Counting heads, 04/24/00

Error 404--Not Found

From RFC 2068 Hypertext Transfer Protocol -- HTTP/1.1:

10.4.5 404 Not Found

The server has not found anything matching the Request-URI. No indication is given of whether the condition is temporary or permanent.

If the server does not wish to make this information available to the client, the status code 403 (Forbidden) can be used instead. The 410 (Gone) status code SHOULD be used if the server knows, through some internally configurable mechanism, that an old resource is permanently unavailable and has no forwarding address.

Error 404--Not Found

From RFC 2068 Hypertext Transfer Protocol -- HTTP/1.1:

10.4.5 404 Not Found

The server has not found anything matching the Request-URI. No indication is given of whether the condition is temporary or permanent.

Counting heads

BY JULIE BORT
Network World, 04/24/00

Can't hire the talent you need? Buy it. That tactic landed Nstor Technologies and Excite@Home on top of the Network World 200 chart for employee growth in 1999. Through acquisitions, these companies expanded their workforces 669% and 311%, respectively.

Nstor, a small player in the storage-area network arena, wanted Andataco, a competitor, for its direct sales force. So the 26-employee firm bought the larger, roughly 200-employee company, keeping all but a few of the acquired people.

"We knew to gain a channel of distribution, we really needed an acquisition," says Larry Hemmerich, CEO at Nstor.

For Excite@Home, employee count went from 570 to 1,775. Obviously, the @Home merger in January 1999 accounted for a big chunk, about doubling the number of employees. But that was only the start, says Marc Ketzel, vice president of global human resources programs. The company completed another half-dozen acquisitions, each adding anywhere from five to several hundred people. "We pretty much kept 100% of acquired employees, with the exception of senior management," Ketzel says.

Along with bringing in new employees, the @Home merger increased the number of Excite's broadband customers from 300,000 to 1.1 million. Naturally, Excite@Home beefed up its customer support, engineering and sales departments, and added administration folk and content producers.

Interestingly, despite Nstor's and Excite@ Home's drastic expansions in 1999, neither is a model of solvency. Both continue to lose money on operations, despite growing revenue.

Related links

Contact Senior Editor Julie Bort

Nstor profile
From the NW200 database.

Excite@Home profile
From the NW200 database.

Net.business
More on the NW200. Network World, 4/24/00.

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