USP Networks has evolved in its own right as a separate division of PS Consultants, where innovation has been a consistent theme throughout the past 17 years that we've been in the IT business. PS began with innovation in software publishing, when Paperback Software (the origins of "PS") broke the mould of £500 PC application software and introduced VP Planner spreadsheet to the UK -VPP was the famous Lotus 1-2-3 workalike that cost just £99, when Lotus 1-2-3 was selling for £495.

Not only was VP Planner cheaper, it was better. But the sad end to that story is that Lotus buried Adam Osborne's US Paperback Software business in huge litigation costs. In a multi-battle court encounter, Lotus eventually lost the war, and the courts agreed that it was not an infringement of copyright to use the Lotus interface as a subset for VP Planner - but by then, Paperback Software was history, and Lotus 1-2-3 had itself been sidelined by the surge for Microsoft Windows and Excel. And Lotus had it's own taste of what it feels like to see a technically inferior product succeed through sheer weight of money, marketing and hype.

PS Consultants went on to fight other innovative battles, bringing Quarterdeck's ground breaking multitasking operating environment for DOS to the UK. DESQview allowed DOS users to run more than one (regular) program at a time, and then DESQview/X proved again that the world of open systems has all the answers for all the problems facing computer users and developers - but not nearly enough of the marketing budget. DESQview/X brought the X Window environment to the DOS PC and was hailed as a marvel.

But once again, we stood helplessly by and watched as the grotesque pastiche of a 16 bit operating system and simply awful user interface managed to sweep all before, thanks only to aggressive marketing tactics - many of which have now been examined in the US courts. But once again, the courts are far too late to save the day for innovations like DESQview/X. However, although the X window system lives on in the UNIX fraternity, and is presently staging a serious comeback thanks to the simple fact that Internet is UNIX, and would never ever have happened without UNIX - no matter how much Microsoft spin may be applied to try and reinvent the truth.

Why the internet will prevail
So you can now appreciate why PSC has found the Internet to be compelling, because it provides the basis on which the little guys with better ideas and products can at long, long last take on the big guys - and win. The really successful internet ideas are those that really leverage the power of the network - eBay, Friends Reunited and BetFair are perfect examples of bringing the two halves of a "transaction" together. Whilst the notable problems of the technology boom have ranged from cash burners to outright disasters.

Had the entrenched interests of the media business not ganged up on Napster, that too would have been a prime example of success based on the principle of peer-peer communication. Instead, the internet has found many ways to satisfy the demand demonstrated by Napster, and no amount of legal bluster from the RIAA seem able to stem the tide. AOL, Amazon, C&W, Marconi, Boo.com, Worldcom and the rest have been unnatural contrivances of marketing, clumsily designed by bankers and marketing people to keep the gravy trains of their big brand customers trundling along. It's too bad that so few noticed that the track ended in a dead end.

But we do not doubt for a moment that the steam-driven dinosaurs will continue to struggle in their tar pits while huge monolithic businesses are replaced by the distributed environments and communities that suit the capabilities and efficiencies of the Internet. We are now at the end of the beginning, and it's time to let the real battle for the Internet supremacy commence.

USP Networks doesn't need to "become" a leader in Internet services - we were leading long ago. With sites hosted and managed by us carrying over 400k hits per day, as far back as 1995, we were able to explore and pioneer techniques and ideas for networking, security and management that are still relevant today.