Arriving at an outdoor cafe, Michael Ditmore, who is equipped with all the modern-day paraphernalia that allows you to be mobile, seems more a relaxed salesman than the 24-hour crisis center for his newest venture.
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His company, the Systems and Software Consortium, is a nonprofit organization with 135 members from businesses, educational institutions and the community. The consortium hooks the members together with the outside world using fiber and frame relay. Using its partnership with GTE Corp. and AT&T, the consortium offers bulk access at discount rates, Ditmore says.
But the consortium is not just about being an IP provider, he said. The group also wants to be an incubator for high-tech companies, he said. It tries to help start-ups by doing everything from finding them space and showing them how to do business to offering them a network of other companies to draw ideas from. Currently, the group rents space in a building to 35 businesses.
The building is wired to the hilt with high-speed telecommunications and IP connections.
Not to be outdone, cable companies such as Cox Communications are laying fiber across Santa Barbara County, hoping to hook businesses up within the next few years. "The town is covered with fiber optics," says Ron Guilbault, sales and marketing manager at Santa Barbara-based PowerCom, Inc., a network service provider.
The tough part can sometimes be getting the phone companies up to speed on the needs of companies, according to Mark Sanders, IS manager at graphics tool maker MetaCreations, Inc. Sanders says when owner Kai Krause wanted to work from his home in the hills of Santa Barbara, MetaCreations had to pay to run phone lines there because none was available that far out.
But Sanders says the costs of running lines to remote places are not that prohibitive. In fact, he says most telco costs are cheaper in Santa Barbara than in Los Angeles, where the company moved from. "We may have to fight harder to get the services, but once we do they're better," he says. "The phone companies just need to be educated."
