Don't put all of your eggs in one basket...

11/10/2005 10:31 PM by Chris Toohey

Via my RSS feed reader, I picked up the following article from eWeek.com that speaks to the current RIM/NTP cage-match.

On the heels of reading this news, I got a call from a good friend of mine that works at a rather large organization (as luck would have it, he was reading the same article and thought to give me a call). While we had our thoughts on the issue, we did wholeheartedly agree on one thing: this doesn't sit too well for RIM.

And to echo that sentiment, he informed me that Sprint/Nextel was stopping by their corporate office to pitch some of their warez for corporate mobility solutions. I couldn't help but think of the FUD-fueled stampede of competing solutions-jockeys in the time when no one was certain of Lotus Notes / Domino's future that bombarded my phone and various email accounts when I was in a similar position... but is this FUD or, with this latest round of stock-droppings and legal maneuvering, is it really the time to start looking for your solutions somewhere else?!

I, for one, regardless of the outcome of things feel as though RIM will be just fine - if nothing else, they're getting smarter as a result of these issues they've had to face. My opinion is based on the fact that RIM is beginning to diversify their solutions portfolio and porting their solutions to non-RIM devices. From Nokia's to the whenever-it'll-be-released Treo 700w, an army of new devices will begin utilizing RIM's newly-ported solutions; an absolutely brilliant move in my opinion!

As the title of this entry suggests, I think it's a rule that the pursuit of non-diversified strategies will be the downfall of your project, your organization, and ultimately you. Let me clarify by providing an example: If I'm writing... say... an inventory program and write that program to run soley on one particular subset of handheld devices (say Symbian OS 60 Devices). I've spent all of this time, my resources, and based my project on the fact that these devices will be plentiful and in the marketplace for some time to come.

And tomorrow? With a *poof!*, Symbian OS isn't an option anymore. The OEM's can't use it on their devices, the customer's can't use any older devices that do run Symbian OS 60 for fear of 1) being unsupported or 2) being illegal.

You're inventory solution - no matter how slick, no matter how functional, and no matter how cheap you discount it to try and make anything off of it, soon won't be worth the dry-erase marker ink that was used to blueprint out the solution in the first place.

I guess it's not so much "Don't put all of your eggs in one basket...." as much as it's "Don't put your only egg in one basket that you don't own and aren't even holding the handle of..."

My friend informed me that they're going shopping for their 1500-seat mobile device solution in light of recent events... and I wonder how many other IT Decision Makers are calling their work-from-home-buddies-that-happen-to-blog and telling them the same thing?