InformationWeek: The Business Value of Technology

January 29, 2001

	Technology At Home
	John Vrolyk, President and CEO 3Ware Inc.

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o some people, the ability to work anywhere is a curse. To John "Beau" Vrolyk, it's a blessing. "People with jobs like mine work all the time anyway," says the president and CEO of 3ware Inc., a maker of data-storage systems. "If I didn't have all this technology, I'd just be doing it on paper."

"All this technology" is the computers, networking gear, and other IT equipment that serve his family's San Mateo, Calif., home. A 486-based PC running Linux functions as the connection and firewall between a digital subscriber line and the home's 10Base-T Ethernet network. On the network is a Silicon Graphics 320 workstation with a digital camera and a high-resolution scanner.

Vrolyk, his wife, and their daughter, 16, all have their own Sony Vaio notebooks. Their son, 12, prefers his Hewlett-Packard Pavilion desktop PC. An aging PowerBook stores old Mac files. For ultimate mobility, Vrolyk packs a Palm VII.

Yes, home-office and portable computing gives Vrolyk more family time, but what's the bottom line? "The fundamental killer application of all this technology is communication," Vrolyk says. He gets E-mail and videos from his kids when he travels. And his son E-mails his grandfather often: "He'd never write a letter unless his mother tortured him."

Photos by Richard Morgenstein

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