Below follows an article about Atlas Technology Group quitting Malta. The article does not cover the full story - since the truth would be to0 difficult to print. However, an ex-employee of this company gave us the inside story.
AtlasTG chief, Minister Austin Gatt and Claudio Grech (Smart City CEO) at the launch on AtlasTG in Malta
Atlas Technology Group ultimately left Malta because they were fed up with being expected to pay huge sums of money to Icon, the company run by Gege Gatt, the son of the not so honorable Austin Gatt - head of the IT Ministry. They where also exasperated by the poor infratructure, internet outages, erratic power supply and to add insult to injury - the very high costs of these services. Difficulties in recruiting qualified people, and the expectation to employ political party stooges also did not help.
The CEO of Smart City is now Claudio Grech. Claudio qualification for the job is having been IT miniter's side kick for many years and its widely rumoured that Claudio and Austin may be on very intimate terms.
Articles follows:
The company that promised 600 jobs in the ICT industry and professed to be 'the first ICT corporation to publicly declare intention to be tenants in Smart City' packed its bags and relocated to the US a few days ago, before Smart City has even started hosting its first tenants.
Two years ago, Atlas Technology Group said during a press conference – addressed also by a boastful IT Minister Austin Gatt – that the company will be employing 600 in the Malta operation.
The company opened its headquarters in Malta in September 2006 employing 12 persons. The plan was to employ another 75 persons by end 2007 and the rest of the 500 employees when Smart City opens.
In the last week of August, the IT company shut its Malta operations with the headcount amounting to a dozen employees.
The closure of Atlas Technology Group went completely unnoticed with the IT Ministry, still headed by Austin Gatt, keeping a stony silence on the matter.
The only announcement was hidden in a release by AtlasTG published on Yahoo’s Biz news. In it, the company launched new software and said that “it has realigned the applications support staff to better serve the bulk of the current business, which is in North America.”
“The present customer base while requiring 24/7 support does not generate the volume of night time (US) workload to properly utilise the Malta support center. The company has closed the Malta support centre,” said AtlasTG
When setting its Malta centre, the company executive director, Robert Altinger said: "Atlas Technology Group wants to be one of the first ICT corporations to publicly declare our intention to be tenants in Smart City, where the presence of true state of the art communications infrastructure will give an enormous positive boost to our business.”
AtlasTG provides outsourced application software support services and software for clients with information technology functions worldwide. The company specializes in remotely supporting custom-built applications and networks using proprietary process, monitoring, and management systems.
In the press conference announcing AtlasTG operations in Malta on 19 September 2006, Minister Austin Gatt had said that: “Atlas’s reasons for choosing Malta confirmed that we [the government] have made the right choices over the past few years."
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