Bricks and mortars attracted
IBM and Venture Capitalist partners Technology Venture Partners (TVP) have already noticed the scheme is attracting bricks and mortar companies keen to get online and series entrepreneurs. -Before they were trying to see what would make them different from all the other entrepreneurs, now they (serial entrepreneurs) are getting noticed," Philip Wing of TVP said.
The 'correction', as the NetGen people like to describe this year's dot-com crashes, has created a breed of entrepreneurs who would like to start having another go, and NetGen does not rule them out of participating in the scheme. -We would look for the reflective capacity in the entrepreneur and that they can sit back and analyse," Wing said.
Cynics could suggest that IBM is merely jumping into this new form of business to shore up flagging hardware sales, especially in the light of profit warnings from Apple, Intel and Motorola, but IBM claim they have noticed no downturn. -We don't see a slow down of the hardware market. There has been a significant growth in hosting, storage and networking equipment," they said. The company also points out that there is significant investment in data centres in Australia.
-There are still a lot of funds still flowing in for technology investments. The correction has not changed that," Philip Wing said, indicating, perhaps, that the downturn is not as bad as some suggest. -Australia is a sophisticated market for proving models and concepts," he added.
itiatives as this can only indicate to detractors that the Internet is still a serious industry sector, and one that is important to Australia, -We see a lot of development and ideas coming out of Australia. Companies such as IBM have realised that they can not do it themselves, especially in new markets," Hreszczuk said.
