As I head into retirement, Kerry suggested I may want to share some of the key changes and milestones I have seen and experienced over four decades in the industry. It’s a tough ask as I have been privileged to see so much change – unbelievable advances in technology, applications, communications and collaborative working and been inspired by so many amazing people in the industry; friends, colleagues, competitors, vendors and customers.
I will start with Business World Computers, which subsequently become a franchise of Computerland USA. I have such vivid memories of Computerland, the fantastic staff I worked with and the loyal clients we enjoyed working and socialising with.
Specifically:
The client Xmas Parties
Client Ski Days
Client Golf Days
Staff offsite events.
We were fortunate enough to be able to offer clients the choice of Apple (Macintosh) and the IBM solution and it was with these two products the global PC revolution gained momentum.
IBM launched the PC. When the IBM PC hit the market in NZ in the early 80’s Apple had their Apple 2, but the IBM PC with PC DOS, Lotus 123, DBase2 and WordPerfect bundled with a dot matrix printer, was from my perspective, the first true PC business solution.
Hardware was king. Initially it was all about hardware, how much RAM a client required, what size hard disk, what graphics card, mono screen, 360K floppy disk drives - essentially these early IBM PC devices looked like system terminals. It was new exciting this new PC world of acronyms DOS commands. It wasn't long before Compaq computers hit the market with much improved and higher spec’d computers and file servers such as the SystemPro.
The Clone war started. PCs were in such demand, people wanted lower priced entry level models and clones quickly filled that gap and a war of attrition started and unfortunately IBM slowly lost market share and then the battle.
An Apple a day. I clearly remember when the Apple Macintosh hit the market with a huge fanfare, with its graphical interface, mouse pointing device, the LaserWriter Postscript printer and software application such as PageMaker it was one of the biggest transformational technologies I have experienced. The PC world embraced so much of the technology the Macintosh brought to the market.
From products to services. The big change in the late 90s was the move to services. To survive, the industry had to quickly move to professional services with e.g. Novell Network engineers in huge demand, service desks implemented, and support contracts put in place with clients. This transition was challenging for the industry but provided huge opportunities for young staff members to grow into new roles that were exciting challenging and generally well paid.
After 17 years with Computerland I moved to Vodafone
My Vodafone days
Mobile Coverage challenge. In the early days of Vodafone, Telecom had the best coverage, but CDMA limited their handsets. Vodafone had the cool handsets the best global network, GSM.
$10 txt Telecom announced $10 txt which was a huge success (all you can txt for just $10 month). Young people flocked to Telecom and dragged their parents (or kept their parents with Telecom) to stay connected to them. A very tough time for Vodafone!
The Blackberry revolution. The BlackBerry was the first workable mobile phone capable of sending and receiving email seamlessly. It was a global success, and its Canadian developer RIM saw massive sales. It was the height of coolness to own a Blackberry.
3G and the iPhone – The internet arrives on mobile devices. The first 12 months of 3G enabled coverage for us at Vodafone felt as if we had a mobile bandwidth solution without a problem or solution. And then the iPhone came along, and we had an answer. The iPhone brought the internet to the handset and needed 3G. The 3G network brought mobile data bandwidth – and the rest is history!
As I sign off and head to retirement, I feel I have barely scratched the surface, have missed so much out and not mentioned the amazing IT community in Christchurch including people such as Gil Simpson and the plethora of successful software companies and entrepreneurs I have had the pleasure to meet. To all those people, I wish them the very best for the future.
Regards
Paul