Trip Report: Back in Amsterdam

Not only reaffirm my previous commentary regarding the height of the Dutch population, I can comfortably now report that I seem to have understated it. While 5'7" is widely accepted as the statistical average height of males universally (according to me), I now believe that the Dutch have completely skewed the results with their outrageous length. Therefore, by tossing out the Dutch from the research process, the new average height of the global male population is 5'5" – thus making me tall.

I went across the pond, with a cold and a less than positive attitude towards my 50 hour trip, to speak at a conference put on by Dutch IT VAR ISIT – which is cleverly pronounced "eye sight". ISIT is interesting in that they are an example of a European trend – they were acquired by a Telco (Telindus who is owned by Belgacom) 9 months ago. Regional/Country specific telecom companies have been merging with each other and adding higher touch IT services and gear resellers in order to maintain relevance inside customers and to fend off the larger multi-nationals. The European market acceptance for such products and services is dramatically different that the U.S. market – customers not only are willing to buy core IT gear, professional services, and managed services from their Telco, they are starting to insist on it.

In the U.S. major Telco behemoths have dabbled in and out of core data center offerings, but have been relegated back to providing bandwidth and phone services – mostly because they really haven't had any legitimate capabilities. No major enterprise would even consider outsourcing any significant IT function to their Telco – since the Telco's don't have anyone that speaks the language of IT, it's sort of hard to garner that trust factor. U.S. Telco's have started to make hay in the small commercial market, offering services such as backup or simple capacity, but (smartly) tend to do so by front-ending someone else's service offering. Verizon offers small biz and consumers services and capacity from Digi-Data, for example. I wonder how long it will take before U.S. Telco's start to become active buyers in this space – it sure seems like they would have the upper hand if they only invested in really getting into the space, and really building competencies (or buying them). In this the "cloud" based data storage era it sure seems like the guy who owns all of the routes to the sky would have a pretty sizeable advantage.

The ISIT conference had 350 IT professionals in attendance. That's a lot. This is about the 8^th time I've participated in a Dutch IT event, and they always have a ton of real IT folks. Better yet, they all tend to be formally dressed – so my new contrarian thing of wearing suits and ties didn't play. I looked like a conformist.

The U.S. democratic primary was a major topic of discussion. The Dutch are fascinated with the whole thing. They follow U.S. politics more than most U.S. citizens. They seem to have some difficulty not bursting out in laughter when explaining the primary process. By the time you've been through the non-primary primaries, such as Florida, the generic "it doesn't really matter if you win the popular vote" delegate system, and the "it really doesn't matter what you think" super-delegate discussion; you can almost hear the "these people are insane" comments locked in their heads. They are too polite to say it, of course, but you just know it's there. Inevitably the discussion turns to Texas, and that's where any semblance of logic (or empathy) disappears. No one can explain the Texas primarycaucus circus. I tried a few times but recognized I was kidding myself, I have no idea how it really works. Eventually I told people that if it comes down to a tie, each candidate picks a gun and they draw at 50 paces. At least 8 people believed that one. Silly Americans. Feeling the need to defend my country's goofiness, the only retort I could come up with was "hey, it's no dumber than Cricket", but the Dutch don't seem to play much Cricket.

Europeans open the bar at these events around 3pm, which is 9AM Boston time for those of you paying attention. Talking about IT and politics is definitely more interesting once the beer starts flowing.

Schiphol, Amsterdam's airport, is hyper-modernized. There is a retail Rolex dealer next to a café. The Europeans seem to be enjoying the fact that the exchange rate is roughly one Euro = $11,000. Thank god the Chinese are keeping the RMB artificially undervalued or there would be no place left on earth where $100 is worth anything. The cab ride to my hotel was slightly larger than my mortgage payment.

One modern, yet dumb, thing they have at Schiphol are "stairless" escalators. They are moving walkways that go up a floor or down a floor. They are easier to get on and off – certainly for kids. (Lily will stop 4,000 people rushing to catch their plane and stare at the escalator for 8 minutes before timing her leap – on and off – causing major pile ups occasionally). The design flaw is that some people actually carry-on baggage, so when heading down a floor the fact that my baggage weighs about 400lbs caused me to accelerate to about 40 miles per hour. Had anyone been in front of me they would have been crushed.

97% of the Dutch still smoke, and yes, you can still smoke inside a restaurant. Even the French don't allow that any more.

The evening prior to the event I was hosted at a fine dinner by Telilndus MD Kris Verheye (not tall, but Belgian), NetApp country manager Theo van Teylingen (ridiculously tall) and ISIT VP of Sales Tony Archidona. Tony is one of those lucky gene guys. A Spaniard raised in Holland, he looks like a cross between Enrique Iglesias and a young Mel Gibson. I was glad my wife wasn't with me. After dinner Kris did the responsible thing, and went home. Tony, a young man of about 30 or so, felt compelled to attempt to drag me (and Theo) to one of Amsterdam's many interesting evening attractions. Being 80, and jet lagged, I convinced him that a nightcap at a pub near my hotel was all I could handle. We entered a classic old (looking – apparently everything in Amsterdam is new, unlike the rest of Europe) pub. The enormous linebacker bartender drew up some beer. Within four minutes, Tony was behind the bar blasting Elvis. Within seconds, both Tony and Theo were singing nearly flawless renditions of the king. Two guys with Dutch accents that would make Austin Powers proud suddenly sounded more American than me. Theo, it turns out, was also really good. It was a bit surreal. It's not every day you see a giant Dutchman flawlessly belting out Suspicious Minds.

It will be interesting to hear the reaction to my presentation. I've been on this "3 Era's of Commercial Computing" kick, effectively proving (at least to me) that A: new generational data in this, the Internet Computing era, will be accretive to the previous era's, as data (and the market itself) was in the Distributed Computing era was to the Transactional Computing era. B: that while not as stark a contrast as block is to file, new era data has different characteristics (bigger files, and way more of them), different creation attributes (they come from everywhere, not just your employees anymore), and have even more nebulous value, and C: if you are struggling keeping up today, you are going to get buried in the near future – and the only way out is to stop trying to retrofit data conditions of today into IT processes and architectures developed in 1970. I'm right, of course, but wonder how that message was received by my tall friends. I'll let you know.

I attended the post event dinner and accepted a ride from a nice young sales guy to my hotel at the airport that the company had nicely arranged for me. Unfortunately James, who has lived in Amsterdam for 14 years (a Welsh lad, it was funny to converse with him in what sounded to me like a typical English accent ((no offense, I'm American)) and then to watch him seamlessly break into fluent Dutch. I have no such skills.) James couldn't find the hotel. It was late, I was on a very early flight, and James had had enough of driving aimlessly around, so he dropped me in the middle of Schiphol with an "it's got to be right around here somewhere" and took off. It was snowing. I asked a cab driver where it was. He had no idea. When a professional cab driver has no idea where your hotel is, a seasoned traveler such as me knows better than to tempt fate. Instead, I saw a big Sheraton sign and headed that way. I got to the counter (it was approximately midnight), said hello in a very raspy voice to the giant man at the front desk, told him I was a Platinum SPG guy and begged for a room. He typed a lot, told me they were oversold, and then typed a lot more. "I can get you only one room" he said. "Great, I only need one room" I replied (although with my cold, raspy sore throat, alcohol level, second hand smoke and general exhaustion he probably heard something that sounded like the noise the creature from Alien made). "It is a suite" he said. "Great" I tried to say audibly, but gave up and tossed a credit card at him. I only ever get suites when I'm alone, and all I want to do is pass out. I never get one when the wife and I are staying somewhere for a few days and can enjoy the fact that we don't have to share a bathroom.

Room 854. Upon exiting the elevator and looking for which direction to go, I started trekking down a hallway that was entirely reminiscent of a scene from The Shining (or maybe Alice in Wonderland). There were at least three thousand rooms on this floor. I walked for miles it seemed, and as I looked up it was like the Monty Python and the Holy Grail scene where Lancelot is charging the castle but never gets any closer. Finally it hit me – I was in the room at the very end of the hall – the only room on the floor facing the length of the hallway and the only one with a double door.

Apparently the King of Saudi Arabia and other such royalty must stay in this room. It had a foyer. Had I the time, I would have spent an hour or so finding all the rooms. Between the front door and the first bedroom I found there were 3 bathrooms. I estimate that the room was at least 2000 square feet. There may have been other people staying there as well, but it was so big I never ran into them. I'm fairly sure it had a staff waiting for me to demand something. Six hours later I woke, showered, dressed, and almost killed myself on the stairless escalator.