28 The Sunday Business PostApril 14, 2019Technology

Imagine, if you will, a DVD disc. Then get someone to put it on the moon. Now stand where you are right now and try to see it. If it’s the morning, it’s particularly tough, but the night sky isn’t going to really help all that much.

Last week, we saw that disc in all its glory. The black hole at the centre of the Messier 87 (M87) galaxy is over 54 million light years away, and took extraor-dinary creativity to find. For some context, a light year is about 9.5 trillion kilome-tres. Now multiply that by 54 or 55 and add six zeros, working out at more than 517,000,000,000,000,000,000km from where you are now. That many zeros is a quintillion, for non-zerds.

It took ten years for a telescopic project unlike any other in human creation cap-ture that one image. The Event Horizon Telescope (EHT), is a collaboration using radio telescopes around the world. The EHT used these telescopes, working together, to capture the image. Albert Einstein’s general theory of relativity, from all the way back in 1915, turned out to be tremendously accu-rate based on the results of the EHT. He was a smart chap, of course, but this is a good call even by his standards.

Karl Schwarzschild expanded on the the-ory before John Archibald Wheeler coined the term “black holes” in the 1960s, and in-advertently giving science fiction writers a cool and foreboding name to work with.

Black holes are really powerful, and this one is extremely big by human standards, which it had to be in order to have any hope of spotting it. As the words in the EHT’s name suggest, to find the black hole it re-quired searching for the event horizon, as that’s where the light is.

The first data was found in April 2017, using telescopes in the US, Antarctica, Chile, Mexico and Spain. Then further telescopes in France and Greenland were added to the process, to essentially create a planet-sized dish 12,000km across.

M87’s black hole is billions of times the size

of the sun, and the sun is huge. The reason this was the one that got spotted, as opposed to Sagittarius A* at the centre of our Milky Way galaxy essentially came down to aesthetics. M87 is more photogenic, easier to capture, and more visible than the alternative.

There’s a lot of dust and gas that make it tough to spot Sagittarius A*. M87, while having problems of the same kind, doesn’t have anywhere near the same magnitude of difficulty to spot.

All of which is a nice way of saying that last Wednesday was an amazing day to be a nerd. But this also means a lot for our con-tinued exploration of the cosmos. Since the Voyager project, the automated form of in-terstellar discovery has accelerated and the 2010s have been a golden age.

From the fly-by of Pluto to landing a robot on a comet to the Trappist-1 findings, the past few years have been amazing ones for discovery. While our own planet has never been in worse health, we’ve been learning oodles more about the universe beyond, and that can help us back down here.

The image we saw was one of gluttonous dining: the black hole is feeding off the matter and energy within the accretion disc that is slowly (by cosmic standards) feeding the monster within.

The next stage in the project will be to spot Sagittarius A*, which is much tough-er, but the work required to get a glimpse of M87 has created the roadmap to do it. A place that is incomprehensibly far away to all of us, yet the centre of all around us, is coming into view.

The joy in the revelations of last Wednes-day was in how much more those working on the project want to find out, the new in-spiration they have to find answers to tech-nical riddles they have yet to solve. The urge to keep learning, to be able to understand the interior of a black hole, is still there.

Einstein predicted black holes, but he wasn’t sure he was right. Now, we’ve got a look at one. In the not too distant future, we’re going to get a look at another. The cosmic ballet goes on.

Emmet Ryan Last Wednesday’s first ever photograph of a black hole was just the latest episode in what have been an

amazing few years for space discovery

Way down in the hole, the cosmic ballet unfolds

Gadget WatchThe once and future hybrid kingBY EMMET RYAN

It’s time to bow down to the king. There’s a reason the alterna-tives in the market are known as Surface

killers: they are all trying to oust the undisputed ruler of the hybrid market.

Once more, the latest edition of the Microsoft device is the best in the business. It’s lightweight, loaded with power and easy to use. The field test was conducted in Athens, jumping between cluttered arenas, crammed flights and cafe bars. Passing was a formality, with the Pro 6 comfortably deliver-ing everything you’d expect.

The advertised battery life is

up to 14.5 hours, but this corner naturally decided to push it a

bit. Even when push-ing the battery to its max,

the life is great with plenty of hours of usage at the limit.

The first Surface was seen as unnecessary, the second was largely seen as not enough of a solution, but since the third generation the market leader has just been hitting it out of the park.

There isn’t a faulty note with this gizmo. The sound quality is great, particular-ly considering the size, and

the presence of only one USB port isn’t an issue in a more wireless-focused world.

If you are buying a hybrid, there are lots of

great options out there. Many have closed the gap on the Surface, but the Pro 6 shows the monarch isn’t giving up the throne any time soon. Everything about it is tuned perfectly to the user on the move. This is a dream of a gadget, it’s that simple.

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At the turn of the century, in the w a k e of the dotcom bubble

bursting, Marcus Ryu and his buddies were looking for a place that was boring. They wanted a sector that was not drawing a whole lot of inter-est but needed real work. In the process they have built a business that is now worth al-most $8 billion and is working with a quarter of the insur-ance business.

Entering an industry around a decade or so be-fore it gets a name tends to be somewhat of a first-mov-er advantage. Guidewire has been an insurtech business since before fintech was even in regular use.

The Silicon Valley business has grown from six people in 2001 to more than 2,400 now, including over 300 at its Irish operation in Blanchard-stown. The business essen-tially builds the systems that run insurance companies; clients include Allianz, Axa and Generali.

“It was the trough of the dotcom bust. We wanted to solve a problem that people weren’t tackling at the time,” Ryu, the co-founder and chief executive of Guidewire, told The Sunday Business Post.

“We wanted a category of problem that was specific to one industry – the less glam-orous the better. That led us to insurance; it’s an enor-mous global industry and they have very old systems. You couldn’t imagine a less glamorous form of software engineering but it’s one with a lot of problems.”

The open approach to a dull sector naturally comes with issues. If nobody is attracted to it to start a business, getting people to work in the space with you isn’t going to be aw-fully easy. Ryu and his cohorts

have the additional trouble of being based in Silicon Valley, where they have the addi-tional challenge of countless start-ups and enterprises do-ing really cool stuff.

“It was a problem that started at the beginning of the company; we were located near the most appealing com-panies in the economy. From the start, we said the appeal would not be about working for a household name or on technology you can tell your friends about,” he said.

“We treat software engi-neering as a craft: we build high-quality products that work as promised, that are built for the long-term. Then there are values of the compa-ny: we work as a community of equal professionals. That

tends to bind people into the company.”

That appeal of staying has been the key selling point for Guidewire; it regularly comes out rated as one of the more enjoyable workplaces in Sili-con Valley and likewise on the Great Place to Work ratings in Ireland.

“The products we make are virtual and abstract. We’re only as good as the people in the company, it’s very true in the software business when those technical skills are so sought after,” said Ryu.

Dublin was a necessary experiment for Guidewire, one that has paid off. It was the first development office outside of its home and is also the largest it has outside the US. Many of the biggest names in the insurance sector are headquartered in Europe, so the firm needed to have a base near them.

“It’s long past being an ex-periment now, it’s a funda-mental pillar. We have pretty much every dimension of the product and delivery here,” said Ryu. “Many of the big-gest insurers are European. To have a presence in Europe, as opposed to Latin America or India, has been fantastically successful for us.”

The need to be different, given the space it is in, also makes Guidewire a bit of an oddball for its approach to the market. Typically a fin-

tech enters as a disruptor, a company looking to change the way everyone does busi-ness in a sector. Insurtech is a touch different: Guidewire isn’t trying to break Axa, it sees the large companies as the only ones that can drive change in insurance.

“These are careful, cautious organisations because that’s their business. What we’re providing is fundamental, we’re the systems of record that run their businesses,” said Ryu. “A lot of fintech players have tried to revolu-tionise a new financial ser-vice. We’re really a vendor to incumbents. Our philosophy is the real engines of change will be the incumbents. In-surance is about pooling risk; you need a big institution to pool risk.”

Ryu’s work is a form of digital surgery, looking to make big changes to the inner workings of clients to improve matters while ensuring all the old material keeps working as long as necessary for the switch to be complete.

“They struggle with com-plexity. They have a huge number of systems and, like human beings, those systems get older. Like an organ, you can’t just say ‘my kidneys are old I’d like new ones’,” he said. “When an existing core needs to be replaced, you need to keep the whole ma-chine working. We’ve done it

hundreds of times but every time is different and chal-lenging.”

The precision of that sur-gery has become even more important with the impact of the general data protection regulation.

“We’re a big fan of GDPR. Europe is leading the way and I think the US will follow. We’re enthusiastic to comply with it. There are ways of us-ing data that are ethical, safe, and protect the sovereignty of individuals. We’re com-mitted to those,” said Ryu. “We’re dealing with much more technical categories of data, about patterns of loss that better price risk. That’s a socially worthwhile goal.”

Over almost two decades, Guidewire has seen the spread of broadband, smartphones and plenty of other technol-ogies change the landscape. Ryu is ready for the next sur-prise.

“Any successful company has been through phases of reinvention. The legacy sys-tem state of affairs feels less and less tolerable. That’s to our benefits because we’re a platform for helping compa-nies adapt to the future,” he said. “Many of our customers now have an aspiration for the future. They want to know if we’re relevant to that. That’s different to when we started, now it’s a time when change is in the air.”

‘The less glamorousTHE BETTER’

Marcus Ryu, chief executive

of Guidewide: ‘We’re only as good

as the people in the company’

Picture: Bryan Meade

Software engineering firm Guidewire deliberately focused on insurance from the get-go. Now it’s worth $8 billion, chief executive Marcus Ryu tells Emmet Ryan

The Dublin office is long past being an experiment now, it’s a fundamental pillar

As one of the partners for the Cyber Expo in Cork, Unity brings

with it a range of expertise as a specialist in both cloud transformation and as a managed services partner.

Unity has supported the event for the last two years. Its head of sales Simon Kel-ly says the major benefit of attending is the range of se-curity experts and vendors that attend.

“A customer can meet industry experts and un-derstand where the market is going, and you can do it at your own pace,” he said. “What I really like about the event is a client can actually have a conversation with many vendors that do dif-ferent things around securi-ty and [be able to] bring that collaboration and thinking over coffee.

“There aren’t many events that will allow you to actually do that. You can get collaboration between vendors, the clients can un-derstand where the gaps are in their own security, find out what people think of them and hear suggested solutions, all at the same event.”

The ability to collaborate, cooperate and learn are rea-sons why even vendors like Unity get so much out of these events. Partnerships play a significant role in the IT space as few companies, if any, are able to offer all

services on their own. For example, Unity has been a partner with Renaissance for over three years and the expertise and resources it has complement what it does, says Kelly.

That collaboration also plays a role at these events. By taking the time to visit and see what other vendors are focusing on, they can get a more complete picture of the security landscape.

“From our perspective, we can go around these stalls and see what’s out there to ensure that we’re staying on top of the con-stantly changing IT land-scape,” he explained. “The customer gets huge value out of it, but we do as well. So we encourage our staff and our clients to attend.”

More importantly, the event is a great way to en-sure the Munster region is well-served in this area. Kelly said that Unity was committed to the region – it has offices in Cork where sales and technical services are provided – and its sup-port of this event is one way of showing that.

“We’re fully committed to the Munster market-place and we’re delighted to support this event in the Munster region,” he said. “Security is at the core of the design/recommendations, so that’s really important for us. Because we’re not cred-ible unless security is part of our thinking within IT.”

www.unity.ie

Unity Technology Solutions: IT support

for the beautiful south

COMMERCIAL PROFILE

Simon Kelly, Head of Sales, Unity Technology Solutions

What I really like about the event is a client can actually have a conversation with many vendors that do different things around security