Monday I was privileged to join Maria Marta Cortesini at the company Aguas del Colorado (http://www.aguasdelcolorado-lp.com.ar).  Maria Marta is the communications and services manager at the company overseeing the engineering team.

Aguas del Colorado company started as a kind of ???spin off??? from a government project.  The government wanted to create an aqueduct from the Rio Colorado River at the southern border of the La Pampa province border north.  Along with the aqueduct the government decided to modernize the technology in the province by installing fiber optic cable everywhere the aqueduct went.

A project like this has many facets and took about 6 years to complete.  Almost 900 km (~540 mi) of fiber optic cable have now been installed in the province.  The benefits of this project are immense, especially to the many rural pueblos in the area.  Now they have greater access to the Internet which greatly affects education, industry and public services.

While learning about the project, I realized how access to the Internet is something I just assume arrives at my house every day, just like the water and electricity.  It is extremely hard to imagine what my daily work life and personal life would be like without all the Internet access I have.

This also reminded me to take this point back to my colleagues at work.  In the emerging markets in places such as South America our customers oftentimes don???t need the latest and greatest technology.  Those reliable and relatively simple products we have mastered over the years can be wonderful for smaller communities who are just getting their feet wet in the world of technology.

I was also able to visit the data center where Aguas del Colorado maintains all the automation and systems of the network.  While I don???t have a lot of experience with data centers it was interesting to see how they had a mix of products from different companies (all printers were HP LaserJet) and see how they have their security systems set up to ensure the servers don???t overheat and that the backup generator is always available.  The photos are of the data center that I grabbed from the company website.  I didn’t take any photos on Monday (bad GSE team member).

The day made me appreciate the advanced technology I have access to on a daily basis.

~Krista