iAsiaWorks
iAsiaWorks was an ISP and Internet data center (IDC) that briefly sprung to life between 2000 and 2001 during the final days of the dot-com era.
Description
It performed an IPO on the NASDAQ as IAWK on Aug 19th, 2000. iAsiaWorks began as a Taiwan & Korean ISP called AUNet, raised additional capital, and purchased AT&T's Hong Kong ISP business in early 2000. The newly merged company offered leased line and datacenter space to companies across Asia Pacific, but with a particular focus on Taiwan, Hong Kong, and South Korea. In each of these markets it built 100,000-square-foot (9,300 m2) datacenter facilities, which remained mostly empty until it closed its doors in mid to late 2001. The facilities were built to the highest specifications available in Asia. In the fall of 2001 iAsiaWork’s facility in Seoul was purchased by Dacom where it has consolidated its ‘KIDC’ operations. Its former facility in Hong Kong is now occupied by Singtel. The status of the facility in Taiwan remains unknown.
Now Defunct
iAsiaWorks is now completely defunct, although the domain name appears to currently be owned by former employees of the US Engineering Department. Recently, it has reappeared on the Internet in the form of an iAsiaWorks Memorial. It is believed that Tom Cross and Nick Levay and Randy Bias of the Industrial Memetics Institute are responsible for this, but The Institute is currently not responding to requests for comment on the matter. Historical iAsiaWorks websites can be found on the Internet Archive .