Interview: Peter Kazacos and the "wild west" of IT

Will your strategy require more acquistions?

Absolutely. We have to grow to be several times our size.

Part of our strategy depends on the outcomes of the National Broadband Network. For somebody in Dubbo, for example, to turn to using cloud computing, the network can't accommodate that today. And we know on NBN's roadmap that they'll be waiting at least two years.

Have you lobbied NBN Co to promote the regions you'll be serving?

We have had discussions, yes, but the thing that is difficult to do is impact their roll-out strategy. Unless there is a Government agenda, or political push, I can tell you no amount of lobbying will be successful from our end. People in these areas should be lobbying their State members perhaps, but not us.

NBN Co only has limited resources, they can't start everywhere at once.

There is much to be done - things we take for granted in the cities isn't happening out there in the regions. You can't expect to have proper regional centres without good connectivity.

There are some older companies out there still trying to survive with fax, but as you see the new generation of business managers come through, they see an absolute dependence on technology.

How do you find good talent in regional Australia?

The model is that we have support staff for customers out there in regional Australia. The customer is far more comfortable if support staff are up the road if not in the next town.

But should these staff be domain experts, they will have the opportunity to travel to all our other regional centres as required to serve customers there. If you have somebody with Cisco skills in Hobart, he may well be required to travel to Townsville for overnight stays.

We try and recruit locally and look at providing them training - both technical training and customer service.

But the seachange guys - you don't find as much - and their salary expectations are too high.

You say this is an SMB play - Where do you draw the line on the size of a customer?

That's important - we are a provider of services to both small business and regional Australia, the customer doesn't need to be both. We look after mining companies, State Government departments in places like Tasmania.

What it means is that we don't attack the customers in Sydney and Melbourne. There you end up becoming one of the 20 million fighting for the market, only to have the customer give the business to IBM or HP.

Its a lot smaller fry than the Kaz days - is it still exciting?

Sure it is. It's the wild west out there, that's what is exciting about it. With the NBN, the technology will be there to make this stuff happen.