An interesting article about the biggest mistakes in high tech deal making – including key players such as:
as well as some hot moves by Google and Microsoft.
Deals are often passed over through poor timing, lack of insight as to the potential of an opportunity or just sheer dislike of the people making the offer. Even the best fall hard when looking back with 20/20 hindsight. Read the full article
Many telecom Xtramail users can attest to the frustration of being trapped by Telecoms disastrous YahooXtra “Bubble” outsourcing exercise.
The Bubble, floated last August as a joint venture between Yahoo Australia and Telecom, failed to deliver the ’suite of premium services’ offerred, and instead has left both consumer and SME customers looking for answers.
Yahoo!Xtra Bubble aimed to be a “compelling differentiator”, and it certainly achieved that, but unfortunately for Telecom, it was not quite in the direction it hoped for the 600,000 Telecom internet subscribers moved from the Xtra email platform to a Yahoo hosted service.
It is always grafitfying when a large company such as Telecom is big enough to admit its mistake at aiming the new service at small business users. And even better when it comes up with a solution. That solution can be expected some time in the next two months.
With broadband and ISP services key to future growth, I rather suspect Telecom will think twice before outsourcing such a strategic service in the future. Sadly, such experiences do not bode well for the technology industry as a whole, as SaaS services are once again attempting to gain a foothold on the market. In this case, Telecom was the customer, and the vendor Yahoo let them down badly – Xtra has had no control over its email service. I can only hope that for both Telecom and its customers, the next provider has a more robust offering.