Constancy of Vision – Clarity of Values. The Character of One Effective Leader

Loren Data Corp, a small, fiercely competitive VAN (a Value Added Network, operating under the ECGrid® Trademark), has emerged from a nightmare.

Todd Gould, President of Loren Data, successfully guided his company through the B2B IT sector’s most active period of consolidation, and emerged with the company intact. The increased visibility came unbidden to Todd, who simply persevered to resolve a high-stakes network routing dispute with GXS (now OpenText). The dispute became an issue of great concern to all companies depending on VANs for the reliable routing of electronic supply chain (EDI) transactions.

Competing against larger organizations is routine for Loren Data Corp; Todd had refined a reliable formula for delivering targeted EDI communications services for service providers and B2B cloud applications. One can appreciate the challenges of balancing the risk of meeting such a dispute head-on, while maintaining ECGrid’s operational standards of  near-perfection.

Throughout this extraordinary time, Loren Data never faltered in its technical operations, providing critical network messaging services for a professional subscriber population composed of supply chain service providers, enterprise software OEMs, and virtual VANs. The Company maintains very collegial inter provider relationships with its interconnected peers; such relationships are critical for keeping EDI message traffic flowing around the globe. ECGrid processes tens of thousands of EDI messages daily, the Netops team covers three shifts of support, and Todd, in the role of CTO, pushes forward on delivering the next generation of transactional messaging and supplier community management. Reason enough for Todd to enjoy a fleeting moment of industry recognition? In a busy, lean operation, there might be exactly one minute to reflect. If community is any indicator, a brief read of the forums covering the industry indicate that Loren Data Corp’s founder is respected as a competent and multifaceted leader. A visionary perhaps? A Thought Leader, most definitely.

Here are a few of my notes and observations about the company, Loren Data Corp, and its President:

GXS Opposition Research

45 Day Countdown to final edit and release

The distribution rights to my portfolio of GXS opposition research has been purchased by a publisher of B2B Titles. I will append the name and contact details of the new owner of this compendium of GXS history, strategies, and competitive quirks and weaknesses, when the contract’ is fully closed and the NDA is lifted.

I still conduct Q&A session via Skype or Phone at reasonable rates. I may also publish customized research topics on GXS and the entire B2B sector, so I’m still open for business.  

 The Giant has Massive Competitive Vulnerabilities 

Along with opening my calendar for new analyst-advocate consulting services, I am delivering a seminar and report on the workings of VAN and B2B Cloud services sectors, organized by the competitive profiles revealed in the survey. But before we commence, just take a look at this:

GXS Salaries | More details for GXS Jobs | GXS Reviews | GXS Interview Questions & Reviews

Central to the study is a focus on GXS, the company’s quirks, competitive strengths and weaknesses, and how this particular actor’s gravitational influence affects all market participants, from the largest Enterprise OEMs and EDI users,  to the smallest trading partners and the Service Providers that make most of the EDI sector operate.

GXS is, as giant PE artificial constructs go, weaker than most, the company’s masters have failed to sell the leviathan, and it seems that the investment banks and SEC are placing roadblocks to a fast IPO – well, at over 10 years in the Francisco Partners portfolio, GXS is now the longest lived failure in the PE Fund’s life-cycle stable of non-runners.

For those that didn’t get the race horse entendre, I was intimating that if a PE fund gave any other existing B2B Comms and solution giant one billion dollars in cash and credit, they would have absolutely run the table and thrived, without the now infamous need to damage the industry with interconnection abuses, The GXS interconnect arbitrage (against Loren Data Corp) was not a display of strength, it was evidence of a GXS management that was out of ideas.

Teaser: Central to all of the GXS competitive deficits, is the absence  of “ownership”,  a feeling that is inherent to founders, innovators, and inventors. All of the many problems facing, GXS, from customer retention to a steadily increasing negative market sentiment, stems from this lack of an owners or founder’s instinct to preserve and culture a venture’s positive reputation.

brrreeeport conversation in advanced stupor

brrreeeport conversation in advanced stupor [Alan Wilensky]

A lonely converastion to myself in the coffeshop line – two shot Americano a buck ninety. The girl at the counter a black haired beauty, Brazilian, like you’ve never seen; such Beauty gotta be a burden, gotta be.

I held the coffee cup in my cold, chapped hands and wondered what to do with my day – Car Talk on NPR, that’s good for an hour –

Practice Ruby on Rails? That plays into the new regime’s hands, I won’t have Jason and David telling me what to think and with whom to mate; as a Great Dane Truly, he is plenty busy of late.

So not a minute had passed , and I muttered ‘brrreeeport” under my breath in a bitter and disgusted sort of way, and a guy I hadn’t noticed standing near said, “I know what that means!”.

I turned and glowered at the man, and walked slowly away.

brrreeeport indeed

RimPack Slime

RimPack Slime, have you another paradigm???
I have to get my pass in the trade show line
It’s the vendor’s time, on the analyst’s dime
And I’m looking for my publisher, Rimpack Slime

Write me paper, on the real or vapoure
with words like tuple, semantic,or Ruby on Rails
While the tech press grieves, all are CES thieves
Mr. RimPack Slime hides behind his veils.