KEY POINTS:
Conducting conference calls in the wee hours of the morning is not exactly the lifestyle Mike Riley had in mind when he moved to New Zealand two years ago - he had set himself up for a life roaming the vineyards of Hawkes Bay.
But instead Riley found himself on call 24 hours a day, seven days a week running Endace, one of New Zealand's largest technology companies.
Having lived in the United States for several years, English-born Riley and his Kiwi wife decided to raise their family in New Zealand.
Riley had held leadership roles in large international technology companies.
While he was prepared for a career change, he said he was thrilled to be working in the booming technology industry he discovered.
"[Wine] would have been a fun thing to do for a while, but I am not sure how much longevity there would have been. I am really a techie."
Just before packing his bags for New Zealand, Riley came across Auckland high-technology company Endace at a trade convention in England.
"I was blown away because at the time it was the only New Zealand high-tech company I had ever come across."
He introduced himself and was told to keep in touch.
Riley arrived in New Zealand without a job, but quickly found himself turning down the opportunity to work as a sales and marketing manager for a Hawkes Bay vineyard and taking up a three-month consulting contract with Endace.
Two weeks later he was hired fulltime and helped the company achieve an impressive result for the March 2007 financial year. He was appointed chief executive in July last year.
Based in Manukau, Endace creates network-traffic monitoring technology, security-application solutions and latency measurements for companies worldwide.
It has offices in New Zealand, the United States, Britain and Singapore. It is listed on the London Stock Exchange.
Riley said New Zealand's high technology sector was world class its isolation being both an advantage and a challenge.
The upside to being thousands of kilometres from its major markets means that Endace designers were able to put their heads down without the disruption.
"You don't get pulled from pillar to post by the day-to-days of the market. "Rather than being interrupt driven we can be a little more strategic."
Endace's disadvantage is that its domestic market is so small that any launch must be tested on the international market a costly undertaking.
"Launching a product is a challenge for any company, but a North American company can test it on their domestic market."
Riley sits on the advisory council for the high-speed research network and contributes to the New Zealand Government's information technology projects. He said the technology industry could not sit back and wait for Government help.
"Industry builds industry in my opinion. [It] has to take the lead and build businesses and show others what can be achieved, give people the aspiration to want to go out and do it themselves."
The New Zealand Government's investment in a high-speed network and its tax credit for firms' research and development encouraged Endace to take up double the amount of its current space in Ellerslie, Auckland, recently. The company employed 30 staff in the past year, mostly overseas, bringing the employee count close to 100, and Riley anticipates bringing another 30 on board this year, in research, customer services and quality assurance.
Despite economic doom and gloom, Riley said Endace would not be taking its foot of the gas - the company should continue to deliver 50 per cent growth year on year.
He said he saw no reason why there could not be 10 more Endaces in New Zealand within the next 10 years.
"Some people winge that other countries have even bigger incentives ... Could [the Government] do more? Yeah, it could, but I think it's a great start and hopefully what it is doing is setting a benchmark to say 'look, what we are doing is encouraging people to do their research and development in New Zealand and if it starts to work maybe we can layer on some more incentives'."
