The Boards thread from November 2005

Regi,

Thanks for the clarification.

I should make it clear to you that there have been ongoing differences between the managing directors, not the staff, of our respective companies (Hosting 365 and Novara) since http://www.iol.ie/~stripes/circle/35/essays/35.0203.01.html(or open list 2001)which predates any of the Spin Solutions team joining Hosting 365.

Indeed it is common industry knowledge that the partnership of Dan and Tony from Spin are the back bone of Hosting 365. Irrespective of who their current employer is the two both have a proud tradition in the Irish IT industry (Spin even gets an honourable mention in John Sterne's book "Adventures in Code"). Hosting 365 only became a serious player when Dan and Tony joined when Spin was taken over by Phoenix towards the end of 2003.

Picking up from Stephen's comment ("Now Eoin, don't go giving away chunks of other companies") if your efforts that made a success of Hosting 365 were justly rewarded it would have been expected that by this stage the Spin team would own a fair stake in Hosting 365. Looking at Hosting 365's accounts filed recently for 2004, since the company was established the owner/managing director, Stephen McCarron, has invested five thousand, five hundred and fifty seven euros (E5,557) of his own money in the equity of the company so you shouldn't be charged too much for a stake in the business that your efforts are clearly making such a success of. In any case any hosting/data centre player would be delighted to have people of your calibre on board and would pay handsomely for the privilege (including equity participation).

It is also clear to the industry that there are two camps within Hosting 365.

The professional part lead by the former Spin Solutions team. Then there appears to be the dirty tricks side of the operation (which I have no doubt the other side are not aware of). Examples of this side's activities include Blacknight's formal complaint to the Open list earlier this year about unethical harvesting of Blacknight's customer base by the management at Hosting 365's and then the contacting these clients (owned up to by the 365 MD on a UK discussion board), questionable domain registrations such as www.kclub.com and www.rackspace.ie by the MD of Hosting 365, use of copyright website content that is remarkably like that of American companies such as http://pirated-sites.com/classic/archive/?archive=hosting365 (or archived pirated sites), over blown claims of market share and hyperbole, the sending of PM's to me by the managing director of Hosting 365 after this thread http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/archive/index.php/t-199379.html(or boards bulletin) along the lines "No personal grudges eoin, just a firm committment to ensure you go out of business" , messing around with other people's business along the lines of this thread http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=115585(or boards bulletin)etc etc.

Our company made a formal proposal via Tom to host Boards.ie in 2002 as we recognised the massive commercial advantage that this offers. We recently carried out a calculation that the hosting of Boards.ie contributes in excess of E50,000 turnover to the Hosting 365 bottom line through referrals, testimonials, credibility etc.

We would be very happy to host Boards.ie and would pay the Boards community a considerable cash amount (in addition to free hosting of the Boards server) as, in addition to supporting a very worthwhile Irish project, the commercial advantages are considerable.

Perhaps it is time for the Boards team to look at this relationship and move to a situation where there are no conflicts of interest, just a suggestion.

Eoin