PEAKHOUR REVIEW SOFTWARE

It believes the market this year will be worth $250 million, up from $160 million last year, and worth nearly $700 milllion by the end of 2005. Meanwhile, IDC Australia is predicting a bumper year for the web-hosting market in Australia. 'We will focus our energies on that part of the market while we figure out this IT recession and hope that the market picks up,' Mr Harrington said. That included managing the complex hosting requirements of large customers such as Pacific Access, the wholly-owned subsidiary of Telstra Corporation which manages the Yellow Pages and White Pages brands, he said. We continue to be under pressure from shareholders to manage our costs tightly and focus on parts of the business that are revenue-generating,' said Mr Harrington. 'We are strongly funded and we have more than 12 months of capital.

APN Digital in August 1999 took a 15 per cent stake in the group, while the National Australia Bank's internet arm O2-e in September 2000 injected $12 million. Peakhour has to date taken $58 million from venture capitalists' purses. The company's backers include National Australia Bank, APN Digital and Technology Venture Partners.

PEAKHOUR REVIEW SOFTWARE

The company fell on hard times last year when the rental software market failed to take off and demand for web services slumped in line with the broader downturn in information technology.Īlthough it withdrew from the international and direct small business markets, a $6 million venture capital injection in September, teamed with the latest job cuts, looks to have secured the future of Peakhour for at least another year. The number of cuts was 'not a material number in the context of Peakhour overall', according to the former McKinsey consultant, who said they enabled Peakhour 'to manage our costs more tightly and give ourselves as much time as possible to continue building on our business'. Its chief executive, Mr David Harrington, confirmed that Peakhour had terminated an undisclosed number of staff yesterday, but rejected rumours that these spanned half of its already significantly reduced headcount. 2002 may be shaping up as a good year for internet services but troubled web-hosting and applications service provider Peakhour has kicked it off with another round of redundancies.

Peakhour review