TENET CTO Andrew Alston resigns

Summary: Chief technology officer of TENET, Andrew Alston, has resigned from TENET on good terms, will stay on until the end of November 2011, and plans to move to Kenya in December 2011.

Andrew Alston, CTO of Tertiary Education and Research Network of South Africa (TENET), has resigned and will be leaving the organisation at the end of November 2011.

Both TENET CEO Duncan Martin and Alston confirmed this.

Alston said that he remains very firmly committed to academic networking in Africa and will continue to work with the academic sector.

He officially leaves TENET at the end of this month (October), but Alston said that he has agreed to stay on for November in a consulting role to “finish things up and hand over.”

After that the plan is to move to Nairobi in December (2011), Alston said.

Asked what prompted the move, Alston said that he decided to call it a day at TENET and move to Kenya for various reasons.

“Thing is, the South African market has grown – hugely – and I do best in markets that are rapidly expanding,” Alston said.

“I feel that in a market as vibrant and developing as Kenya… I can have greater impact there.”

Alston said that he would sorely miss TENET, as it has been an amazing few years.

Duncan Martin, CEO of TENET, said that Alston’s resignation was very unexpected, but that his former CTO assured him that his leaving was not due to any dissatisfaction.

“I have nothing but the highest regard for what he did while he was with us,” Martin said.

Alston helped transform TENET, Martin said, explaining that he helped the organisation exploit the major opportunities that fell like manna from heaven.

“Opportunities like deregulation, certain court cases, and the arrival of SEACOM,” Martin said.

Martin expressed understanding for Alston’s decision, saying that they have become more operationally focussed, with less emphasis on raw development.

“We now have quite a big complex network to run,” Martin said.

Andrew Alston has been an active member on the MyBroadband forums and members will likely recall his insights on topics such as Seacom’s perceived unreliability and the ADSL price versus quality debate.