Rack Force Q & A

...an edited interview with Brian Fry, vice president, Rack Force Hosting Inc.

1. So you are a Rosslander?

I grew up in Rossland and my wife Lora grew up in Montrose. I earned a diploma of technology with specialization in marketing at BCIT after my ski racing days were over, and then fell in love with computer technology. I worked in Vancouver launching a lot of interesting products. By the early 90s I was the chair of the BC Chapter of Information Technology Association of Canada, and later a founding member of the BC Technology Industries Association. I then moved to the Silicon Valley in California, great for my career but not the place to raise our children, so we decided to return to Rossland in 1997.

2. Was it easy coming back to Rossland?

In Rossland I got involved with a local Internet Service Provider (ISP) with a friend of mine. The company grew like wild fire and was ultimately sold to Internet Direct. Then I met my next business partner, Tim Dufour. He understood telephones and voice communication, while I came from the Internet/technology and marketing side. We merged the two concepts together and in 2001 formed Rack Force.

3. What is Rack Force?

Rack Force manages servers and data networks for hosting websites on the Internet; we provide the infrastructure that enables the Internet to work efficiently. We have well over 1,000 of these servers in three separate Data Centres located in Kelowna, where we can access the broadband essential for our large system. The Data Centres hold the racks of computer hardware, hence our name: Rack Force. We compete with other very large companies, some hosting as many as 20,000 servers; we are in the top 100 hosting companies, and growing at about 5 % every month. We constantly measure the activity usage of our clients and optimize our services to them. Many of these clients run thousands of websites - at any one moment there could be 400,000 sessions going through our Data Centres.

4. Security must be a big issue?

Absolutely. We must keep the Internet alive at all times. Whether it's a power outage, a fire or an earthquake the system has to run. Worms, viruses and assorted hackers are a constant battle. We have sophisticated backup and redundancy systems to protect the physical networks, and continually monitor and protect against the hackers.

5. What are your goals for the company?

To grow this company as big as possible as fast as possible. We see Rack Force as a launching pad spawning multiple other companies. The Internet is constantly evolving. Eventually our Data Centres will run all the services you can imagine: voice, video, data, everything for communication. All the applications you need will be available on the 'net rather than installed on your own computer.

6. How is your partnership working?

Excellent. Tim is great in the operational and technical area; I provide the sales and marketing side. We are like mentors to each other. We combine our thoughts, talk things over enough to make sense, then turn it into a plan and do it.

.

7. We don't have broadband here.

No, unfortunately, not yet. We require two or more connections of 1 Gigabit per second or more to operate properly. Our three Data Centres are in Kelowna because of the broadband there, and we have over 20 employees there and just three here. We have been working towards a municipal broadband network here, which would enable a lot of things to happen.

8. What motivates and drives you to succeed?

I'm driven by the possibilities: the concept of "what if." Imagine communicating anywhere through wireless networks! I also want to see many productive and exciting jobs created here. Tech Village is a part of that: finding ways to bring opportunities and hard contracts into this region for the new media workers.

9. Could you run a business like this anywhere?

Anywhere there is high speed Internet you can do what I'm doing, but to run the Data Centres we must have very big broadband capabilities. Kelowna has that. Potentially we could run data centres in this region if the big data lines get here, which is something we would like to do.

10. What support did you have when you were starting up?

We had incredible support from Community Futures, both here and in the Okanagan - the Okanagan CF provided our first $100,000 loan. The bigger centres have a better understanding of our industry, and the Economic Development Commission in the Okanagan was very supportive in guiding and networking us with the right people. In Trail the Skills Centre has helped us with the targeted wage subsidy program. Angel financing followed over a period of time. We had over $500,000 from one, and $300,000 from another. While it sounds huge, it's not a lot of money for the business we're in.

11. What key things contributed to your success?

The right combination of people - the good balance between Tim and me. The other success is using the Internet to measure what we do. At any moment in time we can see how much product was sold and whom they sold it to, all kinds of key data that enables us to optimize our client services.

12. Were there roadblocks to overcome?

Money is the biggest roadblock. It is critical to encourage venture capital in this region. Capital was a big issue: servers cost money and we needed a lot. When we started Rack Force we couldn't pay ourselves for well over a year.

Then there are the technical and security issues. Reliability is absolutely critical in this business, so more money into backup systems and security monitoring and protection. Every single day we are dealing with attacks on websites. Some of these are so big they could take you off line, and others from suspect countries try to use our servers to piggyback their messages from a Canadian address. We have new systems that prevent all this, but it is a constant battle.

13. Do you think the community has benefited from your business?

Most local people don't know we are here. We have very few local clients. Our business is 65% U.S. and 30% Europe, the rest Asian with a small percentage of Canadian. Essentially, we generate wealth that comes back into the Canadian economy, with some local benefits from payroll. We still can't pay people huge wages, but our people are with us for the ride or the excitement or the opportunity. If they stick with us we take good care of them along the way. I do try and share my ideas to encourage local economic activity. Tech Village is part of that.

14. What key lessons have you learned through building Rack Force?

The importance of leadership - continually move up to a higher leadership level, which means delegation. What is the most important thing that I should be doing right now? This is by far the most successful company that I've been involved in. I've learned to change as fast as everybody else is changing, constantly adapting and growing. My priority is leadership in the company.

15. Are good leaders born or do they learn?

Leaders must keep pushing the boundaries. My ski racing background has helped me there. I'm always pushing the limits, finding out how fast or far I can go without falling. When a mistake happens, you figure out how it happened, fix it and push harder. That's just the way I was brought up. I used to believe that great leaders were flamboyant and outgoing: the rally the troops style. Both Tim and I subscribe to the book "Good to Great", which shows the most successful companies are led by people who provide quiet, visionary leadership, and who ensure that their people have the tools, support and encouragement to do a good job. That's been a big learning curve for me, and I still have lots to learn.

16. What needs to change to encourage more innovation in our community?

It's critical that we have a leading edge broadband communication system, the same or better than in the big centres. Why? You cannot develop first class products or technology unless you have first class infrastructure; just like we produce great skiers here because we have a great ski hill. We have limits on most resources here: tourism, manufacturing, forestry, etc.; broadband opens up so much opportunity, way more than a highway across the border.

Second: venture capital or angel financing. Entrepreneurs will fail and Canadians are really tough on failure. Fail once and it's over, goodbye. Maybe the entrepreneur was very close and just made a few mistakes. Instead of booting him off the hill, its time to help him up and support his next run with that little extra that will make all the difference next time around. I think there are a lot of potential angel financers here; people who would put $100,000 or $200,000 into a pool and take a shot at 10 companies. If just one took off it would make up for those that failed. Keep doing it again and again and you could really build something here.

Finally, there is mentoring. Let's stop talking about mentoring and actually do mentoring. We need a more formal system to take our younger entrepreneurs and give them the opportunity to grow and develop.