The new Frogfoot office is taking shape. It’s actually rather peaceful there at the moment. Nice high ceilings in these old buildings.

I think the drive from Gardens to the new office is a bit shorter and I have under cover parking again. The Waverley business park is very different to our previous office. Much more of a community feel to it with lots of small businesses around. I’ve discovered a nice lunch spot (a 1min walk away). Lots of smokers manning every exit sadly, but I guess that’s a general trend.

Discovered a few geeky tshirts we made a long time ago in the process of moving.

I visited the Frogfoot datacentre in Great Westerford yesterday to see if we can host a cabinet or two as an interim solution for Teraco customers. It’s scary how long its been since my last visit.. months. The joys of remote admin and a stable OS I guess.

The DC (aka Frogtown) is rather impressive. Pretty much full. Nice to see how it’s grown from humble beginnings in 2002 when Abz and I built it, painting and cabling over weekends and a few late nights.

End of an era. New beginnings. Now all I have to do is find a new place to live from Sept onwards and most of the big changes will be complete. Change can be scary, but as they say.. can also be as good as a holiday.

..things I write which I kinda know only friends read. Yes, it’s a bit sad, especially when I assume they read these posts.. I skip the “how was your week” stuff in conversations and move along to the “what does it all mean” parts.

• Monday, had lunch at Rhodes Memorial with Jonathan and visited the the Old Cape Town Zoo.
• Turns out Mia had chickenpox over the weekend, at least the worst was over by Tuesday. She’s a tuffy.
• Amobia’s touch rugby team, won 10 - 4 in the final.
• Turns out I’m a hero (implicitly), maybe I’ll get myself a “single dad” tshirt.
• Tuesday, Lions Head. Put on my (mildly gay) long running tights and went for a run along the table mountain cable car road. Had sushi. Watched Get Smart. Nice movie, had a few good laughs.. man, Anne Hathaway is hot.
• Wednesday, Frogfoot office move.
• The VANS self provisioning case was heard in court 29th-31st.
• Watched The Dark Knight. I enjoyed it. It’s a bit more James Bond than Kung Fu like the the previous one was.. and the penthouse was a bit more American Psycho, but I still like Batman Returns. Inspired me to wear my Vivienne Westwood shirt the next day.
• Thursday, Web Africa brand launch at Relish and GeekDinner at De Capo with Cath. Met an interesting tailor who made suits for a number of presidents. Now I know where Fabiani sent my jackets.
• Met Charl and Jade at the GeekDinner. Big thanks to Perdeberg wines for their GeekDinner sponsorship.
• Friday, blogging. Gym.. trust me, newby parents need strong lower backs to keep up with a 2yr olds. Mia. Tea with the ~ex-wife at Manna. We’re working on being friends. Like the Joker said in The Dark Knight.. I was “like a dog chasing a car.. wouldn’t know what to do with it if I finally caught it.”
• Saturday, watched parts of Babe for the 14th time. Stellenbosch Wine Festival with Georg and Mia. Long, busy, crazy day. Bumped into Max.
• I love Vanilla Tea and honey on a laid back Sunday morning.
• Glen Beach for a bit of sunshine and a few photos. Maybe I’ll see you at Fandango for some jazz at 20:00.

Thought for the week..
“the real breakfast of champions is a low information diet”

Big changes all around. Frogfoot moved offices and announced the sale and migration of its consumer client base this week.

You can read the official announcement and story here.. but I figured I’d share some unofficial and personal thoughts.

Brief history

We started Frogfoot in July 2000 with a simple business model. Internet services for businesses. The two founders were both working full time jobs at the time so it made sense to have a niche operation. Frogfoot was the reason we could play with new and interesting toys and tinker with open source software. It was all good fun.

Four years later we moved into our first office space. Frogfoot became our full time gig… a day job. We hired a number of people. Let’s call this Frogfoot 2.0. We started diversifying and growing the consumer side of the business.

This week, eight years later we moved into our second office space and we are making a fresh start, in some ways going back to a very similar point from where we started. Frogfoot 3.0. Back to basics, lean and mean.

A few changes

• No more software development
• No more Stellenbosch office
• Staff numbers went from 20ish recently to 6 people
• Client numbers went from 1000+ to the 100 range

A few observations.. wisdom and perfect hindsight

• Focus. Don’t get side tracked. It’s often hard to walk away and say no but it’s a very useful discipline to master. If you come across a new cool idea.. ask yourself if the idea is good enough to be a business on its own, then start a new focused business.
• The 80/20 Rule. If you know 80% of your profit is coming from 20% of your customers and the other 80% use up most of your time.. find a way to work with the clients you want to work with.
• The call centre model sucks. It’s a back breaking endless war zone. The best support is no support. The only way to provide mass market support is to have fully automated self-help systems and smart customers who know how to use them. Call centres and support help desks are an HR nightmare. You really have to have the personality for it. Personally I think all call centres are doomed.
• Make sure you have solid business foundations. Make real profit.. 20%+ or walk away. If the industry starts selling the same commodity service you sell below cost.. drop it and run, as fast as you can.
• Do the stuff you are good at. Don’t play catch-up.
• Don’t work harder, work smarter. Your time is worth more.
• Finding the right people is hard. Keeping people motivated, who are not naturally self motivated is even harder. People like stability and predictability. Keeping them motivated in an uncertain environment is painful.
• Internal communication is very important.
• Some personalities just don’t work well for managing people.
• Pride only hurts. Make rational decisions. Place your bets and stick with them.
• Decision making is the ultimate power. I remember driving in a taxi in Barcelona. We suspected we were going the wrong way. The meter is ticking. There is a major language barrier. Do you go along for the ride or do you cut your losses and say “take me back to the start”?
• Option paralysis and Occam’s razor. The simple answer is usually the right answer, not making a decision is always the wrong answer.
• Walk away from sunk costs. Especially software development costs. The software development game is messy. It’s like patching a broken fishbowl while driving on a dirt road. The more silicone gel you use the less you can see the goldfish. Avoid software development if you can.
• Don’t count your chickens… At some point I figured it’s a bit depressing growing a business for 8 years, yet finding myself sucked in more and more and not being able put a price tag on it that motivated 8 years of efforts. What I realised is that Frogfoot was an excellent learning environment. A stepping stone. Frogfoot gave us the skills, experience, time and flexibility to start a number of other ventures.. and if I add all that up, I’m more than happy with my 8 years of effort.

That turned out to be a longer list than the quick brain dump I had in mind.

See you on the flip side kids.
Rock ‘n Roll.

If you were wondering why this blog was unavailable yesterday.. Frogfoot moved offices.

I should really make an effort to move my website(s) off my desktop PC to a server in the datacentre.

Pics are at the usual place. It’s all a bit messy here at the moment.

I have not been blogging much lately. Go figure. Weekly news summary as usual..

• I entered Amobia in a venture fund competition. Should have some feedback by mid July.
• Added a Crackbook page for Amobia.
• Watched Zeitgeist, 40 Year Old Virgin and Oceans Eleven.
• We had a Frogfoot company photo taken for 2008. Pics at the usual place.
• Completed the Extreme Networks ECSP training course.
• Made a fact sheet for WAPA.
• Walked up Lions Head three times this week. Helps me think.
• I’m getting back into a swimming routine. Helps me think.
• Friday, made a new friend by apologising to an old friend. We avoided each other for the last 3 years.
• Removed two ~nasty blog posts.
• I brewed up Joe’s famous thai green curry on Friday evening. Nice to cook.
• Visited Wellington on Saturday afternoon.
• Anton is in ZA for a week. Had a nice dinner with friends at the Fishmonger followed by drinks at the Akker.
• Saturday and Sunday was Mia time. We watched Babe today. Sweet movie.

News from planet Joe:

• Teraco now has a commitment for 2/3 of required funding
• Entered Amobia in a business idea competition of sorts, should have some feedback by mid July
• Updated the SwimGeek front page
• Friday, went for a walk with Mia on a strawberry farm
• Saturday, gym, swim, food, family, fun and friends
• Sunday, Fathers Day was a complete mess, I was a complete mess
• Ever see people you know are on your Facebook friends list but you can’t remember their names? It’s happened twice now.
• Persuaded the admin of the en_ZA locale settings to use 24:00 time format and make weeks start on Mondays. The power of open source. If a small thing bugs you it can be fixed quickly.
• I’ve taken an interest in peering (internet exchanges) again after the JINX workshop. Busy tinkering with a few ideas.
• Added a Facebook page for Frogfoot
• I registered for this year’s iWeek conference. I’ve been invited to be part of a wireless panel discussion on the Thursday (wireless day).
• Weekend movies:
  • Elf: Good
  • Sex and the City: Not that bad
  • Hot Fuzz: Classic

Have a fun 4 day week. I can see I’ll need to be applying some selective amnesia jedi mind tricks.

The brief history of Amobia..

Before Amobia was founded

Early in 2002 David Jarvis contacted Joe after finding his personal homepage, looking for Linux geeks to help him build a wireless network in Cape Town. It sounded like a fun challenge, so Frogfoot started doing consulting work for Uninet.

We did network design, routing, QoS, proxy servers, VSAT configs for DVB decoder cards, weird and wonderful asymmetric source routing hacks, some Mikrotik configs, BGP routing etc.

David had just returned from Mozambique where he had built a similar network. This was an interesting time for outdoor wireless networks in South Africa because of the regulatory challenges and questions about the legality of building wireless network infrastructure. It was not even legal to use VoIP back then. A group called Megawan had attempted building wireless networks before and were shut down by the telecoms regulator. In many ways this was the wireless wild west and we knew a few of the cowboys.

We liked the new wireless toys, it was interesting technology and using it was legal in most parts of the civilised world. It was easy to argue that using it was “for the common good”.. and best of all, there was demand, which provided rapid growth opportunities. People were not happy with the incumbent monopoly telco and ADSL services were expensive.

Uninet was routing most of its outgoing and local traffic via Frogfoot’s network at the time and using a big VSAT dish for incoming international traffic. Frogfoot built a Linux QoS server for Uninet. This allowed Uninet to offer always on, rate based internet access at a good price.. an attractive value proposition.

We saw the whole evolution of outdoor wifi.. from PCMCIA cards in Windows PCs (crazy as it may seem) with long antenna cable runs, then simple (dumb) bridge devices, PPPoE, 2.4Ghz 802.11b, then the first wireless CPE routers, followed by 5.8Ghz 802.11a and eventually custom (managed) CPEs. (Customer Premises Equipment).

Frogfoot developed an embedded Linux CPE operating system, which later became the Blio CPE software.

We were happy to be the geeks in the background. David was a true pioneer.

A possible merger, Amobia version 0.1

In late 2004 it was announced that the legal landscape would change. VANS would be allowed to use VoIP as of 1 February 2005 and there were strong indications that VANS would be allowed to build their own networks. Actually I think it was announced that VANS could self provide at that point, but ICASA and the DoC seemed happy to maintain a state of uncertainty.

We started talking about a Frogfoot and Uninet merger. There was talk of using the Amobia brand for the new company. We never managed to make this idea work. Maybe the two company cultures just did not match.

The Amobia Brand

Joe came up with the Amobia name. It has a reference to the amoeba cell based organism. This was the third swimming animal brand… frogs, moon jellies and amoebae.

The Amobia logo was created by a designer we hired at the time.

The mustard yellow, black and burgundy red company colours were inspired by Joe’s favourite wine at the time: Waterford Kevin Arnold Shiraz 2002/2003.

Amobia Communications (Pty) Ltd. was registered in 2003.

Amobia version 1.0

After the Uninet merger idea did not work out.. we parted ways in a spirit of friendly competition. A few months went by and we found ourselves past the Feb 2005 date.

We wanted to build a wireless network to leapfrog the existing wireless providers with a “greenfields” deployment. Do it right, from the start. All 5.8Ghz, no legacy 2.4Ghz equipment.. fully redundant routing, dual backbone routers per site, a 3 layer network with a private IP network for management and a secure VPN layer. No PPPoE. A portal to manage configuration and field-upgradable CPE software. Simple.

“..there has been no case in history where the pioneer became the dominant producer, whether you are talking about a business or a science. The most successful innovators are the creative imitators, the Number Two.”

Frogfoot had the knowledge to design and manage networks, but let’s face it.. we were geeks with skinny touch typing wrists. We needed some muscle on the ground to physically build wireless networks. At one point we tried tracking down an old spearfishing contact, then a paratrooper turned sysadmin.

We started talking to one of Frogfoot’s oldest clients about the idea: Cape PC Services. They were interested. We had a meeting and we started building the new company. It was a simple 50/50 deal.. over a handshake you could say.

Frogfoot would contribute, existing knowledge, management systems, design, marketing, sales and support. CPCS would contribute, network deployment, installation team management, billing and operational things.

We connected our first client in Nov 2005.

Early on we had the vision that wireless is not perfect and it’s hard to get right, but we would engineer systems around the technology to make it work. A wireless network fit for the the African continent.

Fast forward

Amobia received a VANS license. In 2006 a letter from ICASA made 15 wireless providers form WAPA. Amobia and WAPA found a super hero lawyer: Dominic Cull. Amobia connected 100 schools for the SchoolWAN project. We managed to attract a number of big corporate businesses as clients, mostly through our “can do” problem solving attitude. Amobia’s franchise model was a success. Amobia was included in the Individual ECNS license conversion process and we had some fun writing an 80+ page business plan in 5 days. WAPA and Amobia initiated high court legal action asking for a declaratory order on the rights of VANS to self-provide network infrastructure. Amobia now has infrastructure in Gauteng, Western Cape, Eastern Cape and Northern Province. We’re about to launch a wifi hotspot service as our “last yard” distribution model.

Our next major challenges are to get an ECNS license, maybe raise some money and grow the franchise business.

It’s not easy running a telecommunications infrastructure business in South Africa, but it’s very rewarding watching it grow and seeing the impact it can have.

Rock ‘n Roll.

Snapshot from the life of Joe..

• Today: Had a chill Sunday. Went for a walk around Mouille Point. Ended up in Caffe Neo and stuffed myself with a very nice salad selection. I updated the WAPA website. I discovered the best things since sliced bread.. raisin and cinnamon sliced bread. It’s like a big hot cross bun. Yummy.
• Yesterday: Spent time with The Mia. Took her along to gym for the first time. She can bench 80kg.. no, not really.. but she liked the kids play area. Ended up in Somerset West for a friend’s going-away drinks session. One more person going to London. I generally think Somerset West is pretty lame.. “it’s like a wax museum with a pulse”, but Henry’s is not a bad bar.
• Last week I had some fun getting articles about Frogfoot, Amobia and WAPA published. I attended an ISPA meeting and a WAPA committee meeting. Had an Interesnting meeting with a metro-wifi equipment vendor. With a bit of luck we’ll be doing a fairly large scale wifi hotspot pilot project soon. The metro-wifi kit uses some phased beam array antenna technology… getting new toys soon.
• Dr. Strangelove announced he is getting married, in the Cape Town area, in October.
• I’ve come to realise that a large percentage of the world’s popular music is about romantic relationships that ended.
• Had a relaxed lunch at Neetlingshof last week. It’s a nice Sunday lunch spot.
• This coming week we have the next WordPress Cape Town Meetup and the May GeekDinner. I still need to prepare two talks.
• Then, this coming Friday I have a “leaving Stellenbosch” party. Seems my last good reason to gallivant around Stellenbosch is moving to Cape Town. End of an era.

Have a fun week.

An article about Frogfoot’s Hotspot business..

Make bucks off your broadband

The brief history of Blio..

Abz and Joe, had this idea to develop a security hardened operating system somewhere in 1999. We also had an interest in embedded systems and gadgets in general.

Early in 2001 we founded a company called the Blio Corporation (Pty) Ltd. We ran this in parallel with Frogfoot, with the idea to use Blio as a platform to launch products based on the IP developed inside Frogfoot.

Joe came up with the name and logo, which was inspired by the moonjellies in the Two Oceans Aquarium (Cape Town),

Abz’s had a strong background in writing device drivers and working on electronics projects. Joe was interested in management systems for network appliances.

Blio developed an Outdoor Fixed Wireless CPE (customer premises equipment) operating system. Basically a custom Linux system to run on small routers. Abz build the backend. Joe built the font-end. The biggest advantage of this system was to make CPE units field-upgradeable.

This CPE OS later evolved into the software used on Amobia’s network today.

In partnership with Mark (from CLUG) we developed and sold a cost effective 2U rackmount server casing. Frogfoot and Amobia has many of these casings in production environments.

We also developed a Bandwidth Manager (QoS device), but never fully completed the project.

In the process of building the CPE and the QoS devices we started building a unified web based management system framework used across all our products. This user interface is also used for our PBX.

Around 2005, Blio changed it’s focus towards the emerging VoIP market and started building an IP PBX for the small and medium business market. The idea was to run Asterisk on a low power embedded device with no moving parts. At this point Blio took on more shareholders. We became 5 directors.

Nelius and Gerhard have a strong electronic engineering background and we knew them from Stellenbosch days. Thomas has a long history in building PBX systems and developing software for embedded systems. We knew Thomas through the Cape Linux User Group.

Hardware development happens en Stellenbosch. Software development, marketing and sales run from Cape Town.

Where are we now?

We completed the first IP PBX product and we are close to completing all the required tests for ICASA certification. We have some plans to build derivative models, with PRI interfaces and maybe an entry level model with less analog ports. We are actively seeking distribution channels and integration partners for the PBX.

The CPE OS is moving forward. Amobia, which in the past only provided “last mile” services, is now creating a wider distribution network using Wifi hotspots. Let’s call this a “last yard” service. The new hotspot integrated CPE will be deployed soon.

Sticking with my theme of the week about stories, I figured I’ll do my first series of blog posts. It should be a 6 part series.

1. The story of Frogfoot
2. The story of Blio
3. The story of Amobia
4. The story of Teraco
5. The story of how and why we are working with Extreme Networks
6. The story of the Frogspot

The first one is easy, since I already wrote it a few weeks ago when we built the new Frogfoot website:

• The Frogfoot Story
• Frogfoot’s Company Values

Boiler? Yeah, until recently I also did not know what a boiler plate was. It’s PR lingo.

A boiler plate is a paragraph that describes a company and its products and gets included at the bottom of press releases. The idea is to capture the key attributes of a company. It’s like a poem about a business.

I’m busy refining some boiler plates.. what would you say are the most relevant ideas to include?

Frogfoot:

Frogfoot Networks is an independent technology company providing innovative internet services and open source solutions. Frogfoot’s service offering includes: Wifi Hotpots, ADSL, Linux Virtual Servers, VPNs and Web Hosting. Frogfoot was founded in 2000 and is based in Newlands, Cape Town.

More info:
www.frogfoot.com
0860 KERMIT

Amobia:

Amobia Communications, founded in 2005, is an independent network infrastructure provider. Amobia builds outdoor fixed wireless access networks. Amobia’s focus is on corporate branch connectivity solutions and high speed point to point links. Consumer services include cost effective wireless broadband internet access and wifi hotspots.

More info:
www.amobia.com
0861 AMOBIA

Blio:

The Blio Corporation, founded in 2005, designs embedded systems and builds cost effective, scalable and dependable solutions for the next generation converged public network. Blio offers innovative IP PBX telephony solutions and platforms for internet service delivery.

More info:
www.blio.com

Teraco:

Teraco Data Environments, founded in 2007, is an independent datacentre infrastructure provider and the first company in South Africa to offer vendor-neutral colocation facilities. Teraco is focused on building high quality datacentres for corporate businesses, carriers and internet service providers. Teraco’s business model creates a network value effect by building open and competitive environments where the cost of interconnection tends to zero.

More info:
www.teraco.co.za
0860 TERACO

WAPA:

The Wireless Access Providers’ Association (WAPA), established in 2006, is a non-profit industry representative body acting as a collective voice for outdoor fixed wireless operators in South Africa. WAPA’s primary objective is to ensure the sustainability of the wireless access services market. WAPA is positioned to be an interface between government, it’s membership and consumers and promotes self-regulation of the industry.

More info:
www.wapa.org.za