To RIM: Don’t Change The Strategy, Change The Rules
A lot has been said and discussed about RIM’s downfall: indecisive leadership, inability to innovate at fast pace, and no clear path to recovery. I don’t disagree at all with the analysis and the interpretation of the situation, but I do disagree with the conclusion that many people are drawing and vehemently disagree with their [...]
Ooma Phone Service Goes Down, So Does the Website. Company Sleeps Through It.
The one thing a phone service can’t do is to simply disappear. And it is normally those times we realize how much of a lifeline it still is. Like I did, expecting a call from my Dad’s cardiologist re. his hospitalization. Waiting, waiting, I was getting p***d with the poor doc, when I noticed the [...]
Facebook and T-Mobile Launch Bobsled. With Huge Privacy Glitch. Or is it By Design? Skype, Google Voice and Telcos Beware, Anyway…
Out of left field, T-Mobile and Facebook launched Bobsled, a VOIP service that allows voice calls to anyone on your Facebook list for free. At this moment the entire blogging world is busy writing about it, so I skip the basics… and just run to some funny experience while testing it. First, here’s how you [...]
Control Swing
In 2007, Apple took the control from the carriers and put it in the hands of device makers when it launched the original iPhone. Here is an excerpt from a Wired article. For decades, wireless carriers have treated manufacturers like serfs, using access to their networks as leverage to dictate what phones will get made, [...]
Telcos Could Be The Future Enterprise Software Vendors For Small Businesses
Having worked on enterprise software product and go-to-market strategy for SMB (small and medium businesses), I can tell you that these are the most difficult customers to reach to, especially the S in SMB. It’s an asymmetric non-homogeneous market f…
Free Sometimes Comes at a Huge Cost
The other day I was having lunch with a bunch of technology entrepreneurs and the subject came up of the falling service levels we all experience. The conversation was particularly around the telecommunications field but could have easily been any aspect of commerce. The chap sitting next to me had a particular perception; When I [...]
Telcos and SaaS – An End to End SLA?
Recently The Unreasonablemen posted a critique of one of Krish’s posts. I’ll leave aside some of the more caustic comments he makes but focus on the thrust of what he said. To paraphrase the post, The UM is critical of those cloud computing commentators that seem to dismiss as a minor point the fact that [...]
SaaS and Telcos – the Perfect Companions?
I have a particular interest in SaaS aggregation. My background is in SMBs so I have (I believe) a real understanding of the time and other constraints within which SMBs work. Given these constraints there are some barriers to SaaS adoption (as opposed to already aggregated shrink wrapped software) due to the time and effort [...]
