The Press has not been kind to M-Web in the past. The company is like the AOL of SA - big and corporate. M-Web also made itself an easier target by reporting some shocking losses while it was still listed on the JSE.
This last week, however, saw M-Web make us eat our words. Its handling of the potential traffic congestion that its Idols site could cause shows a level of maturity not often seen in the IT industry. By gathering its competitors around the table and discussing how to architect the hosting and delivery of the site`s content, M-Web took a bold step that defies conventional South African IT business mentality.
South African IT is alarmingly immature in its attitude to business.
Jason Norwood-Young, technology editor, ITWeb
It`s kind of like Microsoft calling Novell to a meeting to discuss which strategy would most benefit the end-user, or AMD and Intel having a powwow to ensure the customer profits from their individual strategies.
There has always been some sense of cooperation between Internet service providers in SA, but usually it is split into two camps. On the one side, there is the Internet Service Providers` Association (ISPA), and on the other, Telkom`s South African Internet Exchange (SAIX) and UUNet. Cooperation could happen within these two groups, but heaven forbid anyone should cross the fence.
Well, M-Web did cross the fence, with M-Net absorbing the cost of a dedicated pipe between UUNet and JINX for Idols traffic. The discussions beforehand certainly underpin a new type of business logic - we can help our competitors, and they can help us.
Growing up
The term "co-opertition" has been around for some time now, and is put into practice by some of the larger IT firms, the most notable being the competition/cooperation between IBM and Sun. IBM is Sun`s biggest partner, and also its biggest competitor. It`s a strategy that has been proven to work for these companies. I just never thought I`d see the day when it would be implemented on our shores.
South African IT is alarmingly immature in its attitude to business. The whole lot of them often remind me of screaming kids determined to have the last piece of cake. It makes for a lot of amusing scandal, but hardly represents the cold, hard, logical concept of business. Companies get deals and lose them based on personal relationships rather than their ability to deliver; mudslinging is a national sport; and backstabbing your competitor just for the fun of it is accepted business practice.
M-Web has proven that you don`t need to act like a snotty-nosed four-year-old. It gets the benefit of its site running faster and better to all of its potential viewers, while the rest of the ISPs know that the traffic-generation is not going to affect their business. Everyone wins. What a novel concept.
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