I spent most of the day at a “Thriving@Sun” session for some of the ex-SeeBeyond staff in Hyderabad. It was good to have the opportunity to work with the HR and SunU representatives in India, and it was delightful to renew ties with many of the staff I’d met in October. Only about a third of the team were at the session – the others had attended earlier sessions – and to those that I didn’t get to meet this time around I offer my apologies; I’ll be back as soon as I can.
During the break before my talk, I left iPhoto displaying a slideshow of pictures from the welcoming party. I posted a few of them on my blog back in October, but for those who asked I’ve now uploaded all 22 of them into my Photo Gallery.
The flight back to Bangalore was delayed for a while; the incoming aircraft was late, and then we sat on a taxiway for an ATC-imposed hold. Once again there was a hot meal. Did I mention before that on Jet Airways the food is served with metal cutlery and a starched cotton napkin, folded perfectly and secured with a decorative silk cord? In economy?? (I positively swoon at the thought of what they must do for business class.) And after the trays had been cleared away, we started our descent with a pitch-over that must have “unloaded” us by 0.5G. I expected the first officer to announce that “we’ve started our dive into Bangalore”. Very impressive.
Every traveller's nightmare
It’s every business traveller’s nightmare: sleeping through the alarm clock. In this case the alarm clock was my Treo, and I slept through it because I’d switched it to “silent” mode during dinner last night. So at 5:15 a loud buzzer sounded in my room. Not the phone (why not?) but a noise disturbingly similar to a fire alarm. I jumped up, checked my watch*, and realized that this was the time that my driver was to pick me up!! 10 minutes later I was dressed and out of my room, and by 5:40 I was meeting my colleagues at the airport. I was marginally awake, and acutely concious of the lack of a shower!
Check-in for the Jet Airways flight to Hyderabad was a breeze. Inevitably the only available seat was a middle…. Never mind, it’s only a 45 minute flight. (And since this is India, we’ll get a full hot breakfast on the flight.) We’re bussed out to the stand to board the 737-700, which is almost full.
By 7:25 we are fed and descending towards HYD. The first officer comes on the PA to announce that the temperature in Hyderabad is already 30C (86F).
I’m visiting the ex-SeeBeyond facility in Hyderabad with a number of colleagues from the Bangalore office. Last time I was here with my colleague Dale Ferrario, we both noticed the complete anonymity of the office, with no SeeBeyond signage to be seen. I’m sure he’d be pleased with what greeted me as I walked into the building this time around:
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* There’s an odd thing about my watch. It’s a Citizen Skyhawk, an exquisite piece of engineering, solar powered. You set it to UTC, and then it can display various time zones (on the digital display or via the hands) with just a press of a button. It has just one, glaring weakness: it can’t cope with time zones that are not an integral number of hours away from UTC. India is UTC+5:30. [Corrected – thanks Amateur Blogger.] So while I’m here, I keep the watch on Karachi time (UTC+5) and mentally add 30 minutes whenever I look it it. A firmware upgrade would be nice….
"You quaff a +1 potion of invisibility"
Which geek supply emporium will be the first to import these into the US? I’m talking about the Premium Pack, of course….
What's the opposite of open-source?
Check out this piece at BoingBoing, them write to your congress-critter:
If the controversial Analog Hole bill makes it into law, US technologists will have to obey a law whose most important details are a trade-secret.
Travel update
I’ve just amended my travel plans to include a visit to the ex-SeeBeyond facility in Hyderabad tomorrow, Wednesday. Here’s the revised map (created using the excellent Great Circle Mapper tool):
Sun IEC meetings
Today was spent in meetings at Sun’s IEC (Indian Engineering Centre) here in Bangalore. [Of course Sun now has facilities in other parts of India, so perhaps the title is becoming inappropriate.] Most of the discussions revolved around engineering practices, site planning, and developing the senior technical talent in India. In the last session of the day, I met the engineering team that’s working on some of Sun’s N1 systems management technology, and I was asked to say a few words about systems and network management at Sun, and about where Sun is heading. On the first subject I know quite a bit. I was involved with a number of Sun’s programs in this area – SNM, SEM, SDM – particularly when I was doing CTO duties in the Solstice group. I also participated in several of Sun’s “visionary” initiatives – JMAPI, the original N1, and G2. Even if you don’t actually build the vision, you learn a hell of a lot from it.
Where Sun’s heading…. Hmmm. I didn’t have anything prepared, and I didn’t want to simply trot out the corporate strategy pitch. I decided to focus on three big trends:
- The shift from compute-centric to data-centric systems thinking
- Open source
- Utility computing and virtualization
I’m not going to go into detail now; suffice it to say that each of these trends has huge implications for Sun. It’s not just the products we build and the services we offer; it’s how we do engineering, and how (and with whom!) we collaborate.
My laryngitis has not yet abated, but I’m glad to say that I didn’t actually become speechless at any point during the day. And I didn’t find myself fading out, either: I think this travel schedule (leaving the US in the afternoon and arriving in India around midnight) works for me.
Just testing (nothing to see here)
There’s something odd going on. I posted two items today, but they’re not showing up on my RSS feed. I suspect there’s some kind of timestamp issue, or perhaps an interaction with the various posting tools I use.
Lufthansa
I’ve uploaded some pictures of my journey from Boston to Bangalore to my photo gallery. As I pointed out, Lufthansa feels like an early 1990s airline. They tend to focus on the First and Business class customers, with features like in-flight Internet access. I’d have loved to try this, but there’s no way I can get out my laptop and use it in a full cabin of 32-inch pitch coach seating. Lufthansa doesn’t seem to be interested in competing for the economy passenger. For example, they are way behind the competition – BA, Virgin, Jet Airways – in in-flight entertainment (IFE) for economy passengers. LH, BA and VA all bought 744s at the same time, but BA and VA have aggressively updated their economy seating to incorporate the latest technology (video on demand, games, etc.). Moreover it’s not just a question of the age of the fleet: LH’s newest A330-300 and A340-600 aircraft also lack individual IFE in economy.
Is there any point in competing for coach? Clearly LH doesn’t have the kind of cost structure to complete with newcomers like Jet. On the other hand, both BA and Virgin have recognized that there’s a market for a Premium Economy product positioned between business class and economy. Many companies (including Sun) will only pay for economy, and I can’t afford to pay for an upgrade to business class with all the trimmings. However I’m happy to pay a few bucks to get a slightly bigger seat with a few inches of extra legroom, and I’ve done so on several occasions.
The bottom line is that LH feels very much like an old-style quasi-monopolistic flag carrier. For economy traffic between European cities and long-haul destinations, and between North America and South Asia, they have a fabulous hub in Frankfurt (see my itinerary) and a tolerable price point. They don’t think they need to do anything else to compete, so they concentrate on the premium traffic where they are competing against service-centric carriers like Singapore and Thai. (No US carriers offer any real competition any more.)
So why do I fly them? Convenience, and Star Alliance. (Most of my LH flights were purchased as UA codeshares.) But I still hope that some enterprising carrier will put A340-500s or (eventually) B777-200LRs on non-stops from the north-eastern US to India. (BOS to BLR is 8,139 nm; the A345 can do over 9,000.) I’d switch in a heartbeat.
Lousy time to get laryngitis
I got a good 7 hours sleep last night, interrupted only by a phone call (and I didn’t pick it up in time). The bad news is tht the persistent tickle in my throat during the flights has turned into full blown laryngitis: my voice is distinctly limited. Oh well….
Went out shopping this AM. In theory this was to get to a pharmacy and stuff: in practice the driver always needs to stop at a friend’s craft (souvenir) shop. I played along and picked up a few things.
The city looks beautiful – very different from my last (soggy) visit.
Checked in
Just checked in to my hotel in Bangalore. (Naturally the first thing to do was check Internet access.) It’s 1:37am local time; let’s see if I can get some sleep.
Flights were uneventful. Lufthansa is so 1990’s, though.