Z-Man...When do you move to Atlanta?
 

I'm hearing rumors that M-B will join Porsche in relocating their North American headquarters down here.

Rumors and speculation at this point. I really don't know any more info than that...

-Z

Just noticed Legion's location :cool:. Parts of NJ are OK...used to make regular DR trips to Mawah/Sterling Forest, but GA would sure take a LOT of stress out of your life by comparison to where you now live Z :D.

Chris: How does it feel to be free?

Ok, I'll bite, as a NJ resident. Although I will admit trips to florida remove stress, but it's more related to distance from family ;)

College buddy lived in the Butler/Patterson area way back when, and I love to visit the city, but it causes me stress after just a few days of the "rat race" :p.

....and I wouldn't be caught living in Atlanta (proper) either btw....same :D

Funny, all this traffic has increased my stress level quite a bit. I used to have a 3 minute commute, either way. Now I have a 25 minute commute in and a 25-180 minute commute home. Taxes are way lower, and that's nice.

I previously lived in an area of Illinois that had no problem giving the iron boot of Chicago the finger. We were just expected to fund the city's largess.

NJ is one of the most corrupt places to live in the US. The school unions. The legislature. The mobbed up insurance scam artists. John Corzine/MF Global. The list is so long.

The net result is some of the highest taxes in the country, the highest auto insurance, declining schools with fatter and fatter administrative salaries and headcounts.

It's no wonder Corps want to relocate out of the state. i would NEVER live there.

Yeah, but we have lower gas prices! :D

True - the cost of living is high here -- but I think it is safe to say that government and union corruption is not limited to New Jersey alone: we just seem to air our dirty laundry more than most states!

I've lived in NJ all my life - I have no problem living here - yeah - parts are a bit crowded, but there is lots of greenspace, tons of high end communities (Mendham, Franklin Lakes, Saddle River, Alpine, Cloister...etc), and lots of opportunities.

-Z

I have had many, many job offers in NJ, (Teterboro) and there is no way in a monkeys butt I would live anywhere near that ****hole..! Of course there are nice areas in NJ, but the cost of 'nice' there vs here is a BIG difference.

And gas is way cheaper here than NJ!

http://blogs-images.forbes.com/frank...ices_final.jpg

Only by a penny. And we don't have to pump it! SmileWavy

Much of what you say about NJ is true - in particular the school situation is totally f_ed. However, we did boot John Corzine out of office - and he wasn't from Jersey anyway. Pretty sure he closed up shop in Hoboken and moved back to NYC once his term of "service" ended.

I notice you live in California, which is in my opinion one of the few places that can give Jersey a run for its money in terms of bureaucracy per capita. NJ, for instance, does NOT have a bureau of home furnishings like California has. Thus, I find your comments re: NEVER living in NJ just a tad ironic...

Confirmed. We had our President's reception today and he announced that indeed, we are planning to move our headquarters from Montvale, NJ to a suburb of North Atlanta.
Mercedes-Benz is latest to leave New Jersey; carmaker moving from Montvale to Atlanta - Business - NorthJersey.com

Most of the folk will be moving this summer. Several critical operations areas (Call center, service engineering, and my department - IT) will stay in NJ for about 2 years until the new infrastructure is built up. At least that is the plan for now.

The next couple of days will be more meetings to discuss one on one our options. I am not sure where I fit in the picture given my department's situation. Not sure what options will be offered to us.

The winds of change - they are a blowin'

-Z

If you like your company and want to stay with then my advice is to take any and every opportunity to travel to Atlanta. Invent reasons if you need to.

There will likely be some dedicated migration team. Get on it.

That may be nothing more than paranoia on my part but prior experience justifies at least some of it.

Here's the story from the Atlanta end... my SIL works for the Atlanta Business Chronicle, and they are lovin' this.

EXCLUSIVE: Mercedes USA chief says Atlanta HQ relo will help company stay 'competitive for the next 50 years.' - Atlanta Business Chronicle

Excerpt:

Mercedes move to Atlanta is likely to have a domino effect in northern New Jersey, home to BMW and Volvo U.S. headquarters.

"The next conversation will be at BMW," Boyd said. "The clock is now ticking."

The Southern migration of foreign automaker headquarters is driven by a maturing industry.

When these companies first entered the U,.S. decades ago, they had just sales and marketing outposts, noted Karl Brauer, senior analyst with Kelly Blue Book. That meant the automakers could put their headquarters in glamorous metros such as New York and Los Angeles," .

As these foreign automakers ramp up domestic manufacturing with new plants, logistics require them to relocate their headquarters closer to their manufacturing hubs, Brauer said.

He cites Toyota leaving California for Texas, and rumors of Honda considering bailing on Southern California for Ohio, where it has a large plant.

"I would not be surprised if BMW, Volvo or Subaru (Mercedes' North Jersey neighbors) relocate to the Southeast, if not in Atlanta." Brauer said.

Beyond the demographics (the Southeast has younger, growing populations) and the market realities (auto manufacturing especially for the imports have coalesced in the union-free South), is the issue of soaring taxes in the Northeast hubs.

Yup!

I'll second the advice - it's what we did before considering following the company to Charleston. We took about a 5 day trip to go play tourist and scope out the region, along with a few different parts of town. Long story short, it was totally worthwhile and was the motivation I needed to start putting in for job openings at this site.

Porsche just opened a new NA Headquarters here as well. Trust me...if you "like" NJ (I'm in NJ writing this), you'll love Atlanta!

My only question is why relocate to the N suburbs. Traffic and population density is insane and airport access is poor. Porsche built on the S end only a short distance from the airport and close to Peachtree City.

Cmon down!

Looks like your new building will be in Sandy Springs--walking distance from my building in Dunwoody.

I myself would have preferred if my employer was in Cumming and I had a reverse commute...

Interesting to me is the back story here. Our Governor Christie while grandstanding all over the country trying to make a name as king maker patting the Governor of GA on the back for his business savy in getting corporate moves like MB, all the while supposedly working to keep MB in NJ. Hummm...doesn't take much imagination to figure out how hard Christie really worked for that to happen. NJ sold down the river again!

+1. Having a better daily grind will make a difference for the long run sanity.
20hrs/wk spent in the car is literally a part time job.
Go for a combo of side street routes to work, quiet neighborhood, parks, shopping(food/auto/building), library, pools, schools, mass transit, etc.

Unfortunately, around here, the side streets are just as conjested as the main arteries. There just plain isn't enough capacity for the vehicles on the road.

They are including a visit to Georgia as an option to help determine if an employee wants to move there or not (part of the relocation package). They will also offer a retention package if an employee decides not to move to GA, but stays on until a set date.

There are two main 'waves' of migrations to GA planned: most of the employees will need to make a decision to move by April 15 of this year, and will be expected to be in GA by July 31st. They will move into temporary office space until the new building is built.

Several critical operations areas will remain in Montvale NJ until the new Mercedes building is built in GA. These include the Call center, training center, and IT. (I am in IT). It is estimated that these groups will migrate to GA in about two and a half years, and the same type of packages will be offered (relocation package / retention package).

A lot of media is reporting that part of the decision had to do with moving closer to our assembly plant in Alabama. Actually, the Alabama plant is a completely separate business entity (Mercedes-Benz, US International vs. Mercedes-Benz, USA). While we certainly do business with them, that really was not a huge influential factor. Money was the motivating factor.

The mood is very somber here to say the least.

-Z-man.

And it is the garden state.

I ain't never been there, but any place called the garden state must be nice ;)

And Jughandles :confused::rolleyes::mad:

Lots of folks NOT getting relocation packages...

-Z

That sucks.

Thinking positive thoughts for you.

Good luck - hoping for no outsource deal.

Good luck Z. You haven't bought another house yet have you? That may turn out to be a blessing...

I hope this all works out great for you, Z. If you do relocate to Atlanta, I think you'll enjoy it. Atlanta's one of the nicer places we've lived in over the years. When we were there, we lived in Peachtree Corners and I worked in Duluth. The commute was easy. Other areas around town were probably not as convenient. We loved going into the north GA mountains, sailing on Lake Lanier, and (mild) whitewater canoeing on the Chattahoochee River. Good luck, Z. SmileWavy

Wow, bad times. I thought it was the norm when a company decided to relocate.

No house yet - living in a rental apartment and all of my furniture and stuff is in storage...

I find out today which option I get:
1. Relocate - need to decide by April 15, and move by July, 2015.
2. Retention package - stay on board in Montvale until June 30, 2015
3. Option C: stay in Montvale continue with 'normal' datacenter planning and operations, and migrate to new datacenters when they are built, sometime around Q3, 2017. Then, option 1 & 2 will be presented to me closer to the datacenter move date.

Since I am part of the ITI group (IT infrastructure), Option C is the most logical fit for me. Will find out by noon.

-Z

Option C. We stay put until they figure out what to do with our datacenter environment. So for the next couple of years, I'll keep satisfying the business needs, as well as plan and execute a datacenter move. Gonna be a busy year...

-Z

Nice.

Kinda a stupid question I am sure but how does one move a large data center when downtime is not allowed? Do you buy new hardware and install in Atlanta, get everything mirrored there and flip a switch? Outsource all the data temporarily and physically move the hardware and rebuild? Or some combination of the above?

It is not really a stupid question. But, the flip answer would be "it depends".

I have been doing data center migrations for over a decade now and no two have ever been the same. It is a matter of cost, tolerance & timing. But, they are always very high risk.

The easiest ones that I have done are for clients that have a hot failover site, or sites. Test, test, test then switch over. Move then switch back. There is some big risk here as not all failovers go as planned. A couple of the clients that I have worked with have used this approach multiple times as it gives them an opportunity to periodic refreshes of entire environments. But, this is far from the norm.

All data center migration plans involve discovery, analysis, assessment, design, testing, then cutover. But, from experience most clients perform wave migrations based on applications tied to certain infrastructure components.

Take a look at this article from Data Center Dynamics. It will give you a feel for some of the approaches. Data center relocation

Paul is right - there are many different ways to do this. Currently, we have a dual datacenter environment - but it is a local setup - the two sites are 1km apart. This allows us to have dedicated dark fiber (single-mode long wave fiber connections) between the two sites. Many of our critical systems are mirrored between the sites - dual servers, dual storage, dual network setup.

There are several types of dual setups: active/active, active/passive, auto failover, manual failover...etc. Depending on the business requirement, the system is setup accordingly. The higher level of redundancy, failover, and automation, the higher the cost.

So we can add a tertiary global mirror to our metro mirrored environment in Atlanta. (Metro is synchronous replication, global is asynchronous). The global connection would leverage the Telco infrastructure (ATT, Verizon...etc). Faster speeds and more bandwidth can be achieved at a higher price. Once this third site is setup, we could duplicate our environment, and as Paul explained above so well - we would synchronize, test, cutover, failover, lather, rise, repeat until we are satisfied with the results.

We have not even begun to plan out the actual migration, but that should give you a bird's eye perspective on how it can be done.

-Z-man.

I have no problem with quantum mechanics or cellular biochemistry but computing at this level is complete voodoo to me. Thanks for the edification.

Been out of the game 6 years now Z, but for 25 years, this is what I did as a communications systems programmer/networking guy. Moving/mirroring large data centers either locally or thousands of miles away supporting megabanks, large corporate IT infrastructures, etc. Most folks I know "still in the game" have been working from home (telecommuting) for many years...is that an option for you? I never lost my job in this fashion but I watched many, many, coworkers go through it....it sucks. Invariably, everyone comes out the "other side" just fine though....seems to happen to "good people" ;). Best of luck Z....

Been out of the game 6 years now Z, but for 25 years, this is what I did as a communications systems programmer/networking guy. Moving/mirroring large data centers either locally or thousands of miles away supporting megabanks, large corporate IT infrastructures, etc. Most folks I know "still in the game" have been working from home (telecommuting) for many years...is that an option for you? I never lost my job in this fashion but I watched many, many, coworkers go through it....it sucks. Invariably, everyone comes out the "other side" just fine though....seems to happen to "good people" ;). Best of luck Z....