Undoo Lands Former GeoCities Exec; Buy.com’s High (and Low) Marks
The future King of England has put his blessing on Costa Mesa-based FileNET Corp.’s bid to bring part of Britain’s past into the digital era.
The royal treatment came as a result of FileNET’s partnering with the Wessex Coppice Group to offer technology training to students in its UK Greenwood New Entrants Training Program. FileNET offers Web content management software and related electronic business applications.
Prince Charles officially launched the program on Nov. 20 at a ceremony at FileNET’s European Education Centre, located in the county of Hampshire, England.
UK Greenwood students are trained in the art of coppicing, an ancient craft where broadleaf greenwood trees, such as hazel, are trimmed to the stump to encourage the growth of stems or “poles.” The poles are used to make products such as hurdles, furniture and thatching spars. Woven hazel screens made using coppicing methods have been dated back to 5,000 B.C.
A FileNET-sponsored education center offers the students hands-on learning of the technology skills needed to market and distribute their handcrafted products worldwide using the Internet.
“In a world in which marketing is becoming ever more important, some element of business training is essential for anyone to succeed,” said the Prince at the program’s inauguration. “Wood craftsmen can all too easily get left behind. That’s why I am particularly pleased to launch this wonderful Greenwood initiative today, and, in that sense, FileNET deserve every possible congratulations for so readily offering their help to train the craftsmen in computer skills.”
FileNET CEO Lee Roberts told the gathered crowd, “FileNET appreciates and recognizes the immeasurable value of using modern technology to preserve ancient crafts.”
Ex-GeoCities Chief Joins Undoo
Irvine-based Undoo Technologies Inc. scored a coup when Steve Hansen joined the company in October as chief executive and a member of its board of directors.
Hansen was chief operating and financial officer of GeoCities, where he was responsible for business strategy, senior management, recruiting, operations and strategic management. Hansen helped lead the company through a $75 million private financing, an initial public offering and its eventual sale to Yahoo Inc. for $5 billion.
Undoo Technology offers data storage services from a network of global data centers with distributed systems and software. The start-up’s services currently are being offered for a limited, private beta program.
Undoo Technologies is funded by two Menlo Park-based venture capital firms, Benchmark Capital (an early backer of eBay Inc.) and CMGI@Ventures, the private venture capital affiliate of CMGI Inc.
Undoo “is a comer,” said Larry Stevenson, another early investor in Undoo and the founder of Newport Beach-based Newport Systems Solutions, which was sold in 1994 to Cisco Systems Inc. for stock then worth $90 million.
Buy.com’s Ups and Downs
It’s constantly one step forward and one step back for Aliso Viejo-based buy.com Inc.
On the positive side, Forrester Research Inc. of Cambridge, Mass., ranked buy.com as No. 1 in its PowerRankings of online electronic sellers, beating longtime leader and rival Amazon.com Inc. and others such as Best Buy Co. and Egghead.com.
The rankings combine survey data from online consumers and shopping tests. The survey cited buy.com’s low prices for both products and shipping, speedy buying process, online assistance and quick loading pages.
Forrester senior analyst Tom Rhinelander gave a backhanded compliment to buy.com: “While the shopping experience at buy.com continues to improve, its victory was no doubt aided by the deteriorating customer service at Amazon.com.”
Earlier this year, buy.com opened its Australian site, even though it hadn’t secured the buy.com.au domain name Down Under. On Nov. 20, buy.com announced it was closing its Australian Website, blaming it on a failure to find funding in Australia and a decision to allocate capital to its U.S. operations, where it’s the second largest electronic retailer, behind Amazon.
A US Bancorp Piper Jaffray analyst dryly noted buy.com’s “business model may not be as extensible as thought.”
The stock of the once-golden online retailer reached as high as 35 shortly after its public debut earlier this year and now is hovering around 1. (See related story, page 3)
QLogic Working With Compaq
Aliso Viejo-based QLogic Corp. announced it has signed a letter of intent with Compaq Computer Corp. to develop new host adapters that work with Compaq’s VersaStor software, which frees servers from worrying about the particulars of the various storage systems they communicate with. Together, the two companies plan to bring products to market next year.
SageTree announces deal
Irvine-based SageTree Inc., a subsidiary of Western Digital Corp. announced an agreement with MicroStrategy Inc., a provider of Intelligent E-Business software. According to the agreement, SageTree will bundle MicroStrategy’s business intelligence software into its SageQuest supply chain intelligence application.
