Thursday May 28, 2009 Bill Walker's Blahg
Subversion, Rantings and Ravings
bill.walker@sun.com
Bill Walker's BlahgSubversion, Rantings and Ravings |
bill.walker@sun.com
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Thursday May 28, 2009 I've been in India for about 10 days so far, meeting with customers and partners. Our India crew is strong, with business doing well and some really good projects in flight. Kudos to Neel, Satish, Bhaskar, Suresh, and Bobby for making me feel welcome and keeping me busy with interesting challenges. I thought that China was busy with construction and dust, but India puts it to shame on "improving infrastructure". There is a ton of building going on, but the really impressive pieces are in supporting infrastructure. There are new metro lines going in, flyovers (bypass to us Americans), and real progress being made to support the new economy of more cars and trucks. Outside my hotel in Delhi (in the Diplomatic Enclave), I met a few new friends:
bill.
Thursday April 30, 2009 Biggest Business in Shanghai... I have discovered something interesting (to me anyway). The biggest industry in Shanghai appears to be building Shanghai. I have to dust my shoes every day after work. In the 3km of sidewalk between my hotel and the Shanghai Sun office, there are 8 places where the sidewalk is blocked off because someone is digging, laying pipe, or pouring concrete. Everywhere you look, there is construction. Outside the Sun office, they have been doing pipe repairs in one direction this week, while they are laying new cables and conduit in the other direction. This makes for one giant ditch and many interesting smells in the morning. In this picture, you can see the backhoe digging (again) more stuff out of the ditch in front of the office, while in the background, you can see construction cranes putting up new buildings. I don't know what the average lifespan of a building here is, but they are definitely not in a "slow down" due to any economic crisis! Also note the "interesting" methods of cabling and wiring for electricity and cable TV. If you have some spare length leftover, just coil it up and hang it from the pole. I have been bumped on the head several times this trip with low hanging wires while walking down the sidewalk. I am a bit tall for China at 192+ cm, but it does scare the snot out of you on a dark street at night!
They do have some amazing buildings here though, especially in the new northern section of Pudong, across from the old Bund river side district. I didn't get pictures of the new Grand Hyatt or Park Hyatt, or the building that looks like a giant neon sail. Perhaps tonight. They are much more interesting with the lights on. For some reason, Shanghai folks love to put fancy crowns and funky accessories lit up with bright lights and neon on their buildings. Definitely makes it easier to navigate. "Go down Hengshan until you get to the big crown, make a left and continue until you get to the 4 teddy bears hanging from a blue neon beach ball, then go right towards the big neon domino tile with the sparkly lights on top. If you get to the KTV with all the skimpy dressed girls bugging you to come inside for lady-bar or good messadjeh, you went too far."
bill.
Tom Waits and Alphavile might be "Big in Japan", but my friends are artwork. Well, maybe they are just spackle to gloss over damage to walls by careless movers, but I'll give them the benefit of the doubt. First on the Shanghai Sun office wall of fame, we have Principal Field Technologist, and all around super-geek Jim Fiori. Notice that the poster used to cover the wall damage has also been damaged by careless movers.
Next up, we have Nigel Hawkes, world renowned uber-geek of Consolidation, Migration, and all of those other things that save customers money, and reduce idle assets in their datacenters. Also note the damage on the edge of Nigel's poster, more evidence that some movers just don't learn from their mistakes.
Well that's all for today, just a quick update between calls and meetings. Can someone please send the Shanghai Sun office some new posters to cover the old torn posters that are covering the damaged walls? I think I have some old Sun SPARCServer 690 and HyperSPARC posters somewhere in my garage...
bill.
Monday April 27, 2009 In a former life, I had aspirations of being a successful professional bowler. There were these little things that got in the way, like practice, training, conditioning, as well as dedication and the all important luck. I did cash several good tournaments, including the ABC (now USBC) Nationals (several times). In fact, bowling got me my first job in the computer business, and also brought me to Sun. Thanks to Brian Wong, Mark Curran (AKA Dr. Genome), and Bruce Curtis, I made contacts and friends that brought me here. There, you have the background. While I don't compete these days, and rarely even touch a bowling ball, I do enjoy it much more now that it isn't quite so "important" and I am treating it as a game. Don't get me wrong, the week I turn 50, I will be out there on the PBA Senior's Tour, trying to relive my misspent youth. So here I am in Shanghai China for some local customer visits, working with the teams to drive Q4 business and beyond. I love Shanghai, it is always full of surprises. I'm staying at a nice 4-star hotel a couple miles from the office. Walking through the lobby on the way to the office yesterday, I see bowling pins across from the concierge desk. What the heck?
I can't pass this one by. I wander over and see a sign for "Happy Hour" bowling at the Shanghai International Tennis Center Club. Whatever that is. Of course, China is famous for combinations. Lunch often consists of a "lunch set", a sampling of several different dishes or courses for a set price. Haircut and massage seems to be everywhere (make sure that the barber pole sign places actually *have* barber chairs before you wander in though, or you might find one of those "special massage" places). So why not tennis and bowling? Sure.
OK, so this I must see for myself. I then notice that the address for the "Shanghai International Tennis Center Club" is the same as the hotel. Weird. The next thing I notice is the shiny sign on the wall.
OK, so the Shanghai International Tennis Center Club is apparently in the basement of the hotel. Sure, why not. I have to see this for myself. At the bottom of the stairs is a typical hotel "service sign" in brushed brass.
Through the double doors, and sure enough, I find eight lanes of tenpin bowling, automatic scoring, and a nice lady behind a desk waiting to rent out fungus-laden shoes. Needless to say, shoes that fit my canal boat sized American feet isn't going to happen in a place like this.
Oh well, I guess I'll take a walk. About a block down the street, I come across this nifty giant bowling pin on the sidewalk.
What the heck, I have to go find this one too. First mistake, not taking my time to read signs. Apparently this building not only holds "Orden Bowling", it also contains a club called "Boiling". I blindly followed the signs to "Orden Boiling", and walked into a dimly lit "lady bar". Oops. Not bowling, definitely not bowling. On my way out, I notice the signs for the "BOWLING" on the third floor. Up I went (still blushing a bit from my brush with lady-bar-ness).
This place did have shoes my size, including some nifty Chinese knock-offs of Linds (great shoes). If the pro-shop was open, I would have been tempted to pick up a ball and shoes to leave in the Shanghai office for future visits. The prices on shoes were great, the Linds look-alikes were 300 yuan, or about $43 USD. The balls were a bit pricey, with Storm stuff in the 1800 to 3000 yuan range ($250 - $420 USD). Some of the lower range balls were well under $200 USD though, and I might have ended up buying if the shop was open and I could have had instant gratification. The proprietor was likely off getting a "haircut" though. More from Shanghai later.
bill.
Friday April 24, 2009 A couple more pics from my week in Beijing that might be interesting. Since I mentioned our new, fancy caffeinated beverage machine here in the Solution Center, here is a picture of the beast:
And here is another little item that I found interesting. This is a picture that I took of a sign posted in my flex office space. Apparently if I leave my bicycle in the flex office space, it will be removed, along with any decor that happens to clash with the office themes and decoration. I will have to keep my strange and loud ties out of view! Just to put this in context, the "swanky" flex spaces are about 1.5m of desk space with power and network. Unless you put the bicycle on the desk, I don't see how storing one in the flex space would be possible. Maybe we can put some bike racks hanging from the ceiling?
bill.
End of a long (and great) week in Beijing... Ni hao. Yeah, that's about the sum total of my Mandarin Chinese. I can say "hello" and "thank you". I'm flying off to Shanghai to meet with a few customers next week, and then back to San Francisco for a conference, and finally back home to DC. I'll get to spend about 5 days at home, then off to San Francisco again for the Emerging Markets Partner CTO Summit, and on to New Delhi and Mumbai for a couple weeks. Long flights, glad hotels do dry cleaning and laundry! I thought I would upload a couple pictures from Beijing for grins: My favorite spot in the Beijing office. A coffee maker that actually grinds real coffee and makes a decent caffeinated beverage. There is a new "pod" coffee machine, but that's too much work when this machine rocks.
A picture of my hotel, the JW Marriott in Beijing on a rainy day, from the office window. It rocks being able to walk across the street to the office in the morning.
After a long day of work, nothing beats a massage and a game of pool. Huh? What a strange combination.
In the Solution Center of the Beijing office, there is a timeline of major Sun events. Near the beginning of the timeline is this picture of Scott. If I spoke Mandarin, I would tell you what it says, but apparently it was pretty important, and it never hurts to paint a picture of Scott on the wall. He may be "big in Japan", but in China, he is artwork.
bill.
Tuesday April 21, 2009 One of the things that amazes me every time I come to China is scale. Being from the US, anything older than 250 years is ancient. Here, 250 years is just a bump on the timeline. The same sense of amazement applies to business scale. China has just over 1.3 billion people. That is a huge addressable market for manufacturers and retailers. People here seem to make their purchasing decisions on a more "functional" basis rather than the western trendy / "in thing" type of choices. For example, in the US, how many people (not counting geeks who really understand) buy iPhones or Blackberries because they see a celebrity or colleague with one? Probably more than you would think on first glance. The brand name or model name is driving alot of sales. 
In China, consumers seem attracted to the functionality and utility of a given product. I don't see as many iPhones per capita as I do in the US, but they do tend to buy mobile phones that fit their needs. Browser, IM, social networking utilities, and easy text entry. Of course, glitzy and quirky are still huge in this market as well.
If we look at auto manufacturing in China (since the Shanghai auto show is this week), there are over 100 manufacturers of cars in China. Some are licensed or partnered manufacturers like Volkswagen, Jeep, and Buick, but there are still plenty of opportunities for the "little guys" like Chery and BYD. There are some seriously cool cars here in addition to the Skoda, Jeep, GM, Audi, and Volkswagens that look like home. In the US, we refer to "the big three" automakers, and heaven forbid that the economy knocks one of them out of existence. Here, if one folds because of the economy and lack of sales, there will still be 99+ others waiting to take over the market share. They make some very ugly and utilitarian vehicles here, but they also make some real stunners at incredible prices.
China's largest mobile carrier is China Mobile with over 475 million subscribers. Yes, that is 475 million. More than the population of the United States. Their operating revenue for 2008 was 412 billion RMB, or about $60 billion USD. That is huge. With those numbers, you would think that they are the only game in town. No way, there are other mobile carriers in China as well, doing (what we in the US would consider) big business.
That is just the beginning. If you want to be amazed, read up on PetroChina, Bank of China, Huawei, CCB, SinoPec, Baoshan, Cosco, the University systems here, and poke around some of the english language Chinese newspapers. The changes here over the past 15 years or so are dramatic, but the people are still as friendly and warm as ever. No where else in the world have I walked across the street from Gucci, Prada, and Rolex to eat a phenomenal $10 USD lunch. Best part of working in our Beijing office is that there are a pair of Starbucks within a block of my hotel and office to keep me caffeinated while I adjust to the timezones.
bill.
Monday April 20, 2009 I arrived in Beijing Sunday, just in time to watch the Shanghai F1 Grand Prix on CCTV in Mandarin. Once I saw the weather, I was glad that I didn't fly in early to go to the race. I love attending races, and five F1 races are hosted in my region, but any race that requires "monsoon tires" or "wets" just won't be on my top list of places to be. I'd make an exception for Monaco or Spa Francorchamps, of course. Throw in the likelihood of getting "general admission" tickets rather than seats under some kind of cover, and I was glad to watch from my nice, warm, dry hotel room 1000km away.
This trip is focused on a few existing (and highly valued) customers. It is what I call a "go deeper" trip. I'll be working for 3-5 days with each customer to help talk through some of their pain points and work with them to improve their operations and IT infrastructure. The issues are often "spur of the moment", or based on recent activities and drama, but digging through these as symptoms of underlying systemic issues often uncovers more interesting challenges. For instance, "that system is a piece of junk!" often translates into "No change control or configuration management, and everyone having the root password is probably not a good thing.".
I did get a chance to celebrate yesterday's news with a dinner at the Hard Rock in Beijing. Don't get me wrong, eating native is one of the perks of my job, and I love to explore cuisine in far reaching pieces of the globe (except for eel, or any animal that I would consider... ummm... gross), but once in a while you just have to get a cheeseburger and fries. The Hard Rock in Beijing is great, and the swag in the gift shop is cheaper than any other HRC that I have visited (over 30 and counting). I was bummed that they didn't have any decent hats, but I did find a couple goodies for the family at home. The highlight of the night was the band. Didn't catch their name, but they were form Singapore and Beijing, definitely a mixed bag of nationalities. They did some nice Cure, Journey, POD, and Green Day covers with three members swapping the lead singer duties. Laugh of the night was provided by the over-animated Chinese lead singer who lost a couple buttons on his '501's during an especially spirited portion of the show. Kudos though, he never missed a note.
More later as the week gets rolling...
bill.
Friday April 03, 2009 A long week, this might help... World, I'd like to introduce you to Goliath and Doogie. This should add a smile or two on a Friday. Goliath is a boxer/pit bull mix, a rescue dog that we were going to "keep until we found him a good home". That was 5 years ago. Doogie is a 140 lb (63.5 kg to my non-US friends) pile of pure stupid, formed into the shape of a yellow labrador retriever. Impossible you say? Labs are smart? This one took two years of daily "gotta chase the cows next door" running into the electric fence to learn (1) exactly *what* an electric fence is, and (2) running into it is a painful thing. Enjoy.
bill.
When good marketing goes bad... Yeah. Goes bad... Like cottage cheese sitting in the back corner of your refrigerator for about a year until the power goes off for a few days while you are on vacation in the middle of summer. That bad. I was looking through my drawer this morning for an old t-shirt to wear while welding some damage on my tractor's mower deck. Yeah, I live way out in the boondocks with a large yard for the kids to play in, and my tractor broke last fall.
I grab a random shirt from the pile, throw it on and head downstairs. All of a sudden, the message on the shirt hits me. It is an old Sun Education (AKA Sun Learning Services) shirt that says ".com your career". In 2000, that message was very cool, along with the "we are the dot in .com" on the sleeve. Unfortunately, the meaning of .com'ing has changed a bit. Back in the day, it meant taking your business online, exposing yourself to this new Internet connected world, and making Google money. Oops. With the bursting of the .com bubble, to "dot com" something tends to mean something different these days. "Dot comming" your career would likely mean blowing it up, concentrating on fleeting opportunities, or other negative emotional responses. Especially if you lost some money on those high tech stocks in the past 8 years or so. Oh well, the shirt keeps my winter-pale body covered, and I don't really mind if I get some dirt and crud on this one.
bill.
Wednesday February 25, 2009 A Mile High, and Enjoying Mexico... We are in Mexico City this week for account reviews, customer visits, and other fun activities to make customers happy and revenue flow. The teams here are much more "mature", as Mexico has been a strong country for Sun and Sun PS for many years. The feeling of "teamwork" here is amazing, and the people work well together within Sun, as well as across the partners and with the customers. Enough of the work stuff though, Mexico City is alot of fun, even if the gringo doesn't habla very much espanol. I speak border spanglish and Dora spanish thanks to my children watching Dora the Explorer and Go Diego Go non-stop. Above the Dora vocabulary, I know enough working spanglish to order beer, find a bathroom, and get home in a taxi.
A local cantina that provided a tasty lunch and liquid refreshment Monday. I have never seen a smashed up, 20 year old pickup truck with Jaguar "starfish" wheels before.
Here is something you don't see every day. Strolling downstairs to find an exit after the upstairs entrances were locked for the day, I stumbled upon this little gem. The first picture (bad picture, I know) is fairly easy to recognize, an ATM. The second picture puts this in context. The ATM is in the middle of a cube-farm inside the sun office. Safety for those in need during off-hours, and very convenient any time.
bill.
Friday February 20, 2009 The Emerging Markets PS team spent the past week in Brazil. A whirlwind tour of the key accounts and key opportunities in Sao Paulo and Rio. One week is definitely not enough time to spend in Brazil when you are in the office 12 hrs a day and hopping flights within the country to get from office to office. Sao Paulo is the biggest little city I have ever seen. For a city of ~18M people, it feels like you are in a small neighborhood most of the time. There are no real "skyscraper" districts that make you feel closed in (like in New York), and no frantic hustle and bustle like Beijing or Los Angeles. The people are friendly, the account teams are eager and lively, and the work is exciting. What a cool town. We also spent about 23 hours in Rio. Yeah. Rio definitely can not be consumed in less than one day. The atmosphere of the local office was upbeat, and the opportunities were exciting with lots of momentum. The city is amazing. The scenery (mostly from a cab) is gorgeous, with the mountains and hills, the ocean and bay, and 1930's and 1940's Spanish/Portuguese architecture. The view from the hotel at 5:30 AM as we were heading back to the airport was breathtaking, with the early morning water traffic and beach in the foreground and the hills and cityscape in the background. Off to Mexico City Sunday. They have alot to live up to if they want to compare favorably with my Brazil experience. Down side is that Carnivale starts this weekend, and I will miss most of it flying out Sunday. I'll upload some pics when I get a chance to shuffle them off of my Fuze.
bill.
Monday December 22, 2008 Back from Beijing (and Shanghai)... I just returned from a week long trip to our Beijing and Shanghai sales offices. I hadn't visited China since about 2001, and much has definitely changed. I suppose I should rewind a few weeks though for context. Sun's new office in Beijing:
My blahg has been pretty much off-topic for a few months, as I have been transitioning into a new role. I am now the lead for Systems and Storage Professional Services for "Emerging Markets Region". EMR consists of China, Russia and the rest of CIS, India, Latin America, much of the middle east, and any country without a Sun office. Beijing's famous hub of "retail negotiations", the Silk Market:
This trip was awesome! The teams in Beijing and Shanghai are definitely on a roll. Lots of complex identity management work, portal integrations, and storage management projects underway. Huge thanks to Dowson for hosting us in both cities, Andy for helping to set everything up, Winston (and Jimmy via mobile phone) for helping with our social activities, Hammer, Jimmy, Arthur, and all the delivery architects for your time and for sharing the information. Next comes Moscow and Brazil. For now, time to spend the holidays with family and friends. More to come later...
bill.
Friday November 07, 2008 SunOS Rises Again, Better than Ever! After 15 months of bozos whacking away with power tools...
YAY!! And yes, my 2008 Hybrid Mercury Mariner has "Solaris" license plates. And yes, that is a 1975 Bricklin SV1 Gullwing in the background, and no, I haven't touched it in 3 years, and yes, if you'd like to take it off my hands, I would entertain offers.
bill.
I spent the past couple of months working on a project that had way too many lawyers involved. I didn't want to blog about it, as dealing with lawyers and "content review" for everything I decided to write during the project would have made my head explode. Now that the project is finished, and the intellectual property sharks are done reviewing and blessing things, I feel a bit more open about sharing my experiences. I did get to work with a a great geek who also happens to be an actor. I learned a ton about storage and cloud-like things using virtualization layers. Since the project finished, I have been working with the xVM Server folks on the Early Access Program, details here and here.
I'll throw some screen shots and info up soon. For now, I have a borrowed, single CPU, dual core, 8GB memory x2200 M2, sitting in a datacenter 1500 miles away to run my tests on. As of today, it is running the xVM Server software (EA2), with Solaris 10 update 6, a Solaris Express Community Edition release (Nevada 101a), Windows Server 2003 x64 Enterprise Edition, and Windows Server 2008 x64 Datacenter Edition. All on the same machine. All managed from a single desktop filled with console windows. My Windows Server guest systems even have remote console working, with decent performance to my desktop at home over VPN. Yay!
bill.
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Well, it seems that way. Tons of opportunities, tons of great people, tons of great customers.
