more from Steve Kiene...

the guy feels like talking a lot... emphasis added... the part I agree is the following:

>>My biggest worry is that the person who was the driving force behind acquiring Vitalstream is still in the same position at Internap. If anyone should have lost their job for making a bad decision, that's the person.

>>I only have opinions. I think Internap is full of politics and it's a challenge to be part of a team when you're remote and the folks who don't like you are local. They get face time with management, et al a lot more often and can continually attack people behind their back.

Maybe Eric recognizes this and is only hiring in Atlanta- I don't know. Their job site would probably be a good indication.

>>I think most of the company wanted to stay status quo and JD deciding to expand the business into software as a service/cloud-like stuff (that's really what CDN is) was probably viewed as a betrayal of the company "DNA".

Another issue is Internap's crazy religious belief that Linux is the only viable option for anything. Vitalstream was based on Windows and that caused a lot of bad blood.

I also think Phil Kaplan and team's near fraudulent (or completely fraudulent if you ask me) representation of the Vitalstream assets was also a problem. Once folks realized that the VS folks were smoking crack (not literally), it was too late. That upset a lot of folks- quite understandably.

I think JD maybe isn't the best CEO for some folks. For me, he was great. I was hired to do a job and I was trusted to do it. There was no micro-managing, no second guessing. Sure, I was questioned and challenged, but that's a lot different.. I think most of the folks at the company needed more direction because they didn't want to be leaders.

I'll bet in hindsight, he would have hired a few more strong leaders and let them do their thing.

Remember though, the position Internap was in when he came in. He righted the ship and fixed the financials. He took a risk (CDN) and I respect him for taking that risk- daring to make the company more than it was. Sometimes risks pay off, sometimes not.

You also have to look at the CDN market at the time- rates were high and were climbing. It was fair to expect them to continue to climb for awhile longer. No one- not Akamai, not Limelight, predicted or was prepared for the massive drop in CDN pricing.
My biggest worry is that the person who was the driving force behind acquiring Vitalstream is still in the same position at Internap. If anyone should have lost their job for making a bad decision, that's the person.

>>Well, I think they have to write down most of the remaining goodwill. The CDN has been almost completely re-written and there's little value to be extracted from what Internap bought. What they are selling today is not what they bought- it's virtually all new. I'm no financial expert, but if there's $60M+ in goodwill remaining, there has to be $60M in value to be extracted, right? If not, it has to be written down (minus the value that has been realized). I think.

That's not to say the CDN business should be "written off", i.e. dumped.

I have read the public filings on Eric's compensation package and have drawn my own conclusion what he's likely to do. Folks can read it themselves and draw their conclusions. He does stand to make a lot of money if he sells the company and walks away. You can calculate how high the stock price will need to rise to in order to make him more money by not selling.

Then again, maybe his comp package is just a reflection of what he was able to negotiate- not any indication of what he's going to do.

I'd think that if the board's intention was to sell the company, then one of the board members would have taken over as CEO vs conducting a long search to find someone to come in and act as CEO.

>>No, it's a selling point. The competition always hammers on the fact (wrong) that the Vitalstream CDN was junk. Well, it's not the "Vitalstream" CDN anymore. This is stated on most sales calls, and that information is not confidential.

This information has been told to customers at tradeshows as well.