Eric Novikoff

AT&T: The iPhone's Achilles' Heel

I've noticed the same problems that this article complains about with my BlackBerry Bold on AT&T. It's very irritating. On the other hand, it's hard to be mad at them (though frustrated is easy) because they give such great customer service.

RIMs Latest Apple Apps Won't Catch on Well: Here's Why

I think the bigger issue is that RIM doesn't know what it's doing when it comes to selling phones. Increasingly, people are being seduced by the BlackBerry's cool hardware, but RIM insists on restricting their big advantage - enterprise-grade email - to their corporate users. BIS, with it's lack of history and direct server connections, is a joke. And to get real corporate email, you have to either pay huge monthly sums to a BES server company, or you have to install an obscene combination of BES and Exchange software into your own data center, together with hiring a certified expert to run it. Where does the small business or mail-savvy consumer fit in here?
All the while, Microsoft Windows Mobile has reproduced every BES feature, and better - and it's easily available to small business using a variety of mail servers, including the inexpensive and capable Kerio, which requires no administrator.
I can't believe I'm recommending a Microsoft Product, but in this case, RIM has lost to Microsoft.

Cloud Computing: Could Customer Service Be Its Waterloo?

Our company is founded on the value proposition of delivering outsourced operations services, and we moved to become a cloud provider because it complemented our services offerings. Our founders come from an enterprise background and we each experienced a lot of frustration with outside (and inside) IT services that didn't quite manage to fulfill the needs of our business units to deploy projects quickly and easily at small incremental cost, so we wanted to fulfill that need. What we've found over 18 months of being in business is that many of the customers who come to us, come because of the operations and support services we offer, but that we also have considerable business from people who simply shop on price or choose us for other reasons (security, reliability, etc.) and don't purchase full operations services or even telephone support because they pride themselves in their technical capabilities. There's definitely room in the market for a variety of approaches, since the potential base of buyers for cloud computing is so diverse.