Technology

High-Tech Telecommuting

by Patrick Flanagan

Local tech gurus will go the distance to call Lafayette home.

High-Tech Telecommuting
Local tech gurus will go the distance to call Lafayette home. By Douglas Menefee
**
M**ore than 400,000 travelers pass through the doors of the Lafayette airport annually. It's no secret that many of those passengers are employed by the oil and gas industry with their workforce being deployed to jobs around the world.

What may be surprising to some readers is learning that many of these passengers are part of the growing trend in which a number of Acadiana residents are traveling to work for some of the largest technology companies in world.

Over the years I have had the pleasure of meeting a handful of these "road warriors" through various community or business initiatives. On and off conversations with these individuals have proven to me that Lafayette is truly one of the greatest places in which individuals will endure life on the road for over 100 days a year to be able to call Lafayette home.

This week I reached out to some of these road warriors to learn more about them and the type of work they do, how often they are on the road, and where they typically travel to.

Matt Delcambre
VP, Enterprise Business Architecture
Oracle

Works with Fortune 500 companies to ensure alignment of Oracle's IT offering with its business goals. He started commuting while working for Sun Microsystems (joined in 1987), which was acquired by Oracle in 2010. He travels three weeks out of the month, typically flying out of Lafayette on Monday mornings and returning home on Thursday evenings.

Typical travel destination(s):
San Francisco, New York, Chicago, Denver, Atlanta, Dallas

Paul Jones
Mobility and Device Specialist
Microsoft Corporation

Will celebrate his 10-year anniversary with Microsoft this year and has traveled to almost every state and nine countries. Three years ago he became a mobility and device specialist who loves his job because he gets to play with software while working with customers as part of the sales team. His newest job role has helped him reduce his travel to 60-75 days a year.

Typical travel destination(s):
Louisiana, Oklahoma, Arkansas and parts of Texas

Suraj Subramanian
Chief Software Architect - IBM Cloud Managed Services
IBM Corporation

Designs software and systems architecture for the IBM Cloud Computing Platform to help customers reduce costs and mitigate security risks. He typically travels at least once a month and is away from home 100 days a year.

Typical travel destination(s):
Munich, Germany, and New York

Raymond Camden
Developer
Adobe

Works as a web and mobile application developer who evangelizes web standards. In addition to traveling to speak at conferences around the world, he travels to Adobe's headquarters monthly.

Typical travel destination(s):
San Francisco

Jared S. Quoyeser
Director, Americas Vertical Segments
Intel Americas

Manages Intel Americas' vertical segment for health care, pharma/life sciences, retail, education, state/local and federal government, financial services and energy. He travels 75 percent of the year.

Typical travel destination(s):
Portland, Ore., Santa Clara, Calif.

When I met these individuals, little did I know that I would become an active member of their "click" this year by entering into a contract with a Seattle-based technology company to serve as its enterprise CIO advisor. This has afforded me the opportunity to engage with Fortune 500 executives on how they can leverage cloud computing to become a better business leader.

Over the past eight months I have logged more than 100,000 air miles and broke the 1 million lifetime miles milestone on United.

One common characteristic that all of us high-tech telecommuters agree on is that Acadiana has the culture for which we want to call home. Each of us has been presented with opportunities to relocate, yet we all opt to deal with overcrowded, delayed and canceled flights while enduring the stress and pressure of being away from our family.

Over the past few months CGI and Enquero have announced expansion plans to create almost 1,000 high tech jobs in Lafayette over the next five years. The executive leadership at these companies specifically cited Lafayette's rich culture, university curriculum, community vision and available infrastructure for giving Lafayette a competitive advantage over other regions across the country.

A highly respected techie, Douglas Menefee is currently collaborating with industry-leading technology companies on the adoption of cloud computing by enterprise businesses.