Mimic Media Inc.– What was the point?
Mimic Media Inc. (previously known as ITTS Systems Inc.) was formed in the late
90’s to meet the growing need for small business focused value added re-sellers.
This modestly successful company moved
away from hardware sales when the profit margin on “white” box systems gradually
eroded as IBM, HP, and Compaq aggressively entered the desktop market. ITTS
Systems Inc. built a niche market on scanning, OCR, and custom designed
workstations for the visually impaired. As time progressed the company
focused on a web hosting business, for
customers located all over the world. The name changed to Mimic Media Inc. to
better reflect the new direction. Internet Security became a focus for the
company in 2000 and with the outbreak of the Code Red in 2001 the company was
engaged in clean up and prevention activities for a large number of customers.
In the last few years the margins on web hosting, the low cost of high end
computer hardware, decently priced Internet bandwidth, and the domination of the
desktop market place by Dell have made
running a company focused on just about any computer activity very challenging.
Mimic Media Inc. ceased “official” operations around
2002 as most of the potential revenue
generating activities turned into hobby expenditures. Over the life span of the
business there were only a couple of years that the business operated on it’s
own and turned a actual profit, most of the time the operation of the business
was supported by the owner’s “outside” employment, and short term loans from
family members.
Some people make choices to learn about “all-things computer” by going to school
or university, others open a business and attempt to make a living providing
service and sales. Both approaches to a
career in the computer industry have merits, but in today’s world with the razor
thin margins on computer sales and services I would have to suggest that
education is the way to go. In the case of Mimic Media it was an expensive and
at times difficult undertaking as having a great computer technical skill set is
not good enough; you have to be able to sell at a profit if your running a
business.
Today the experience of running Mimic Media Inc. has manifested itself as a
personal philosophy I use to achieve
technical expertise; like a series of hard “Lessons Learned”. The complexity of
early computer systems required a rigid adherence to
standardization; to get things to work.
There are now many different ways to do things in modern operating systems like
XP and Windows Vista; but the key to success is developing
a simple step by step process.
Standardization of the network from desktop systems to switching, to servers to
the wide area network VPN connections allows one to then “benchmark” the
network. After some time spent benchmarking the network has been completed one
now can have a total situational awareness of the day to day network operations.
This is the end state of proactively managing an enterprise network. It all
started out trying to make Netware and
Windows 95 work.
Mimic Media has been replaced with my own personal hobby servers, although I maintain a couple of web sites to this day no money is charged and I've gladly donated my time, experience, and a significant financial contribution to support http://www.guildcompanion.com and http://www.milpol.ca A FTP server is also maintained to present a collection of information and old drivers to help support some of the legacy systems still in production.
Ian Trump