Edge Women of the Year Interview – Azimeh Sefidcon, Ericsson

In the lead up to Edge Computing World, we’re taking some time to speak to this years finalist of the Edge Women of the Year award. Today we’re talking to Azimeh Sefidcon, Director Research, Head of Cloud Systems and Platforms at Ericsson.

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Tell us a bit about yourself – what led you to get involved in the edge computing market?

With both academic and development background in few industry, and knowing the convergence of compute and network is one of the key components of pushing the technologies forward, I focused to further find the novelty, usecase and differentiators in this area. Both processing and communications are key and optimal combination of the two makes unimaginable possible

How does diversity benefit the edge environment?

To begin with the edge environment is a diverse technical area, from software to hardware, as well as network and compute are still considered different branch of technologies and even different disciplines in educational institute. For pushing the state of the art in this domain, there is a need both for system thinking and standardization as well as hands-on opensource, implementation oriented breakthroughs and innovative solution. With that base it takes absolutely diverse mindset, ways of working and skill set to be able to address the challenges of this domain fully and industrialize the novel technologies.

Tell us what is one lesson you’ve learned that’s unique to being a female leader in the Edge space?

Women have been and are still challenged when it comes to be the spoke person and front runner of technology, consider the number of female CTOs overall across the world ! In this area with all the dynamic movements in the industry and all the diversity of challenges, the female leader may be less trusted to bring the golden nugget and optimal solutions. However, I am optimistic that is changing and these type of initiatives can help the awareness.

How do you see the edge market developing over the next few years?

The edge market will continue to expand and grow as the edge will be the optimal place for hosting the workload from many perspectives, optimal speed of execution, locality and privacy of data, optimal computing and execution environment to name only a few.

What advice would you give to other women entering the edge space, and/or what are some ways in which you have helped to support and lift other women in the space up?

My advice for women is to never be intimidated with the complexity of technology in a multi-disciplinary area, all the movement in ecosystem and competition. Learn to enjoy adversity.

Thanks Azimeh !