Re: Proposed Management Team for the UIXP

["Hans U. Haerdtle" <hansu@imul.com>]

Well, certainly a very noble idea from a technical point of view, but
practically I don't see this working. Building a skill base of engineers
and gaining expertise is certainly in any good and professionally run
company's very own interest and training will be provided to their
technical staff.

This is simply necessary in our industry because the most advanced
technology applied will give the respective company the competitive edge
in the market. And this is directly proportional to the company's
business success due to client appreciation of superior QoS standards and
delivery. Of course paired with marketing and sales efforts.

Let's be realistic: How do you address the issue of conflict of interest?
By nature of their work and involvement the 3 proposed rotating staff
members would need to have a considerable if not in-depth knowledge of
all the member ISP’s network concepts and architecture. This includes
company proprietary software at least to some extend plus even future
planned upgrades and introduction of new services. Introduced for the
very reason: to provide better performing and more advanced services to
their clients and to the industry and market as a whole - and gain market
shares! In a fair competition and respecting proper business ethics. And
this very competition is the driving force of any market improvement and
clients and the industry are the very beneficiaries of this.

Don't get me wrong: As a techie I am, this suggestion is certainly a
noble vision and I could support this within a University or Institute
environment or even between large industry participants who put high
level specialists together in a scientific research joint-venture for
reasons of cost and resource sharing. But all this are laboratory setups
with fundamental scientific research tasks still far away from practical
applications and never close to near-to-market-delivery solutions which
are already in the hands of the marketing managers keenly watching market
tendencies and deciding on tactical release dates.

The IXP is certainly a very useful institution but let's be honest: It is
in the first place a commercial issue and not an inter-networking or
technology challenge. This very knowledge is the skill base anyway of the
respective member company and a good part of its success in the market.
It is the commercial issue, which makes an IXP desirable because of the
possible cost saving element. Just like an interconnect arrangement
between telecom operators. For the ISP industry in Uganda this will be a
saving on relatively expensive international bandwidth, which is at this
moment still only available through expensive V-Sat links. Link
redundancy could be an additional feature provided that interconnect
capacity requirements are met and a commercial agreement is in
place.

Therefor the IXP is a commercial issue and a facilitation provision and
it has its operational costs for a professional setup and running.
Depending on the respective local interconnect traffic of a potential
member it is viable or not. Like any other business case. Otherwise even
now any two or more companies could go together and setup private
interconnectivity for cost saving or other resource sharing 
reasons.

Also additional data interconnect facilities could be offered by the IXP
for wider industry applications (WAN and VPN) or even regional
inter-networking could be proposed (if telecom operators are part of
this) with ultimately load balancing, resource sharing or link redundancy
features and benefits (i.e. Euroring). But this is certainly a different
scale and would require a complete different setup and approach in terms
of inter-networking architecture and commercial requirements.

In my view, the IXP has to be an independent and neutral commercial
entity, a service provider with an offer to the market to provide and
manage interconnect facilities and value added services with standard
connectivity interfaces and scaled link capacities.

Hans U. Haerdtle
General Manager
Infocom


At 09:04 PM 2/1/02 +0200, Badru Ntege wrote:
> Members please find below a suggested method
> of running the IXP.  This would
> help us build a good skill base of engineers and also enable
> professional
> networking between engineers from different companies and network
> providers.
>
>
> There will be Three People detailed to work at the UIXP.
>
> 1. Project Leader
> 2. Team member
> 3. Team Member.
>
> The Project leader will overall be responsible for the running of
> the
> UIXP. Ensuring that the UIXP is up and running at all times and will
> be
> the team leader.He will also be responsible for future planning at
> the
> IXP, preparing progress reports, billing of members, and attracting
> new
> members to using the IXP and enforcing the UIXP Acceptable Use
> Policy.
> He shall be employed on a 6 months - 1 year basis at which point 
> his
> contract can either be renewed or some other member takes up the
> role.
>
> The team members will be technical people from the participating
> entities
> who
> will rotate on a 3 month basis. These team members will still be full
> time
> employees at their repective places of work and will be doing part
> time
> work at the IXP. The IXP will pay them a small fee on top of what they
> get
> form their parent companies for the period that they work at the IXP.
> The
> team leader will also be an employee of one of the ISPs doing part time
> at
> his place of work.
>
> Thus at the end of three months, the two technical people go back to
> their
> respective places of work and another team of two from some other
> members
> take up work for the next three months. At the end of 1 year, the
> current
> team leader would either move back to his place of work, or his
> contract
> could be renewed for another 1 year period.
>
> IN case of the former, then one of the other technical people probably
> one
> who interned with the old team leader can take over as the next 
> team
> leader. The outgoing team leader is free and encouraged to apply to do
> a
> three month stint as just a team member if he so desires under the
> new
> team leader provided of course that his parent company is willing 
> to
> release him further.
>
> It is assumed that all these people remain on payroll at their
> parent
> companies and will work at the UIXP as part time people. it is
> estimated
> that to maintain 10 hours working time from say 8.00 a.m. to 6.00 p.m.
> 7
> days a week this would come down to 23 hours per person per week. On
> any
> one day of the week, one of the team is on call and can be called at
> any
> time in case of a failure at the UIXP.
>
> Emoluments for the team will be as follows:
>
> Team leader:   Ush. 480,000/=
> Team member 1: Ush. 190,000/=
> Team member 2: Ush. 190,000/=
>
> This on top of what their parent companies decide to pay them per
> month.
> It is up to the parent companies to decide whether they will adjust
> their employee's salaries during this period or not.
>
> This is done with a vision of creating a skilled and knowledgeable
> work
> force so as to enhance the industry. We believe the knowledge gained
> would
> be useful to the participants back in their parent companies.
>
>
>
> Badru Ntege
> General Manager
> Technical Director
> Sanyutel Ltd
> mob: +256 777 000 88
> Tel: +256 41 345 466
> =================================
> A network of People and Technology
> ==================================
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> empowered
> workforce)
>
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