Datalink celebrates 10 years

Datalink began life as a new business venture between three partners on May 28, 1998 in an office in Murrumbeena on the outskirts of Melbourne.  Atthat time we offered business internet services including dial-up internet access, website development and hosting, and we had a plan to establish ourselves in business internet services while conducting entrepreneurial dot-com projects on the side.

By the second year of operation I had learned some important lessons. Firstly, entrepreneurial side projects fail more often than they succeed (tip: if you want to be an entrepreneur, do it full-time).  And secondly, our industry has more hype than it has technical skill.

From these lessons we re-developed our core business around the principals of technical innovation, business outcomes and a can-do attitude. We dropped our dot-com side projects, dropped the ancillary services where we offered no competitive advantage, and developed our core competency, delivering web-based solutions for business opportunities.

Fast-forward 10 years and a lot has changed, but a lot remains the same.  We moved into the city, saw some staff come and go, saw new partners replace old ones, and saw web 1.0 replaced with web 2.0.  But we still service many of our year-one customers, we still have some founding staff with us and we still deliver value through technical innovation, business outcomes and a can-do attitude.

Although the dot-com days have gone, our entrepreneurial spirit remains with our ongoing research and development efforts.  Some of our successful projects include Freestyler, Concord, Lithio, Transact and Central.  For those using these products and services, look out for big news later in 2008 when our next generation of products are released - we're calling them "web 3.0" :-)

I would like to take this opportunity to say a big thankyou to all the staff we've worked with over the years, past and present. The Datalink family has evolved, and past staff have since migrated allover the world, but many of us remain close and some of you have made a bigger difference than you may realise. 

Also, I wish to thank our long-standing customers, one of which is beginning a new major development project with us this week to build the next generation of a site originally built in 1999 - thanks!

I still love the internet because it still offers so much in the way of innovation to business.  I look forward to working together with our customers, suppliers and partners for the next 10 years and am excited to see what web 3.0 brings.

All the best,

Scott Davey, Managing Director.

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