Motorola execs see opportunity on way to meeting
With them was Robert Barnett, head of the Illinois-based CGISS section of the parent Motorola (that stands for "commercial, governmental and industrial solutions sector" - a lot of the "solutions" which Motorola is bidding to put in place, there and here.) Barnett also is a member of the parent Motorola's board.
While the Motorola executives were here for their day-and-a-half board meeting, they did a quickie tour of the Old Town, wined and dined their Centertel customers at the Belvedere Restaurant and did a lot of business at the Bristol, where they stayed.
"In general, they were very impressed at things they see in the city. They can see the cranes all over the city," said Richard Lada, country manager for Motorola. "You can just feel the change."
And while this wasn't a decision-making session on anything particular in Poland, there was a lot of Polish progress to talk about, including Motorola's newly awarded $13 million contract to equip the Warsaw police department with a cutting-edge command-and-control, integrated communications system. The so-called "tetra" system will become standard across Europe, for truckers as well as cops, once all countries put the new technology in place.
"Poland is out there in the lead," said Lada, adding that the country is joining the U.K. and the Netherlands in moving to install Tetra now. "They have decided to go with it now, rather than go with a radio system that would have to be replaced after awhile," he added.
Almost everything from the past needs be updated or replaced. If Poland decides to leapfrog over current technology and move right to the next wave of systems in a variety of areas such as banking, services and communications, that's a lot of business. This also makes Poland a magnet for investors, the kind that bid to equip the bureaucracy with modern systems and also implant that new technology in private companies.
Before flying back to London, Kuznek also did a site inspection of Motorola's software center on the outskirts of Krakow. There are 70 people on board, mostly software engineers, "and they're still recruiting," Lada said.
He also looked at the future site of the Motorola software research center, in a special economic zone focusing on high technology. Motorola will be one of the lynchpin tenants. Despite that, they had to put the plans for an $18 million, 500-person research center on hold for more than a year. And the reason why is part of the landscape here. Not malevolence, not demands for bribery or payoffs, not political pressure of one kind or another, not union demands for this or that. Just plain mistakes, in the rush to shape a market economy.
"There was confusion about whether the software center would qualify for the tax holiday at the Krakow special high-tech zone," Lada said.
But they were always going to be a core tenant there, right? Yep. But apparently in the haste of putting together Krakow's proposal to the Council of Ministers for approval of their Special Economic Zone and its tax-holiday for investors, the software research facility was inadvertently left out of the final version describing eligible companies.
"There was a lot of cutting-and-pasting from other blueprints used for other economic zones. And they just forgot to add in the software plant, to everybody's chagrin when this was discovered," Lada said. That created a delay of nearly a year. Four months ago, the government clarified the intent and Motorola put the project in high gear, with architectural drawings moving along. Construction is due to start next year.
With the board meeting behind him, Lada took off for California for vacation and seeing relatives, including his father, Polish-born and Home Army World War II veteran Jerzy Lada. After emigrating to Canada and then the United States, he moved up - and then some - as an engineer, retiring as vice president of an aircraft-manufacturing parts company.
While the Motorola executives were here for their day-and-a-half board meeting, they did a quickie tour of the Old Town, wined and dined their Centertel customers at the Belvedere Restaurant and did a lot of business at the Bristol, where they stayed.
"In general, they were very impressed at things they see in the city. They can see the cranes all over the city," said Richard Lada, country manager for Motorola. "You can just feel the change."
And while this wasn't a decision-making session on anything particular in Poland, there was a lot of Polish progress to talk about, including Motorola's newly awarded $13 million contract to equip the Warsaw police department with a cutting-edge command-and-control, integrated communications system. The so-called "tetra" system will become standard across Europe, for truckers as well as cops, once all countries put the new technology in place.
"Poland is out there in the lead," said Lada, adding that the country is joining the U.K. and the Netherlands in moving to install Tetra now. "They have decided to go with it now, rather than go with a radio system that would have to be replaced after awhile," he added.
Almost everything from the past needs be updated or replaced. If Poland decides to leapfrog over current technology and move right to the next wave of systems in a variety of areas such as banking, services and communications, that's a lot of business. This also makes Poland a magnet for investors, the kind that bid to equip the bureaucracy with modern systems and also implant that new technology in private companies.
Before flying back to London, Kuznek also did a site inspection of Motorola's software center on the outskirts of Krakow. There are 70 people on board, mostly software engineers, "and they're still recruiting," Lada said.
He also looked at the future site of the Motorola software research center, in a special economic zone focusing on high technology. Motorola will be one of the lynchpin tenants. Despite that, they had to put the plans for an $18 million, 500-person research center on hold for more than a year. And the reason why is part of the landscape here. Not malevolence, not demands for bribery or payoffs, not political pressure of one kind or another, not union demands for this or that. Just plain mistakes, in the rush to shape a market economy.
"There was confusion about whether the software center would qualify for the tax holiday at the Krakow special high-tech zone," Lada said.
But they were always going to be a core tenant there, right? Yep. But apparently in the haste of putting together Krakow's proposal to the Council of Ministers for approval of their Special Economic Zone and its tax-holiday for investors, the software research facility was inadvertently left out of the final version describing eligible companies.
"There was a lot of cutting-and-pasting from other blueprints used for other economic zones. And they just forgot to add in the software plant, to everybody's chagrin when this was discovered," Lada said. That created a delay of nearly a year. Four months ago, the government clarified the intent and Motorola put the project in high gear, with architectural drawings moving along. Construction is due to start next year.
With the board meeting behind him, Lada took off for California for vacation and seeing relatives, including his father, Polish-born and Home Army World War II veteran Jerzy Lada. After emigrating to Canada and then the United States, he moved up - and then some - as an engineer, retiring as vice president of an aircraft-manufacturing parts company.
