IT FAILURE AND THE COLLAPSE OF ONE.TEL

摘要

There are a number of cases about IS failure. However, few suggest that the IS failure led to the downfall of the business. This paper examines the information technology strategies employed by the high-profile Australian telecommunications company One.Tel Limited and assesses the extent to which a failure of those strategies may have contributed to, or precipitated, One.Tel's downfall. With increased reliance on technology in business and its sophistication, potentially catastrophic failures may be more common in the future. One.Tel was founded in 1995 as an Australian telecommunication company and ceased trading in 2001. In the middle of 1999, the focus of the company changed towards the building of a global business, geared to the delivery of media content. We argue that the IT strategies operating within One.Tel were not adapted to meet the rapid growth that ensued. Further, we suggest that the information technology approaches that had served adequately in the early years were not appropriate for its later ambitions. Most importantly, we discuss the failure of its billing system in relation to published frameworks of IT failure as well as the importance of getting such basic systems right. We argue that these frameworks do not cover well the One.Tel case and we put forward a new category of IT failure, that of 'business ethos'