Small business with big plans: Entrepreneur plans to develop an e-business data centre.

For as much as e-business can assist northern companies to stretch into global markets, the same technology allows outside companies to extend their reach into your backyard.

Since starting Gossamer Systems Inc. more than two years ago, owner Brian Tricker has harboured big plans to build a commercial data centre for e-business that is like nothing else on the technology scene in Northern Ontario.

But what he discovered thus far is that businesses across the North simply are not ready for what he has to offer. Nevertheless, he remains determined to keep preaching to the unconverted.

Gossamer Systems is a full-range technology consulting and development services firm specializing in e-business solutions for the business-to-consumer and the business-to-business market (B2B).

The North Bay company offers a menu of services that are "all over the map," from strategic marketing and planning for companies wondering about how to incorporate their products into the e-business world to actually setting up the physical development of Web sites and linking Web systems into back end office systems, says Tricker.

Gossamer took some tentative steps in June, 1999 into the application service provider (ASP) market with the intention of establishing a data centre where they could develop and host e-business systems on behalf of clients on a per-monthly payment basis.

Unfortunately, at this point, the concept is still on hold since many companies in the North are still figuring put how e-commerce can benefit them.

"They don't see it as an investment that will keep them competitive in a more global market," says Tricker. "Some of the more progressive companies are investing in it tool and tong because they view it as one of the tools to use.

"But there's a significant gap in understanding what they read versus 'How do I apply this to my business?'"

Tricker says some northern companies sell themselves short in realizing what a globally unique product they have to offer, while others selling commodities should utilize e-business solutions more to better serve their regional customers.

"I guess I reject the fact we're not visionaries up here. I've seen the pioneer spirit to take on challenges. We lack the understanding where we sit in the global economy and how these types of technologies can really be leveraged to make them more competitive."

His conceptual centre would offer more than basic services offered by internet service providers, most common in the residential market. ASPs fulfill a commercial business's greater service demands with B2B transactions going on 24 hours a day with security and redundancy capabilities plus a backup system to secure data and transactions.

Until he can round some investors to finance the centre, most of his work remains in the consulting field instead of doing the actual e-business development work as with some of his more progressive southern Ontario clients.

"There's a perception up here that it's out of their price range, or that it's not going to deliver any kind of the benefits, that's been hyped so much. They confuse the dot-com market that you hear in the trades with what business-to-business is really all about.

"The whole idea is we're trying to reduce the cost of doing standardized business processes through automation."

For instance, if a company has a product that is not complex or customized and does not require a salesman's contribution, take it out of his hands and watch the cost drop dramatically.

During one of his investigations for a company in the mining sector, the cost of entering a transaction order into their existing system cost $125 to process. In an automated e-business scenario, it would cost less than $5.

"If you take people out of a standard process where you don't need judgment, the cost drops dramatically," and allows sales representatives to do other things rather than mundane tasks of data entry, he says.

But despite its tremendous potential, most northern companies adopt a wait-and-see attitude of what next techno-fad is coming around the corner instead of realizing the potential and "getting out of the gate as fast as you can."

Though tempted to re-locate south to be closer to venture capitalists interested in his data centre idea and his bigger clients (such as the Ministry of the Solicitor General, Union Energy and the Business Development. Bank of Canada), Tricker's aim to remain a northern entity and grow organically.

With just two full-time employees at their Trout Lake Road offices, including Tricker, the virtual company puts together teams of individuals as needed on a sub-contract basis drawing on more than a dozen independent technicians at his fingertips from North Bay, Toronto and the U.S.