Richard's Next Move
If you have recently made a real-time bank transaction that involved more than one branch, then it is very probable that Richard Hlomador provided the "connectors" for that transaction to happen.

Richard's K-NET is the Ghanaian industry leader in corporate data and internet services; presently it connects government, as many as 10 commercial banks and about 150 corporate organizations with at least four or five branches; but Hlomador wants more. I am still not there, I want to be a Zain or an MTN; there is no end to the dream, Hlomador told CIO Business World.

The dream keeps upgrading itself, he added. Richard's dream apparently happened out of chance. Domiciled in the United Kingdom, he came back home to Ghana in 1994 for a holiday with his personal laptop. A lady CEO of a furniture company insisted she wanted to buy his laptop and he sold it to her; that led to more orders. Subsequently K Compu Service (KCS) was incorporated. KCS built its own computer brand ?Liberty' that sold well in corporate Ghana.

There is no corporate [company] that we have not supplied hardware or provided support to, Hlomador speaks of the success of KCS. According to Richard, three factors accounted for the success of the Liberty brand: the computers were built to address the power system in Ghana, their support was key; they also had parts in stock.

The pleasure of seeing the systems work was phenomenal; the motivation was not so much the money, as he recalls.

The successes of KCS were in the past; Hlomador took another leap in another area of technology: managed networks and internet services. K-NET was hence formed.

When there is no more challenge, you move the next steps that are needed in the economy and are challenging, he says.

We needed to form a company that had a network focus, he elaborates.

With the incorporation of K-NET, Hlomador has built an enterprise that connects the entire country with an assortment of network infrastructure, from satellites to microwave link installations. His company has the infrastructure that reaches some of the remotest destinations in Ghana. The company has a disaster centre in another location that backs up data on their servers real-time.

If you have built an infrastructure that is running services like government, banks; you do not want to have half a minute of downtime.

Hlomador prides himself not only on what he has on the ground but the people that keep the systems running.

The company's strength is its engineers; we have five core engineers who are infected with the network dream he says.

Beyond the engineers the company has got motivated customer care agents who attend to their clients problems when they arise in a 24 hour cycle. It is the most important part of the business, Hlomador reasons.

Hlomador shares the formula he used to build his enterprise. He lists three things; challenging himself, his drive to acquire knowledge and his focus on technology. I like to make a lot of cash but I stay in technology; that is the only thing I know how to do, he says

Richard is preparing to take another leap; this time in eBanking and value added services.

He has built a value added text centre to provide services for mobile phone operators and mobile commerce infrastructure to also provide eBanking services to the banks.

The 3G licenses will enable (mobile phone operators) to do what we are doing now [voice, data and internet], so we have built an ecommerce platform to provide services to the telcos, he reasons for his change in direction.

In addition to the value added services he intends to provide to the mobile operators, he will focus on providing fixed wireless to corporate Ghana on a Wimax platform.

Asked when he was going to stop, he said: it is not possible; technology is a part of me. I started technology at the age of 10; I do not see myself stopping.