Showing posts with label IIPM News. Show all posts
Showing posts with label IIPM News. Show all posts

Wednesday, April 24, 2013

“We’re looking at optimisation in terms of the right structures”

Carlo Chiarello, Executive Vice President – Smartphone division, Research In Motion talks to B&E about the future strategic direction of the company

B&E: After the appointment of Thorsten Heins as CEO in January 2012 how are things shaping up at Research In Motion?
Carlo Chiarello (CC)): It’s business as usual, specifically in terms of what Thorsten has announced. We’re looking at optimisation in terms of having the right structures at the right places. As we have something important to announce, the media will be involved.

B&E: You have recently launched the BlackBerry Mobile Fusion software which will also support competing smartphones. Don’t you think the move undermines your ability to promote BlackBerry smartphones in the enterprise segment?
CC: Not at all. We feel very strongly that we are absolutely open to making sure our enterprise customers have the best management solutions possible for all their devices. And BlackBerry Fusion is a result of a lot of our enterprise customers saying that they need solutions for other products that couldn’t really use our network infrastructure. We don’t think it’s bad at all. We think that we are helping a lot of enterprises do the job that we started doing for BlackBerry by allowing other devices to use it as well.

B&E: So the BlackBerry 10 devices would be based on the QNX Operating System...
CC: At its core, yes. QNX has been a great company that we acquired a while back. So the BlackBerry 10 infrastructure would be based on technology developed by QNX.

B&E: The PlayBook was the first device to use a version of the QNX OS and had some compatibility issues with your network. Do you think devices with the new OS will manage to utilise RIM’s entire network infrastructure?
CC: I’m not sure how severe this issue was, but the BlackBerry Mobile Fusion will not just help secure other platforms such as iOS and Android but will also take care of issues that customers might have encountered with the PlayBook, additionally supporting BlackBerry 10 devices.

B&E: The BlackBerry Messenger is one of those features which make BlackBerry devices extremely lucrative for customers. Are you planning to introduce BBM on the PlayBook anytime soon?
CC: That is something that our development teams are looking at. I can’t make a commitment in terms of when it’s going to happen. But what we’ve found so far, from people using the PlayBook, is that they use it with their BlackBerry device. The BlackBerry Bridge app makes BBM work on the tablet. So we’re still exploring. If it’s feasible, then we’ll definitely have a BBM app for the PlayBook.


Source : IIPM Editorial, 2013.
An Initiative of IIPM, Malay Chaudhuri
 
For More IIPM Info, Visit below mentioned IIPM articles
 
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Friday, April 12, 2013

Time to unleash the green growth

Be it climate change, water scarcity, biodiversity loss, or ecosystem degradation; green economics can weave together these strands. According to ‘TEEB’ report, ecosystem delivers essential services worth $21 to $72 trillion a year while the commercial opportunities in natural resource sector alone could be between $2.1-6.3 trillion by 2050. The implication: green and growth can go hand in hand.

Seeking Competitive Gains
Given the prevailing environmental and economic challenges, countries and corporations have come up with policies and strategies in order to shift towards cleaner and greener business practices along with green innovation. The International Energy Agency (IEA) is of the view that greener business practices will have important economic pay-offs in terms of resource efficiency. IEA estimates that 17% (approximately $46 trillion) increase in energy investment is required globally between 2010 and 2050 to deliver low-carbon energy systems, which will consequently yield a cumulative fuel savings worth $112 trillion. As a competitive factor, companies are seeking competitiveness gains through clean and green technology investment.

Environmetnal Challenges

OECD, in its recent report, states that the impact of economic activity on environmental systems are creating imbalances which are putting economic growth and development at risk. As a matter of fact, existing loss of biodiversity and degradation has already had dramatic consequences for business; soil erosion in Europe is estimated to cost 53 euro per hectare per annum. A 2007 report of the World Bank estimated that the cost of excessive use of groundwater in China was in the range of 0.3% of GDP (the cost fell largely on the agriculture sector). The TEEB 2010 report estimates the annual economic loss caused by introduction of agricultural pests in the US, UK, India, Brazil et al to be more than $100 billion.


Source : IIPM Editorial, 2012.
An Initiative of IIPM, Malay Chaudhuri
 
For More IIPM Info, Visit below mentioned IIPM articles
 
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Thursday, April 04, 2013

Search for The Next ‘Hundred Zeroes’!

Technology Companies are setting up VC funding Arms, Raising optimism of a Great Inorganic Leap forward. Seriously, aren’t corporate venture funds already too overrated?

When Google founders Sergey Brin & Larry Page decided to take up VC funding of $12.5 million from Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers in 1998, they told the VC firm’s partner John Doerr that they were willing to hire an outside CEO, but they backtracked a few months later; saying they would like to go on their own. They were then taken by Doerr to meet a number of CEOs like Andy Grove of Intel, Jeff Bezos of Amazon & Steve Jobs of Apple to really appreciate what a CEO’s job entailed. Finally, they relented on the outsider proposition, provided the outsider was Steve Jobs and no one else, before finally being convinced to explore further!

Considering Steve Jobs’ iconic personality and a high probability of a clash of equals, that may not have been a genuinely good idea. But this anecdote from Steven Levy’s book titled In the Plex: How Google Thinks, Works & Shapes Our Lives, really underscores how Google’s founders never really were comfortable letting their baby being run by anyone but themselves. The inevitable happened this year, when Page took the reins as CEO and Eric Schmidt became Chairman. Page already is talking about taking Google back to its start up days when it comes to the culture of innovation.

They have always been concerned about the company slowing down on growth. Levy mentions that they once fired all the middle managers for that! In fact, though not all may take such extreme action, that reflects a genuine concern of technology companies beyond a certain size, as they risk getting blown over by the next disruptive technology in a dynamic industry. This fact has proved true for companies like Microsoft, Yahoo!, HP, BlackBerry, Dell, IBM and Google itself, to an extent. Apart from a number of initiatives to get the company on the innovation drive again, which include working on book search and autonomous vehicles, one of the Google’s most ambitious moves is with respect to its VC firm Google Ventures, which has earmarked $200 million to fund promising start up companies (touted as a move to find the next Google?). That’s significantly large by VC standards and Google claims that it has a special secret algorithm that can help it find what the next big start ups would be. Apart from Google itself, a number of big technology names are on the list of corporate venture funds like IBM, Intel, SAP, Microsoft and National Semiconductor. But how successful can this VC model led by technology companies be?


Source : IIPM Editorial, 2012.
An Initiative of IIPM, Malay Chaudhuri
For More IIPM Info, Visit below mentioned IIPM articles

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