The final quarter of 2001 will be remembered for two things: the U.S. reaction to and recovery from the Sept. 11 attacks and the economic slowdown. While people fear what might turn up in their mailboxes, companies are making hard choices by slashing jobs and closing offices. In the midst of all of this, one Canadian company is standing tall in the face of disaster by providing a product that focuses on resiliency and exemplifying fiscal responsibility. ComputerWorld Canada staff writer, Kristy Pryma, recently spoke with Toronto-based Nigel Stokes, DataMirror Corp.'s chief executive officer, who describes his company as plumbers for the Internet era.

CWC: How have the events of Sept. 11 and their aftermath affected DataMirror?

Stokes: We've got some survivor guilt, because in some ways this will be good for our business. It feels a little bit like blood money, but the reality is that we've talked about it for years before this ever happened, but now resiliency has got a big exclamation mark. People are listening a bit more now and taking it in a bit more now. People are really hanging on the resiliency concept because they know that their own businesses could be impacted. The economy prior to this was in that limbo state where there was delayed decision-making probably for six months, where people were saying "We're not going to do it this quarter, but we'll look at it next quarter and see how our business is." What we've seen is that resolve has changed. There's no complacency left. Now people are going to make their minds up.

CWC: How is DataMirror weathering the current economic storm?

Stokes: We're running our business by being conservative. We are fortunate that our cost structures are already in line: we haven't over billed, we haven't overstaffed and we have positive cash flow. A contrarian approach is that business always pay off. Because we've got positive cash flow in reserves, we can hire people now, and I can tell you that available resources of talent right now in the high-tech community is phenomenal. It's been a tough market in technology for years, where you hadn't been able to get anyone. Now you can get very skilled people because they're not working at Northern Telecom and they're not working at a lot of other companies that have had to go through this attrition.

CWC: What sort of strategy is DataMirror employing to maintain this economic stability?

Stokes: It's a great merger and acquisition timeframe. Companies that have cash reserves and positive cash flow are the stronger companies, so we can gain a relative competitive advantage now by doing acquisitions today. We're usually using cash for acquisitions rather than stock, so we're not having to pay the 10 times revenue multiples that everyone was paying before. We're getting a good value, and we're getting teams who want to join us because they know that their future is better with us rather than trying to fund their businesses themselves or fund their R&D themselves.

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