The three corners of the Information Strategy Triangle provide an intriguing insight into how RIM has tried and not been able to compete with their peers and have failed to regain their lost market presence.

For a technology company, RIM had unique selling points for the core product (mobile phones). Secure communication through email and instant messaging helped RIM penetrate the enterprise and consumer markets respectively. However, blindsided by products from Google and Apple, RIM was slow to react. Their Information Systems failed to realize the reasons why Apple, Samsung and Google succeeded. User experience is considered to be the primary reason behind Apple’s success and Google’s OEM partnerships that allowed others to offer an experience similar to the iPhone helped Samsung, HTC and others. The lack of innovation and relying on their laurels, RIM’s information systems failed the company. This led to RIM trying newer business strategies and products.

RIM, impacted by the lack of rapid innovation and products, decided to branch out into newer mobile computing market segments like tablet computing. The product did not meet the expectations since the company’s Information Systems still weren’t able to grasp the market demands. The company then looked at alterntive business models like licensing their software to become a software & services player. This consideration was accompanied by them looking at a possible sale of their hardware manufacturing division. Unfornately the leadership, the investors were not on board which led to a major organizational shift in RIM.

Trying to keep up with the loss of brain power, the company felt they needed a new vision and restructuring from the top. As a result the CEOs of the company asked to stepped down. The failure to adjust the three corners of the Info Strategy Triangle at the same time, RIM has not been able to adopt and adapt.

Drafted with inputs from Varun Kumar

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The Information Systems Triangle & RIM’s Failure

I came to India for a month long vacation and traveled to many places in North India. I spent so much time on wheels that sitting at home I feel bored out of my wits. I went to the world’s highest cricket ground. I stayed at a palace. I visited the Golden Temple and a pretty classy lounge. All these events I can relive as I scroll through my Foursquare History. Unfortunately, Foursquare does not let me club these visits into a group that I can call my North India 2011 trip which would be a part of my Places I Visited In India During 2011-12 Vacation. I created a life event on Facebook, tagged my cousins and added all the locations but for some absurd reason, I can only add one picture. I clicked and shared many.

Foursquare has lists which I will use due to the lack of a better service within Foursquare. Facebook has given up on Places. It is no more about Checkins on Places. A life event of where you were is more relevant to your Facebook Timeline now, Facebook perhaps realizes that.

If only Foursquare asked me when I checked in to an Airport, Bus Stand or a Railway Station that if this was a new trip and then allowed me to flag each subsequent check in as part of this trip it would make for the simplest solution to an aspect of location services that doesn’t exist today. If Foursquare could then present this in a manner that could make me relive those moments with pictures, it will be more than just me checking in to a location. There will be an emotional connect that I can share with friends and family. Sending them a link to this “trip” would make my life easy and theirs joyful as they go through the images and places. The story will tell itself…

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Plethora Of Location Services, None A Travelogue Make

Click here to view the embedded video.

The TellMe video I mentioned in the video can be found here.

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iOS5 vs WP7

But that changes today.

I bought a MacBook Air sometime back and I like it. I am not a fan of OS X, I simply feel less productive when I am using it. I have setup TeamViewer on my Dell XPS (which is now my desktop) and the Air. I don’t have Photoshop and a lot of other useful Windows utilities on the Air, I RD into my XPS16 to get a lot of my work done. And it works fine. I did not have Office for Mac on my Air for a long time and used Office 2010 on my Dell through TeamViewer! It works and saves me HDD space.

Which brings me to Chrome’s Remote Desktop plugin announced today. Microsoft’s Remote Desktop utilities aren’t useful. Period. I can’t RD from my college computer into my XPS16 since I don’t have privileges to configure RD. But from Chrome, I can. So essentially, I can access all my passwords, bookmarks etc. using Chrome’s sync and access all my files on the XPS16 through the browser! Straightforward and easy!

This brings me to Chromebooks, those netbooks now become useful portable lightweight computers that can be used to access your more powerful computers to get “real” work done.

Google has just upped the browser game. Chrome is now shaping to be the perfect Windows complement.

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Chrome’s Remote Desktop Plugin Makes Chromebooks Useful

Bezos gave what I call as straight-face presentations. In this case the presenter doesn’t show a lot of emotions and hand gestures are kept to a minimum. Steve Ballmer is more of an animated presenter—he likes to excite the crowd. I was sitting in a lecture during the Amazon keynote and saw a recording on a crappy 360p YouTube stream shared by Amazon.

The keynote and Bezos were being compared to Steve Jobs’ Apple keynotes and the comparisons are justified. The Amazon Silk team video at the end was straight out of Apple’s keynote guidelines. Of course Amazon differentiated theirs with sketch animations–a nice touch, not very inspiring though.

Watching the keynote, I got a feeling that Bezos was quite disappointed about Bloomberg getting all the information beforehand. The only thing worse than that is having all your announcements leaked and your demos failing on stage—fortunately that didn’t happen. Back to the keynote, a risk in straight face presentations is expecting cheers and claps as you go along—validation that the crowd is into what you’re saying. Unfortunately for Bezos that did not happen. The build up to the $99 price drop was evident and the lack of audience participation was obvious. Bezos did his best by quoting how journalists opined that a $99 Kindle would be revolutionary and (shockingly) no one in a room filled with journalists applauded. It was depressing to see such lack of audience participation.

The journalists knew what was coming and Bezos wasn’t excited about showing what they had anymore. Bezos’ announcement of the $79 Kindle was met with the same reaction, or lack thereof. His unveiling style did not help either. Jobs presenting the world with the MacBook Air out of a manila envelope was simple, elegant and made a point. Bezos failed to drive the point of how small the new Kindles are compared to the iPad.

The Fire is a big deal for Amazon and the world knowing about it before the keynote would be a crushing blow for any presenter. Which brings me to the Fire demos. While talking about the music app, Bezos played Adele’s Fire–a nice touch. The other thing I noticed was how Bezos timed each of his words during the X-Men playback, a clear sign of him practicing this to perfection only to be undone by the great sleuthing at Bloomberg. Here’s the X-Men clip with Bezos timing his words according to the background score:

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Analyzing Jeff Bezos’ Keynote