2degrees boss fronts on website glitches; names names

[UPDATE Aug 19: Mr Hertz has just sent the following statement:

"While you know that I do take full responsibility for the difficulties that we are experiencing, I also mentioned a vendor/supplier of one component of a larger highly interdependent systems architecture, Yamaha.

"In fact, I have come to more completely understand, Yamaha has been an extremely valuable partner in sorting out the solutions.

"Yamaha was invited into the 2degrees project very late in the game to help us resolve issues that occurred earlier in the project from work done by another supplier, no longer involved. In the relatively short time that Yamaha has been involved, 2degrees has had excellent support from the Yamaha team both on the ground and back at their HQ product support team.

"The whole Yamaha team has put in extraordinary hours with incredible commitment and extraordinary skill through the launch and after. They have truly been an active, responsive, and highly competent and important part of the solutions to an important component of our web services.

"I simply should not have mentioned the company in the context of our website issues and would like to make sure that this is clarified for your readers.

"My apologies to you, your publisher and your readers."]

This morning I met 2degrees boss Eric Hertz, for discussion ranging from the telco's launch blues – and who is responsible – to when its 3G data will will kick in.

Like many of the new telco’s 200 or so staff, Mr Hertz had worked through much of the weekend addressing launch glitches; chief among them a glitch that has kept e-commerce and self-service elements of its website offline for more than 10 days.

The atmosphere was calm, but intense. Even as he jumped between floors with your correspondent in tow, Mr Hertz – still less than a month into his new job – cornered a manager on the stairwell and (good naturedly) grilled him for a website update.

The news wasn't all good.

Last Wednesday, Mr Hertz said he would be “very concerned” if twodegreesmobile.co.nz wasn’t fully functional by the end of that week.

Although the “Your 2degrees” section of the site went back online late Friday afternoon - allowing customers to log on and track their account, or port a Vodafone 021 or Telecom 027 number over to the new network - today the online shop is still offline for sim card sales and online sim card registration.

48 hours
Mr Hertz said would be 24 to 48 hours before the e-commerce section - down since August 5 - went back online.

Partners named ...
I told the new chief executive that many in the industry were curious who was to blame. Was it an in-house job? Where partners involved, and if so whom?

After only a slight pause, Mr Hertz replied, “There are two separate vendors who supplied-off-the-shelf software ... they both customised their systems it to our front-end specifications, then we worked with them on the back-end and larger cross-system integration”.

The two companies involved are Tecnotree, which supplied the software for the Your 2degrees self-service section of the site and Yamaha Motor Solutions, which supplied the software for the online store.

India-based Tecnotree was formed when Finnish company Tecnomen acquired Delhi’s Lifetree.

Yamaha Motor Solutions, also based in India, is a subsidiary of Yamaha of Japan - a company best-known for its motorcycles, marine and engineering products. Yamaha Motor Solutions also has an IT division, which is certified for IBM, Oracle and other systems.

... and, to a degree, blamed
Next question: was Tecnotree in any way responsible for the 10-day “Your 2degrees” outage ?

Mr Hertz paused for several seconds, then responded:

“Yes, we’ve had some issues.”

[See comments top of story about Yamaha]

Not adequate load testing
However, he adds, repeatedly, the buck stops with 2degrees.

“Some of what we’re seeing is because we didn’t do adequate load testing.

“We did do some load testing.

“But if we’d done heavy stress testing, there’s no doubt we would have revealed the problem.”

Would Mr Hertz have instituted such testing, had come onboard ahead of the launch month?

“I’d like to think so, but that would be blaming something else. Would I have made the same decision? I don’t know. I don’t do Monday morning quarter backing. That’s an American football thing. What would you call it here? [your correspondent struggled for a rugby equivalent].”

Mr Hertz said while Tecnotree and Yamaha had been involved in the integration with 2degrees’ complex back-end systems, and cross-system integration with other networks, his staff had over-seen the process.

“Everybody’s got some responsibility in this thing,” said Mr Hertz. “We’ll review once we’ve got everything thoroughly stabilised. We led the effort. And from the customer’s point of view it’s all on our shoulders. I take full responsibility for it.”

Hubris?
Some will see the off-shored outsourcing as a backfired attempt at outsourcing. But a senior figure in Auckland's web development community told NBR he disagreed: "Those indian firms are usually pretty good but need 'onto-it' local project management.

Mr Hertz said he hoped the public would give 2degrees credit for “solving the problems quickly, and communicating problems quickly. We’ve built some complex, highly distributed and tremendous systems for the future.”

3G data coming
So what’s next?

Mr Hertz is cagey on a launch date for 3G data, but when pressed, offers “sooner rather than later. ... by the first half of next year.”

He said to expect keen pricing, but would not be drawn on specifics.

Why no 3G data at launch?

There were no technical issues, said Mr Hertz, but “as a company you’ve got to prove yourself on product one before you prove yourself on product two. I’m not making any promises because we have yet to prove ourselves still in product one.”

As expected, Mr Hertz offered no details on how many sim cards or cellphones 2degrees has sold, or its targets, but did claim that sales were running ahead of expectations despite the online glitches.

Drop the BS, Mate
Mr Hertz asked NBR’s opinion of the Drop the Rate, Mate campaign.

Your correspondent offered that he would not have pretended that 2degrees was paying 15 cents a minute MTR. “I would have said: we went to the government to get some help levelling the playing field. We got part of the way there, but there’s still a long way to go”.

“That’s a good point,” conceded Mr Hertz. “But it’s harder to articulate to the general public ... it wasn’t a good deal, but it was the best at the time.”

You can't hide those iPhone eyes
The formal part of the interview over, the 2degrees chief executive craned over to see what apps were on your correspondent’s iPhone 3GS.

“I can’t wait to get my iPhone on 2degrees,” he offered, with a similar gleam in his eye to that of one Paul Reynolds of Telecom, another confirmed Apple nut (and we know where that led).

“At Zumobi, I got to see the next generation of handset from all the major manufacturers,” he enthused, before waxing knowledgably about the merits of different smartphones and OS’s. Another favourite: Nokia’s N97. (Zumobi was the Seattle smartphone start-up where Mr Hertz was president in his last post before joining 2degrees in an announcement made by its majority investor and one of his former employers, Seattle-based Trilogy).

The chief executive asked for contacts in the local smartphone development community.

When 2degrees does expand to attack the business market and expand into the more exciting, more 2009 world of data cards, smartphones and netbooks, it will be familiar territory for Mr Hertz.