Iceland Volcano Disrupts IT Executives' Travel Plans

The eruption of a volcano under Iceland's Eyjafjallajokull glacier this week is disrupting the travel plans of hundreds of thousands of travelers, including IT executives who are stuck on one side of the Atlantic or the other with no end in sight to their delays.

The ash from the southern Iceland volcano, which poses a serious risk to aircraft passing through it, has drifted southwards to Europe, causing airports throughout much of that continent to close.

For IT executives traveling to either side of the Atlantic, the delays have caused travel plans to be put on hold and forced them to find ways to make the best of their situation.

Jonathan Huberman, president of the Consumer and Small Business Products division of EMC and former CEO of Iomega before that company was acquired by storage king EMC, spent Friday evening about a half-block away from the Avenue de Champs Elysees enjoying steak tartar and shrimp with his company's Denmark head of sales.

Huberman was in Istanbul, Turkey and Milan, Italy earlier this week for business, and had planned to leave Paris for New York on Wednesday evening before Paris' Charles de Gaulle Airport was closed.

His eventual goal was to be in Nashville on Saturday night to enjoy a Mixed Martial Arts fight by Muhammad "King Mo" Lawal, who Huberman said uses its storage devices as part of a system for training.

Paris is fairly chaotic now. In addition to all the airport closures in France, the country is also in the middle of a train workers' strike, and hotels in Paris are completely full. That's bad news for his Danish colleague, who's only alternative now for getting home is a 25-hour bus ride.

Huberman currently has seats on a flight out of Paris on Sunday, but he is not expecting it to leave as planned. He is also hoping to be in Singapore for a sales meeting, and may try to find a flight from Paris to Singapore.

Next: VARS Adjust Plans

Another U.S. IT executive unable to return home is Alin Srivastava, vice president of worldwide sales and marketing at Secure Passage, an Overland Park, Kansas-based developer of firewall monitoring software.

Srivastava was in London much of this week with his company's head of technical services meeting customers and channel partners at the Checkpoint Internet Security show, and had planned to return home on Thursday.

For Srivastava, the thought of not being able to leave London immediately is not such a big deal as he planned to return to London for the Infosec conference on April 26. "So if I can't get out Sunday, I'll just stay here and do some work," he said.

The delay is also a chance to get in some sightseeing, Srivastava said. "We're staying next to Parliament and Big Ben, and Kensington Palace is nearby," he said. "We've been doing a lot of walking, and taking advantage of being here. It's easy to get frustrated. It's better to be patient."

The flight disruption works both ways, with IT executives in the U.S. unable to get to Europe as planned.

Leonard Iventosch, vice president of global channels and OEM at Isilon Systems, a Seattle-based developer of scale-out NAS appliances, was planning to leave on Monday for meetings in Frankfurt, Germany, Paris, and London before spending a few days with his wife in the Bordeaux region of France.

"We were planning on having a mini partner summit in London," Iventosch said.

However, those plans will likely be cancelled due to the travel situation, he said.

Jennie Sorce, travel manager for Isilon, has been trying to reschedule Iventosch, but she said things are not looking good.

Because of Iventosch's multi-city schedule, the travel plans were already complex enough even without the disruptions, Sorce said.

"They had multiple plane tickets and train tickets," she said. "Even if they got to Europe, if one ticket got cancelled, they will be in a pool with other stranded travelers. The disruption is of such a scale that, if they were to go and every piece works as scheduled, the masses of people at the airports and train stations would be unbelievable."

The volcano also disrupted the plans of Isilon executives from Europe who were in Las Vegas this week for the NAB (National Association of Broadcasters) conference, Sorce said.

Alistair Roriston, regional territory manager for Isilon in the U.K, who had hoped to be home by now, has been rerouted to spend a week in Seattle working and hoping that his flight now scheduled for Sunday will not be cancelled, Sorce said.

Meanwhile, Xavier Guerin, Isilon's country manager in France, is now flying via Chicago to Dulles airport in Washington, D.C., where he hopes he can get a Saturday flight to Paris. "But he will likely not be able to leave," Sorce said.

Next: IT Business As Usual In Iceland

While executives in Europe and the U.S. wait anxiously for news about possible resumptions of flights, the IT business in Iceland, where this whole disruption started, goes on just as it did before the disruption.

Alexander Eiriksson, COO of SecurStore, a U.K.-based provider of disaster recovery services with an office in Reykjavik, Iceland, said the ash plume from the volcano is actually in an isolated part of the country.

SecurStore partners with Toronto-based cloud storage software developer Asigra to provide disaster recovery services for customers in Europe, Iceland, and the U.S., and Eiriksson said there have been no disruptions to service.

"So far, there have been no restore incidents," he said. "But customers in the area are happy to know that their data is protected. They can always buy another car. But data is their lifeblood."

The geothermal activity that causes volcanic activity in Iceland actually makes that country a great place for a disaster recovery site, Eiriksson said. The Reykjavik area has had no eruptions or earthquakes for 1,000 years.

However, the country has learned to tap geothermal energy along with wind to replace fossil fuels and make it an example of a country run completely on green power, he said.

CCP, the Reykjavik-based designer of EVE Online, a massively multiplayer science fiction game, is up and running with no disruptions caused by the volcanic eruption, said Valerie Massey, senior director of public relations and communications.

"The only problem for my Viking overlords are delayed/cancelled flights to Europe. Other than that, we're unaffected," Massey wrote in an email.

For now, no one knows how long the delays will last. While travelers hope flights resume in the next few days, governments of the countries involved say the disruptions could actually last weeks.

Even if the eruption of the volcano under Eyjafjallajokull glacier ends soon, some scientist fear it may start a larger eruption of the nearby Katla volcano, which could potentially cause the problem to spread even further.