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Satya Satyamoorthy's Blog

13 posts

 

With 2005 almost behind us as I sit and ponder how we have grown especially in the APAC region, I am amazed at our growth in this part of the world.

  • From zero to a full fledged office in Bangalore, India!
  • Added great partners in Japan, India, Malaysia and Australia!
  • Started to serve several APAC customers!
  • Successfully completed a number of trainings here!
  • Had a lot of speaking engagements!
  • WOW!

 

Exactly a year back when I took up the challenge of expanding into the APAC region, esp India, I was nervous and really did not know what to expect. This was my maiden “business” attempt and had absolutely no clue what it is to “fight” with the bureaucracy and the “license Raj”. Now a year later, looking back the path I traveled, I have to accept that this was one of my major achievements ever. The experience gained is worth its time in Platinum! Marc, Brad and Ben: Thank You for providing this lifetime opportunity! Hey, I have tons of stories to tell my grand children, sitting around the dining table in front of the fire place!

 

The interest shown by the community, by the System Integrators, by the product developers in APAC has been truly overwhelming! Not a day passed by without some organization calling me! We have successfully added several partners in Australia, Japan, India and Malaysia and several more are on the anvil – watch out for more announcements from this region in the next couple of months!

 

The community in this region has literally embraced us. Wherever we go for the road shows, presentations, we have had tremendous response. Ben Wang was telling me that people were willing to pay $$s to hear him speak in a restaurant in Tokyo. After my talk in Linux Asia 2005, I had people flocking to take pictures with me! Can you visualize the JBUG launch in Hyderabad which had more than 200 people flocking and became a "standing room" only session? I am told that the Bangalore and Hyderabad groups have regular meetings and the interest in growing day by day! In the queue are several cities in this region who want to start their own User Groups!

 

We have major plans for the coming months and we are sure that you will find us in a city near you – wherever you are!

 

Overall we have had tremendous growth which even I did not expect. From the bottom of my heart – I extend our gratitude to our partners, our customers, the developer community who support us and to my family for having accepted me making calls at 2:00 AM and glued to my laptop at 3:00 AM – (this is something I preach against, but failed to follow this year! One of the prices you pay for working from home!)

 

I wish you all a very HAPPY AND PROSPEROUS NEW YEAR 2006!

 

We at JBoss consider "Every Year" as the "Election Year"! So we will strive even better to beat your expectations and serve you more!

Satyam Becomes the first Indian SI partner!

 

What a week to follow the Big MS announcement!

 

Tuesday (Oct 4th 2005), the maiden announcement went out! Satyam, one of the top 5 India SIs has officially become our partner. They have a great team - real Open Source passionate, and professional folks in GSRaju and Peter Thomas! Peter is a winner! I think they do technology for true Business needs and not blindly suggest tools!

 

I also visited their "Futurus" Labs in Chennai! Impressive- State of Art center! They know how to "show off"! I think they are doing some real cool work over there!

 

I am imagining in a couple of months they will have some great showcase pieces of Conversion to JBoss, Applications using JBoss Portal and possibly JBoss jBPM hosted there?! Peter and Raju are you listning?

14 Sep 2005.

 

This morning we had the Breakfast session with the Senior IT people in Bangalore. We had some great who-s-who of IT attend that. We had a lady flying all the way from New Delhi to attend! Thank you Ma’am! We had partners, customers, future partners and future customers! Folks from HP, Novell, NIIT, Infosys, TCS, MobiApps, Satyam, Siemens, Cognizant are a few that comes to my immediate memory. Sorry Folks, if I have missed any of you! The breakfast was excellent. Even better were the interaction of the audience! The persons who attended were quality, senior persons who I think began to appreciate and few of them even volunteered to get their solutions certified and were very keen in knowing about our partnership program!

 

Immediately after the Launch, we traveled to one of our partners to sign the agreement! This will soon be announced and will be ground breaking! This will be the first of several good news arriving from the country of Curry and Culture!

 

In the afternoon we had the official launch of Bangalore JBUG! I was not sure what to expect! We were in for a surprise! The leader is a real JEE stalwart and a true find! She is from Aztec and a true mid-tier veteran! (Who said Girls don’t do open source?) She had the audience under her magic spell! Talking of the audience, we had some 52 people attending the launch! The crowd was truly heterogenous, came from all cornors of the town, taking time off to travel the nightmare Bangalore roads to attend this event! Thank You all from the bottom of my heart! Between Bangalore and Hyderabad we have had more than 150 JBUG members? I simply cannot imagine where will the India JBUGs go to? If all of these folks develop JBoss applications and all are JBoss experts, I have no doubt that one day JBoss will be the de-facto middle ware in the JEE world! Simply unimaginable! Aztec has gracefully offered the space for the next few JBUG meets – Thank You Aztec! If you are interested in attending the future sessions, become part of B-JBUG, please enrol by visiting The Bangalore JBoss Users Group. Also, Amit has offered to talk about Hibernate in the next meeting of JBUG! Yes, JBossers, we will make all the needed help to make JBUGs in India a great success! Watch out Pune and Chennai – we will be announcing JBUGs in your cities very soon!

 

Later in the evening we, the India JBoss team had the dinner with Brad! We went to Karavali, the famous Kerala/Mangalore/Konkan style restaurant! Here again Brad proved the he can handle more spice than I. I simply cannot believe it! Brad you are Great!

 

Tuesday 13th September, 2005.

 

For those who are wondering who is Brad, He is Brad Murdoch, the VP of Operations and Services, JBoss Inc. He is responsible for making sure that customers are happy and we are happy – yeah, all the services and operations of JBoss worldwide are under him!

 

Today we were to go to Electronic city to meet one of top 5 SIs in India! The meeting was at 10:30 and I told him that I will pick him around 8:45. He asked me what 1-1/2 hours to travel 20 KM? I said Brad, You will understand! He did! We were going through some “memorable” traffic and congestions and later Brad told me – “Incredible!”

 

We had a great discussion with the team that brings in new technologies to the core mass and they told us they have 12,000 developers in that campus and are adding one more building and will eventually house 20,000! Of these there are more than 3000 Java/J2EE developers! They have COEs for each technology area, and even have their own Prometric test center!

 

Later I took Brad to Nandini for Lunch! Spicy Andra food! Even I cannot handle and Brad did! Brad you are great! Juha told me that the spiciest thing in Finland was “salt”! Juha, wanna a taste of Spicy food?

 

Later in the day, we traveled to ITPL to meet one of the largest SIs in India! I started my career in a company which finally merged with this one! We met one of the center heads and his team! The meeting went excellent! I came to know we share some common ex-colleges and friends!

PS: Brad had a real taste of Bangalore driving and the way our drivers weave through the traffic that he told me that he will never ever sit on the driver side passenger seat and will only sit on the back seat!
14 Sep 2005.

 

This morning we had the Breakfast session with the Senior IT people in Bangalore. We had some great who-s-who of IT attend that. We had a lady flying all the way from New Delhi to attend! Thank you Ma’am! We had partners, customers, future partners and future customers! Folks from HP, Novell, NIIT, Infosys, TCS, MobiApps, Satyam, Siemens, Cognizant are a few that comes to my immediate memory. Sorry Folks, if I have missed any of you! The breakfast was excellent. Even better were the interaction of the audience! The persons who attended were quality, senior persons who I think began to appreciate and few of them even volunteered to get their solutions certified and were very keen in knowing about our partnership program!

 

Immediately after the Launch, we traveled to one of our partners to sign the agreement! This will soon be announced and will be ground breaking! This will be the first of several good news arriving from the country of Curry and Culture!

 

In the afternoon we had the official launch of Bangalore JBUG! I was not sure what to expect! We were in for a surprise! The leader is a real JEE stalwart and a true find! She is from Aztec and a true mid-tier veteran! (Who said Girls don’t do open source?) She had the audience under her magic spell! Talking of the audience, we had some 52 people attending the launch! The crowd was truly heterogenous, came from all cornors of the town, taking time off to travel the nightmare Bangalore roads to attend this event! Thank You all from the bottom of my heart! Between Bangalore and Hyderabad we have had more than 150 JBUG members? I simply cannot imagine where will the India JBUGs go to? If all of these folks develop JBoss applications and all are JBoss experts, I have no doubt that one day JBoss will be the de-facto middle ware in the JEE world! Simply unimaginable! Aztec has gracefully offered the space for the next few JBUG meets – Thank You Aztec! If you are interested in attending the future sessions, become part of B-JBUG, please enrol by visiting The Bangalore JBoss Users Group. Also, Amit has offered to talk about Hibernate in the next meeting of JBUG! Yes, JBossers, we will make all the needed help to make JBUGs in India a great success! Watch out Pune and Chennai – we will be announcing JBUGs in your cities very soon!

 

Later in the evening we, the India JBoss team had the dinner with Brad! We went to Karavali, the famous Kerala/Mangalore/Konkan style restaurant! Here again Brad proved the he can handle more spice than I. I simply cannot believe it! Brad you are Great!

Today (12th Sep 2005) we were in Hyderabad a.k.a. Cyberabad, for the launch of our services in India.

 

It was some trip! Morning we had a big group of CxOs and decision makers attend the “Breakfast With Brad” (BWB) event! We had “who is who” of IT in Hyderabad attend! The Director of NASCOM, the head of SPIN, folks from Satyam, RAM infotech, Emagia, and several others, Head of IIITH, head of JNTU Comp Science department… to name a few! Brad made a presentation and I followed up with a short version of my story! The audience was excellent and was able to appreciate and they asked several good questions and from the feedback they were well received! Following the launch, we had the “Meet the Press”. There were several members of the fourth estate, both English and Telegu, both Business and Technology, both online and print media! Several good questions were asked and we made the best attempt to answer them! The result was very evident by the amount of great PR we received! For a sample refer to: CIOL and Silicon India .

 

In the afternoon (lunch time) we headed back to the Softpro offices for the launch of JBUG Hyderabad! What an enthusiastic audience! We had over 100 people – all Java developers and majority of them JBoss developers - attend! It was literally a gate crash. Standing room only for the late comers! Brad made a quick presentation and launched the Group and I chipped in with the technical presentation of the JEMS suite! What a dream start for the JBUG in India!

 

The launch in Hyderabad was unbelievable! I am very confident, we are going to be very very successful in India and APAC!

Brad Finally Arrived in Bangalore! He arrived Saturday - 11 Sep 2005 Night and I picked him from the airport and he stayed in the Royal Orchid on Airport Road. There is a neat golf course attached to the hotel and I thought he would enjoy, till I met him the next day! Sunday morning I meet him and he come panicing and wanted me to find an alternate accomodation! I asked him why? It was past midnight, he was tired after the long trip from Tokyo! So tired was he, he turned off the light and bang.. saw something run across and over his bed. He switched on the light and saw a big lizard! So shocked was he that he spent the whole night awake! It was really sad that he had to start his India stay that way! To add to his agone, for some reason, he had absolutely no HOT WATER to shower! I tried calling all the good star hotels in Bangalore and all were sold out! So, I had to run to the manager and ask her to set things right. Which was... Later we went to the restaurant attached to the Hotel for a Buffet Breakfast! First experience of authentic south Indian food for Brad! He simply enjoyed, the delicious Kesari Bath, Kharabath, Idly, Vada and Masala Dosa with Sambar and Chutney, Dokla and Kachori with Tamarind and Mint chutney and finally an Aaloo paratha with Yogurt! He simply enjoyed it! Later we went on a small sight seeing trip to Vidhan Soudha - the capitol building and the Hare Krishna temple (ISKON temple). Brad had an unique experince and he had the complete Aarthi of long Balaji and had Pushpanjali - flower offering to Lord Krishna. He exclaimed it was a fascinating experience! Later we spent the evening to nullify all the good karma that was obtained - we went to NASA Pub! Tomorrow we are in Hyderabad!
 Last week we had the first Advanced Class completely conducted by the India Crew!  We had a full house of 18 registered students. They came from Bangalore, Hyderabad, Delhi and even from Nigeria! That was a great mix of students. The one from Nigeria, Chuck has already taken the Certification Test! Congrats Chuck!  But the two members from a big partner of ours, bailed out after the first session! They were Java ignorant! I don’t know, how they are going to help with no knowledge of Java! God Save us…  Amit helped in conducting several sessions and the Labs – A Big Shout Out to AMIT!  The new member to the JBoss family, Vicky Kak was also equally helpful. I will Blog about his later! Thanks Vicky!  The sessions were very good, interactive. We had the group from HP who have already experienced JBoss and the ones from Softpro, the other partners who really added value by pitching in. Thank you guys! How come so far there have been no girl/lady students in any of our classes in India? Common Fair ones… Next time give these guys a run for their money!  Some of the sessions which we thought will be killers, were in fact a cake walk… Like Class Loaders, JMX, Tuning etc. I was expecting a kill and slam dunks from participants… but the students seemed to have got them…  The venue was good, but for the traffic to get there. The participants were very late on the first day! I think from the second day they planned. The food was good over there and the class room seemed alright too! So I think that was a good place for future classes! Let see!  As soon as I get pictures of the class, I shall put them.   I think overall it was very successful! Looking forward to expand to other cities here in the near future!
ssatyamoorthy

Brad's Visit!

Posted by ssatyamoorthy Aug 31, 2005
Brad Murdoch is planning to visit India September 10th through the 15th. We plan to visit Hyderabad on the 12th and be in Bangalore the rest of the time. Brad is hosting a Breakfast session for the corporate big-wigs on the 14th at the Royal Orchid, Airport Road, Bangalore. If you know some big-shot who has to be invited, please email me. I will work on repoting Brad's experiences in this land of Spice and Customs! I asked Brad, what he wanted to do on the Sunday when he is here and offered him choices of Palaces or Wildlife. He chose the latter - and gave me instructions he has to hit all the Wild Pubs and Dance floors here in Bangalore - Yeah, the wild 'night' life! I am a goody goody guy, hey at least my wife thinks so, so how to look for the wildest places? :)! Any suggestions?
ssatyamoorthy

India JBUGs

Posted by ssatyamoorthy Aug 31, 2005
Yes! Believe it or Not! We are going to launch the JBoss User Groups (JBUG) in Bangalore and Hyderabad. We are launching the Hyderabad one on the 12th of September, 2005 and the Bangalore one on the 14th. We have an excellent user of JBoss, Ms. Jyoti Bacchi of Aztec who will be the leader for the Bangalore Group. She is a pragmatic, technical architect who is a no-nonsense person who does technology for business and not vice versa. So, I think we have a good leader. From the responses so far, I am told we are going to have a gate-crash for the event! Welcome geeks and let’s have a Party like we always do!
We are going to have our first indigenously delivered Advanced Class next week. We have a full house and let us see how we fare. I am told by our experts who have conducted classes before for Indian Audience, that the Indian Students are a class apart. Not only they want to learn, but they want to prove that they are the best! I am warned that they will pick on the weakness of the instructor and go at length to prove that “I am better than You!”   Having said that, I am sure Amit and I will do a good job as we have prepared well. In case you want some one to attend this class, please feel free to login to www.jboss.com and register for the same.
I am very happy to announce that JBoss India is now fully functional. It is a great feeling for me to go to an Office vs. working from home. I don't get bugged by the "great" Sales people calling me and disturbing me! I love my corner office and the view is great from there - looking at the twin tall pine trees - yeah pine tree in Bangalore! But for the noice from the honks of passing vehicles, looks and feels great! BTW, JBoss India is on an expansion spree! If you consider yourself as a J2EE expert, now is the time to prove it to the world! If you have the fire under your belly to be the Guru, now is the chance. If you have what it takes to be an "Open Source" geek come on! Please email me ssatyamoorthy@jboss.com and lets us together get them!

 

July 8, 2005

 

On this auspicious day (as per the Indian/Hindu calendar) we had the official "Blessing Ceremony" a.k.a. the Udhoga Aarambam/Griha Pravesam. The office is in the beautiful and peaceful Jayanagar suburb of Bangalore, India. It is on the double road that connects BTM with BSK right across Angadi Silks (Girls should know this place - famous of exquisite Silk!)

 

My wife and I, on the instructions of the priest performed all the rituals as per the Indian tradition. This was an elaborate ceremony to invoke God Ganesha (who removes all obstacles) and the Navagrihas (the planets who affect our physical and psychological being ;-)!) and install Goddess Lakshmi (goddess of Wealth!). We also did the needful to get rid of all bad Karmas (you know who!) and invite the good ones!

 

Hurray! We have a full fledged office in India!

 

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