About the Author
The IP Development Network Blog is written by Jeremy Penston. Jeremy has been in IP Telecoms since 1996, when he graduated with a Joint Honours degree in Management Studies and Philosophy from the University of Leeds.
In the late 1990s, he worked in strategic planning for UUNET, building out the company's geographic presence through a second wave of (organically grown) local startups. As this plan became a reality, Jeremy took on a wide-ranging role in Business Development managing capital investment, product delivery and reporting financial performance in the new OpCos.
Following that success, he took on a more operationally focused role as Product Director for the region's Internet Access, Hosting, Security and VAS for the company that had become WorldCom and eventually MCI. A large part of the work involved identifying and overseeing the delivery of massive cost savings as the company suddenly shifted from growth objectives to cashflow management as a result of the well-publicised bankruptcy.
After a final push, driving the delivery of MCI's DSL portfolio through the company's stagnant product development process, he left to join PIPEX Internet. There he was responsible for the consolidation of that company's historical acquisitions into one set of products. He was also deeply involved in the financial planning of PIPEX's LLU rollout.
His father weighed black-holes for a living (he was an astronomer). Jeremy is a little more down to earth but his speciality is the economic spreadsheet model, also based on maths, logic and the fundamental interconnectedness of things. The model is always the basis for his technical and commercial understanding and from it comes the breakdown into a strategy, goals, projects, their tasks and desired outcomes.
Since 2005, The IP Development Network has provided consulting services to companies in a broad range of related industries, dealing with everything from MPLS VPNs to SaaS.
About the Blog
The commercial reality is that the blog is a marketing vehicle for the consultancy services. The aim is to show the sort of understanding that sets the consultancy apart from others in the space.
Of course there is a need for chinese walls between the consulting and the blog. You will find little or no reference to clients in the writing to protect commercial confidences. We do not promote clients on the blog or write sponsored posts as this would invalidate the independence of the writing.
The only grey area here is when we look beyond a client at the wider market they operate in and technology they use. There will be times when work with clients sheds light on generic issues or concepts that are worthwhile sharing with the world. Similarly, much of our knowledge comes from off-the-record discussions with industry thought leaders (who also have their own agenda of course). We will always protect commercial confidences in what we write, but we will rigorously apply a BS-filter to whatever we are told.
Without the consulting work, the funding of the blog is uncertain, especially as we are committed to keeping the site Adsense free. That doesn't mean we are committed to keeping the site ad-free, just that we don't think that Adsense can get anywhere near targeted enough to make adverts as valuable to you the reader as the blog content itself. We will only ever include adverts if they are attractive to readers and these will always be clearly labelled as such.
The blog is also a means of documenting the thought process as our understanding of the industry develops, for our own reference and for others. What this means is that our ideas and analysis are freely available to readers, without strings, for their review, thought and comment.
If it adds to the sum of knowledge, then that's fine by us. Please, use the comments if you think we've missed something - the chances are that we have and that others will agree with you! We will however moderate all comments to make sure that we avoid the scourge of the Blogsphere - spammed comments.
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