My example of a disruptive technology

Back in 1989 I started my second job as an "analyst" at the International Development Research Center in Ottawa, Canada. Little did I know how much my first two priorities would change my life:

1. Make a recommendation on which local area network to purchase and deploy from the vendors: 3COM, Novell and Banyan.



2. Replace the $60,000/month Telex operation with electronic mail.

For the first task we did a pretty thorough evaluation and picked Banyan VINES as our network operation system. The main reason was because Banyan seemed much more efficient handling remote offices like we had in Nairobi, Cairo, Delhi, Singapore, Montevideo and Dakar.

For the second task we got all of our offices accounts on an email system sponsored by CGNet.

We managed to get #2 implemented before rolling out the world-wide Banyan VINES network. The savings were astounding. We went from $60,000/month to $6,000/month within the first two months. We then improved on that even further by implementing a product called "Zoomit RemoteLink Plus" which helped us reduce our costs another order of magnitude to $600/month. This was my first introduction to Zoomit and to what is now known as a "disruptive technology".

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Banyan, Zoomit