that these data centers are operating on. So everything from ground up, you're almost talking about a complete tear down and then rebuild. But there are engineers that
you know, from a facility standpoint, IT standpoint, OT standpoint, liquid cooling, we need to come together to tackle the problem and understand, hey, if I need to take out an air-cooled rack and put in a liquid-cooled tank, what does the site need to have before I even do that? And then before the site even, the actual building is, do I have enough power?
going into the site? Do I have to consider extra power? How do I do that? Do I tap into other resources? What am I nearby? My biggest thing that I'm trying to state and where I believe we will be, those who partner together to understand the full scope of the challenge will be the ones that are most successful. Because you're tackling the full, the complete challenge.
versus just that lonely island approach of I've got my bag of apples and that's what I care.
Carrie Charles (34:16)
Yes, this has just been so insightful and educational for me. I could talk to you forever. Thank you so much for coming on the show.
Yazz Krdzalic (34:26)
Of Thank you for having me. It's been a great pleasure. And of course I invite anybody follow this channel. Make sure you tune in. We've got a lot of great speakers I already heard about, good friends of mine and follow us on LinkedIn, do all the social media things and visit ECS and the website is equiscs.com.
Carrie Charles (34:45)
What is the website?
Can you spell Equus again?
Yazz Krdzalic (34:52)
EQUUSCS.com, great question. And if not, follow us on LinkedIn and you can find all the cool things, all the latest and greatest, what we'll be up to and where you'll find us and see us next. And I sure hope to see many of you out there.
Carrie Charles (35:09)
I'm sure I'll see you again at the next conference, Yazz. Thank you for joining me today. Appreciate it.