'Always' expires after 3 years

By ADAM GIFFORD

Always There, an application service provider for retailers majority-owned by ANZ subsidiary Eftpos NZ, is no longer there.

Managing director Martin Shelton said the business was being wound up and major customers transferred to Hosting and Datacentre Services, which hosted Always There during its three-year life.

Some of the nine Always There staff will also shift to HDS, a partnership between Hitachi Data Systems and Dbemco.

"ANZ has been looking for some time for an exit route," Shelton said. "What we were doing was not core to its business, so when the opportunity came to migrate customers to HDS we chose to exit."

Always There provided retailers with applications including Microsoft Office, Exchange email and Outlook, exo-net 6000 accounting software, the Chris human resources and payroll package from Frontier Software, AdvancedRetail and Eftpos.

The service was delivered using Citrix thin client technology.

Customers included the Building Depot, Rattray's Wholesale and Wellington call centre company AM/PM Calling.

Rattray's Wholesale went into receivership last month.

Shelton said that could not be blamed for Always There's woes, but it did not help.

He said the company turned over $1m last year, not enough to keep going.

"While we had a strong technical solution, we were unable to secure volumes to justify it."

"There is no question the thin client model will be the way of the future. We were just ahead of our time," Shelton said.

The model, in which customers rent applications by the month rather than buying a licence outright, was touted two or three years ago as the future of computing, but it has proved difficult to make it work as a business.

Unisys has all but shut down its application service provider division, and Telecom folded its e-solutions joint venture with EDS and Microsoft back into its Business Solutions group.

The only two high-profile providers still on the New Zealand market are Computerland subsidiary AppServe and GDC's iVASP service.