EMAIL INTERVIEW –  Anto Budiardjo and Ken Sinclair

Anto Budiardjo, CEO Anka Labs, Inc.
anto@ankalabs.com

Sinclair:  Good to see you at AHR, how was the show for you?

Budiardjo:  It was my first AHR in years. In many ways the bulk of the show hasn’t changed, the Controls and Automation area seemed busy. I’m glad I attended.

Sinclair:  What was your main take away?

Budiardjo:  The BAS industry is embarking on the tricky but important transition to a data-centric world. Many of the products shown had hints of this, but it was most notable away from the show floor.

Sinclair:  You mean the educational sessions?

Budiardjo:  Yes, many of the sessions discussed this trend. We’re in the navigation phase of this change; people are trying to understand the landscape, to create their own roadmap of how to move forward.

Sinclair:  Interesting, any specific example?

Budiardjo:  The session you moderated where I spoke, was really about “what is the edge?” While the edge is a key concept for our future, the humble DDC is actually the [old] edge, so we’ve been living on the edge for years. It’s just that going forward, the DDC needs to be much more data-aware and better participate in the whole edge-to-cloud system for the purpose of analytics.

Sinclair:  So, what needs to change?

Budiardjo:  The network infrastructure needs to be changed to be predominantly IP, and we’re making good progress there. Beyond that, the DDC itself needs to be reimagined to be a much more important component in managing and serving data. The trick is to do this while keeping the key functionality of the real-time controller of equipment.

Sinclair:  Is that the purpose of your work at Anka Labs?

Budiardjo:  Yes, the software we are working on, AnkaDOS, runs on devices that we call EAC (Edge Analytics Controllers). EAC’s are first and foremost designed to be an easily configured and wickedly good Sedona-based controller that saves on installation and commissioning labor, thanks to Haystack and some of our magic! And, it does this while performing sophisticated analytics functions right there on the edge, thanks to our partnership with SkyFoundry.

Sinclair:  What is the status of AnkaDOS?

Budiardjo:  We are going into Alpha test phase right now. At AHR in Chicago, we previewed the Alpha to a room full of some of the best integrators and energy consultants around. The feedback was solid; we are oversubscribed on requests to be part of our Alpha program.

[an error occurred while processing this directive]Sinclair:  What kind of feedback did you get?

Budiardjo:  Someone in the audience noted the need for a standard Operating System for BAS devices, and that AnkaDOS fits the bill perfectly. I couldn't agree more, that is exactly our vision.

Sinclair:  You also participated in the New Deal, how does AnkaDOS fit there?

Anto: The New Deal launch at AHR was a major milestone to the datafication of BAS, especially the release of the CABA white paper. AnkaDOS fits right into that vision as a component that facilitates standardized and tagged data to feed the digital twin in the cloud, a key tenet of the New Deal.

Sinclair:  And I saw you did a webinar from AHR with Memoori?

Budiardjo:  Yes, it was a great webinar that captures much of what we are talking about here. Your readers can watch the YouTube of it here, or a podcast of it on SoundCloud here.

Sinclair:  It should be a great 2018!

Budiardjo:  Yes indeed, at Anka Labs, we are looking forward to releasing AnkaDOS and helping the industry move forward with datafication.