This was a week in which the Republic took a significant step back and a smallish but meaningful step forward in its attempt to create an e-commerce profile for itself. The sudden and stunning resignation of American Mr Brian Thompson as the chairman of Telecom Eireann is a serious blow to the State's potential profile internationally as an e-commerce site. While much analysis of the implications of Mr Thompson's departure has focused on the impact it could have on Telecom's upcoming flotation, real damage was inflicted on something far less tangible.
Mr Thompson brought with him not just estimable experience and expertise in the telecommunications sector but the ability, because of those attributes, to heighten interest and a sense of expectation in those who might be considering an investment or involvement here. His contacts throughout the industry were undoubtedly significant as well - the people who make the decisions on where to locate, invest, employ.
A chairman of such global profile was a walking, talking endorsement of the Republic's high technology achievements and potential. The Government understood this well and there was a clear sense of deserved self-satisfaction in Government quarters that he had taken the position.
His loss is unlikely to affect the flotation of a company which will certainly be seen down the line as a lucrative acquisition as the international trend towards telecommunications market
consolidations takes off in Europe. But it must be a source of some despair to those in Government and elsewhere who saw his appointment as offering fast-lane access to the deeply-desired goal of becoming an e-commerce hub.
But the day after Mr Thompson's resignation came an announcement with relevance to e-commerce growth as well. EMC Corporation, one of the leading international companies which provides other companies with facilities for storing computer data, and Viking Office Products, a subsidiary of the office supply giant, Office Depot, announced that Viking had become the first major company to opt for the Republic as a virtual headquarters for online transactions, using EMC's new "Internet server farm" in Ovens, Co Cork.
The server farm, which utilises two 2MB fibreoptic Internet lines leased from Telecom Eireann, is a facility that provides space on the muscular computers used to house websites as well as offering a range of complementary services (those things technology companies like to term "solutions" and "strategies"). EMC - which Business Week this week ranked number five in its list of the 50 best-performing companies of the Standard & Poor's 500 index - intends to offer companies a comprehensive Internet presence in Europe. The pleasures of virtual operations mean Ovens is just as appropriate as Dublin or Paris or Rome for such a business.
But it was clearly the Republic that offered the enticements to locate here, says Mr Sean Clough, Viking's vice-president of marketing. And it wasn't just tax incentives. "Ireland was the one country which really seemed interested in what we were doing," he says. "England didn't care. The French certainly didn't care. But Ireland has a vision." In other words, he emphasised, it's the only European country which seems to have a clue about ecommerce.
Although only a handful of Viking people are here now, over the coming year Mr Clough believes the company will eventually employ 25 to 30 as it centralises its European marketing, sales and administration in the Republic.
The Irish-based website, located at www.vikingdirect.co.uk, will handle Viking's British sales. Mr Clough says that the traffic and use of the site in its first two weeks has so completely surpassed their expectations that they will hasten the rollout of sites for other European countries, also to be based at EMC's Cork facility. Viking achieved $1.5 billion (€1.38 billion) in sales last year, of which 66 per cent were to customers outside the US. That gives some sense of the prospective scale of its Web operations.
EMC certainly should have the profile to attract a wide range of e-commerce oriented companies to its hosting site in Cork. If it, and other similar facilities succeed, the Republic will have taken an important step in creating a welcoming and viable environment for the development of e-commerce.
Such prospects underline yet again the urgent need to consider just how technology and the increasing move towards digitisation will affect Irish society. As this column has argued before, there is an overriding need for the establishment of a group or groups, independent of government and industry influence, to serve as a public watchdog and encourage public discourse on the potential and problems of information technology.
The Pathfinder Project is a privately sponsored initiative to bring people together to discuss, as its organisers explain "how the potential of information technology can be more effectively utilised for social and economic progress and the policy and strategic issues that emerge". They want "to raise public, institutional and corporate consciousness". One of the project's key goals is to help facilitate the establishment of a watchdog group.
In order to do this, it is holding a seminar next Wednesday at the Davenport Hotel in Dublin which features several speakers. It hopes the seminar will help start a discussion which can continue over the project's website (http://pathfinder.exselan.ie). Further information is available on the site.
Karlin Lillington is one of the speakers at the Pathfinder seminar.
