 Chris Goh's "On the Net"
I recently wrote about Telstra's ADSL service in Lismore. I should add that when I visited the Telstra Bigpond shop, they were extremely friendly and helpful.
It's easy to bag an organisation about its performance, especially when there are high expectations – primarily driven by Telstra, which is the only carrier offering broadband services in the region. And I'm well aware of talk of litigation by consumers, especially the Australian Telecommunications Users Group, over Telstra's failure to live up to what it promised with ADSL. But I'd like to suggest some reasons why the problems occurred, in an effort to provide a better understanding for all.
Like many other organisations, Telstra has suffered because of a lack of management experience in understanding the resources and testing required to ensure that their fundamental business models aren't compromised when they're starry-eyed and off pursuing lucrative new technologies. Look at Ansett, which has the best online ticketing services of any airline in Australia. It focused on innovation and everything elsewas second fiddle until bits started falling off the planes.
An organisation isn't that different to an individual. Like one person, it faces limited resources and limited time, and a need to prioritise how they're expended to achieve goals.
The current economic outlook, the sometimes wrong belief in economies of scale (getting bigger doesn't always mean getting better) and ever-changing technology have all created a volatile business environment.
The Tech stock crash only gave us a glimmer of what was actually happening in normal organisations. Investments were made, not for a potential return of investment, or to improve the organisational structure, or even to assist in supporting core businesses. Profit-equity ratios went out the window for fashion and many CEOs were lured onto the rocks by an IT Lorelei who was telling them the age old story of keeping up with the Joneses. While positioning yourself relative to your competition is not bad, it nevertheless led to strange behaviour, like rationalism to accommodate IT consultancies that were charging like wounded bulls (remember the Y2K binge?).
Along the way, business forgot a fundamental rule – look after your core business. One.Tel is another example – heaps of cutting edge technology, but the failed billing system was inadequate. (An ex-Telstra billing specialist came in to fix things, but too late). One.Tel had an infrastructure from Lucent Techonologies, with the most modern switchings, that was more than a match for any Tier One provider, but One.Tel forgot how the bills get paid.
Anyone who's watched the economic rationalism that went through Telstra over the last decade knew that what happened most of the time was that the highly valued employees took their redundancy, then went off to make more money on the open market. The sad part for Telstra is that it decided to roll out ADSL – a new technology – having lost a good slab of its technical corporate knowledge and seemingly without the proper quality assurance processes. All for what? To become the dominant ADSL provider in Australia. Yet the recent negative press led Telstra to stop any new rollout of ADSL services. And that was preceeded by a civil class action from a Sydney lawyer who placed a $10,000 ad – partly paid for by unhappy customers – in national newspapers seeking others to take on Telstra.
What ambitious business leaders haven't taken heed of is that in E-Business, business actually comes before the E (maybe my Chinese heritage, which taught me to read backwards, helps me understand this better). Technological innovation reflects your business processes, and if they're not up to scratch any shortcomings will become obvious, if not amplified. Technology does not establish your business needs, it's the business requirements that will determine the technology you need.
It's a lesson many need to learn.
HotNews
Mac fans are even more jubilant at the release of the first version enhancement of OSX 10.1, which offers considerable speed increases, plus improved stability and more elegant functionality.
In the NSW parliament's latest fiasco, it alleged that the son of a government MP has been hacking into the files of the Opposition to steal secret strategy documents. The Labor MP behind the problem, Tony Kelly, says he's not very computer literate – despite the fact that he taught computer studies. It's odd they don't do an audit on security on the system, but on the people who use the system. If there were a decent hacker among the politicians, then the Federal government's Internet legislation wouldn't be so hilariously funny.
Hotsites
www.dubit.co.uk
This Flash site has to be seen to be believed, especially by anyone who loves IRC and virtual worlds where you can chat. This Flash sites allows you to explore a city with others and has taken Flash to a whole new level of interactivity. Check it out.
www.take40.com/
Take 40.com would probably be familiar to music buffs – especially older ones who remember Kasey Casen. The site isn't that full of content, but it does allow fans to have fun at getting to know their favourite stars and see what is going on. It's pretty and well-designed, but may be a bit slow for some.
www.intel.com/cure/
You've heard of SETI, which uses spare time on your PC to analyse incoming radio waves for signs of ET. Now Intel, in collaboration with the US National Cancer Foundation, has created a similar program for your PC to help scientist process possible cancer cures. The snapshots are great and you can look like a really cool scientist. :-)
|
