John Linton
.....and his 150 year old views on the survival of the fittest are reinforced by the news from the Valley:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123439862101275191.html
and probably elsewhere - but I drifted in to a period of reverie and nostalgia when I read those town names earlier this morning and couldn't be bothered to read on through the rest of today's tech wreck items. I drifted away for 20 minutes or so looking for web site references when I should have been doing something more useful and remembered with great fondness my many visits to the different companies in the townships around San Jose and what a great, collectively, bunch of truly innovative and desperately dynamic people I knew back in those days and wondered what has become of them.
One thing that did strike me in the bits of tech news I did quickly browse was this:
http://www.itnews.com.au/News/96206,hotkey-franchisees-await-update-as-email-outage-rolls-on.aspx
which caused me to wonder why a company the size of iPrimus could firstly have such a major data centre disaster (which affected other ISPs including Exetel because PIPE provides our Sydney - Melbourne link and our some of our local direct connects) and then couldn't get an email service back on line for ten days - just what sort of poor network design could cause such an issue?
I also didn't recognise the names of the companies (I assume they are VISPs or hosting providers) that apparently rely on iPrimus/HotKey services. So I assume that they are tiny compaines or very small 'niche' service providers that have no ability to buy services for themselves. Maybe the iPrimus data centre problems are their equivalent of the alleged comet that exterminated the dinosaurs?
I had thought that the number of tiny ISPs was continuing to rapidly decline and was continuing to go out of business leaving only debts to the companies foolish enough to supply to them (mind you the Strathfield Car Radio shows that a company can rack up tens of millions of debts to suppliers as experienced as Optus and GE Money so I'm not singling out tiny companies as the only examples).
So I had to have a bit of a chuckle when I was sent this:
http://www.asx.com.au/asxpdf/20090210/pdf/31fzj07rd6yx51.pdf
The concept of a tiny company like EFTel with its unbroken record of making losses and having its auditors qualify their annual accounts saying there is doubt that they are able to continue in business offering "wholesale ISP services" is just plain laughable. What sort of services? ADSL2 ports on their handful of unpaid for HuaWei exchanges? Seems to be a case of the blind leading the blind.
If iPrimus can't get an email and other hosting services back up for however many tiny ISPs they are currently inconveniencing it beggars imagination to think that a rag, tag and bobtail operation such as Eftel's (itself a kluge of half a dozen financially failed tiny ISPs) that its last five annual reports demonstrate it to be, can provide "wholesale ISP services".
So it's fitting that on the anniversary of Darwin's birthday, a reminder that only the fittest survive, that there are at least two slightly larger companies doing their best to wipe out a larger number of tiny companies - talk about the triumph of hope over experience.
I ponder Exetel's future when I read such nonsenses. Well, that's not strictly true as I tend to think about Exetel's future all of my waking hours so I probably should have said that when I read about the Valley closures and 'announcements' such as the one I referenced from Eftel I think through what implications there are for Exetel - if any.
The only thing that crossed my mind when I read the Eftel announcement was what was happening within PIPE? A quick check of their last annual report shows Warwick Pye listed as a senior manager within that company on a remuneration package of around $A350,000 (including the bonus component of $A150,000 all or some of all which he may not have earned). Now PIPE is a supplier to Exetel, with a respectable background, a decent market capitalisation (though admittedly, not as good as a year ago) and, given that their cable investment pays off, an interesting future. Eftel, on the other hand, is a penny dreadful with no money and no future and a group of 'managers' who, at the wildest stretch of kindness, have no background in the industry or any serious qualifications to operate a technology company.
So it made me wonder what happened to Mr Pye at PIPE to make Eftel look like a sensible career move (was it a simple 'didn't reach sales targets' parting of the ways)? Which lead me to further consider the reverse scenario as to whether it was a question of Mr Pye, knowing what was happening at PIPE, saw bailing out to a 'teetering on the brink' (according to its last two annual reports) dog's breakfast of an organisation (if that's the appropriate word) like Eftel was a sensible 'career move'?
Darwin's birthday seems to bring such considerations to my mind each year and I make a note in next year's calendar to check that Exetel is still in existence and is still obeying all of the precepts of business survival which, as far as I can see, it is still doing even in this toughest of all years in which survival is going to be harder than ever.
Without being pointlessly pessimistic I think it's going to be a year where 'survival' may well be counted as a success and if any commercial entity was able to grow, even a little, then that could be counted as being very satisfactory. I suppose that means that Exetel's plans to grow at a more rapid rate than in previous years is not very sensible - but, so far, that remains our objective.
Where did I put my "what really killed the dinosaurs coffee mug"?