Here's another to chew on.
INTERVIEW: Mirror Image Focused On Pfts Ahead Of IPO
By Robb M. Stewart
05/23/2000
Dow Jones International News
(Copyright (c) 2000, Dow Jones & Company, Inc.)
LONDON -(Dow Jones)- At a meeting of employees, Cosmos "Cos" Santullo, chief executive of Mirror
Image Internet Inc., read out the recent dramatic falls in several Nasdaq-listed technology stocks.
It wasn't a scare tactic, although he admits several were ashen faced. Nor was it to gloat, even
though the plan isn't for the unlisted company to be spun off from its parent for roughly a year.
"Wall Street is looking for one thing: profitability," Santullo told employees.
That's the lesson he wants to impart to the company he joined in December and is trying to get to shed
its engineering frame of mind for that of a sales and marketing one.
"I'm comfortable with saying we expect to be profitable in 12 to 18 months, depending of course on
conditions," Santullo told Dow Jones Newswires during a stop in London.
Mirror Image is majority-held by Cayman Islands-based Internet holding company Xcelera.com Inc.
(XLA), although Exodus Communications Inc. (EXDS) gained a 15% stake when it invested $75 million
in cash and $562.5 million in shares last month.
Xcelera bought its controlling interest last year, and moved the headquarters of Mirror Image from
Sweden to Woburn, just outside Boston, MA.
The company says it arms Internet service providers and enables e-businesses by cashing in on the
bottlenecking on the web. It does this by locating servers and storage equipment at net exchange
points around the world to speed up delivery.
In July, it will officially launch its instaStream video-streaming, instaSpeed caching service and
instaContent online content services on a commercial basis, pushing itself out in both the U.S. and
Europe. It has operation centers in London and Frankfurt.
Its revenue stream should be incremental, Santullo said, as more users come on line. In addition to its
own sales push, it gained 3,000 users through Exodus, which will use Mirror Image to speed up the
delivery of its content.
"We aim to be the Switzerland of the Internet," Santullo said, which he explained means he sees no
other cache and distribution firms which directly compete and no corporations which couldn't benefit
from its services.
His only worry, he said, is that large traditional companies will decide instead to invest in an
infrastructure and go it alone. Intel Corp. (INTC) recently said it is getting into the business, he noted.
Santullo has a sales and marketing background which he is putting to use, having worked for EMC
Corp. (EMC) and International Business Machines Corp. (IBM).
Every 60 days or so he spends a week in Europe. This visit he is meeting with, among others, British
Telecommunications PLC (BTY), which has been test running Mirror Image's services.
He added Lucent Technologies Inc.'s (LU) Bell Labs group has also expressed a strong interest.
In the U.K. alone, Santullo said the aim is to capture 75% of the Internet traffic in one of its content
access points. This cache of information can then be spit out to users even quicker, particularly as
most of it is static content anyway.
Sales, then profitability. That's the push, Santullo said. Although everyone keeps asking when the
group will be floated, he added.
It could be as soon as this year, he admitted, but at the moment he is enjoying not having to worry
every day about how Nasdaq and the technology sector is faring.
Company websites: mirror-image.com exodus.net and
xcelera.com
-By Robb M. Stewart; +44-20-7842-9294; robb.stewart@dowjones.com |
