Unfortunately, for me, the list in the “Fell Short” column was a lot longer than the “Exceeded Expectations” column.

Pros

Let’s start of with the positives, of which there are some.  The release of OS 2.0 introduced onboard email, contacts and calendar.  This is a very welcomed addition to the Playbook.  The implementation is well done.  For the email, I really liked the ability to have a unified inbox that not only had your email accounts, but also messages from social accounts like Twitter and LinkedIn.  I received a fair bit of correspondance through direct messages in Twitter and having them show up in my “inbox” alongside email was excellent.  The calendar is fairly well done as well, I particularly liked when glancing at the month view how the numbers for the dates grew larger with the number of meetings on that day.  It allowed for a quick glance when trying to pick a future date and easily finding a day where you had a lot of availability.

The browsing experience was a good one for me.  Sites loaded quickly, pages rendered as they should.  I liked the tabbing approach they use for having more than one browser window – the use of the smart bezel (swipe down from top) to show the hidden menu items was intuitive and worked well.  I did have a couple of occurrences where the browser crashed.  For example, I wanted to use read.amazon.com so I could use the Kindle cloud-based reader since there is no Kindle app for Playbook.  Unfortunately, the browser kept throwing me errors and eventually would crash/quite.  Outside of these few issues, the browser was a real pleasure to use for browsing.

This version of the OS also introduced the ability to create folders which worked well in order to organize applications into groups that meshed with my workflow.  The mechanism for creating folders was similar to the way it’s done on an iPad and is a very welcomed addition to the Playbook OS.

Lastly, you can indeed run Android apps with the new OS.  I was excited by this, because the lack of apps doesn’t allow you to do much with a tablet.  For some reason, RIM has buried Android apps in the Blackberry App World – you can’t tell which is which just by looking through the apps.  I am not sure why they haven’t created an area that highlights the apps (more on this below under Cons).  I managed to find some apps and they run fairly well. They launch a kind of shell (see pic to the right) that acts as a container for Android apps.  I used the WordPress app (which is an Android app) and it worked well. You should note, however, that just because there might be an app in the Android market, it doesn’t mean you can necessarily run it on the Playbook.  Those Android apps need to be recompiled and placed in the Blackberry App World store.  There is a way of sideloading apps (a technical term for hacking an app onto the device) but most people aren’t going to do that – they want apps they can simply download from an app store-like environment.

Cons

To begin summarizing the drawbacks, you need only look at what framed the themes in the Pros section of this post.  It’s 2012.  If we’re talking about “there is now onboard email” or “you can now create folders” for any tablet today, then we are immediately drawn to part of the issue.  While done well, those features described above are 1st generation tablet functions.  Every other tablet has had these things from the start years ago.  The iPad and Android tablets are several generations ahead of the Playbook and the Windows 8 Consumer Preview I downloaded puts increased distance between what Playbook is doing and what modern tablets are doing.  The biggest drawback I kept thinking about while using the Playbook was that there was nothing new.

The lack of apps was undoubtedly still the biggest stumbling block for me.  I began keeping a list each time I needed an app that I normally use, but I abandoned that list because it was growing long.  Multiple times each day I’d need an app that I normally use on my iPad only to find that I couldn’t find it in the Blackberry App World.  In other instances, when I did find the apps, they were poorly done and not at all as refined as on the iPad.  Evernote is an example of this.  I use this app constantly throughout the day and I was pleased when I saw it was available.  Unfortunately, the Playbook version of Evernote is but a shadow of the iPad and Android applications.  In instances where I couldn’t find an app I needed, I had to forgo what I planning to do (very frustrating), revert to using the app on my iPhone or in some cases use the web version via the Playbook browser (which then necessitated the need for WiFi).  I listed above that the ability to run Android apps was a Pro (and it is!) but there was a real lack of apps from the Android ecosystem that were available.  I looked for no less than 15-20 specific apps I have on my Galaxy Tab but couldn’t find them in the Blackberry App World.

I was also surprised that there is a lack of messaging apps – like BBM! – which again hobbles the device.  I’ve become use to now using messaging tools to chat with family, friends and colleagues and the lack of them on the Playbook had me pulling my iPhone out of my holster more often rather than just flipping from what I was doing on the Playbook to an app, responding and then returning to my previous app.  How RIM could omit such an important and often used tablet tool is puzzling.

Lack of applications aside, another thing that I was hoping would be resolved, but was a persistant problem, was the touchscreen.  It just isn’t as responsive as to what I’ve gotten use to.  In many cases when wanting to type in a field for example, I’d need to tap that area two, three (four, five) times before the cursor appeared there and the pop-up keyboard showed up on screen.  In some cases, having to repeatedly tap something onscreen would “buffer” those taps and suddenly I was in some area I didn’t want to be because of mis-tapping something that appeared on screen after I tapped.  This was frustrating.  Any good tablet must have a screen that is responsive – delays in what you touch and what you see totally kill the user experience and seriously impact productivity.

Lastly, the 7″ screen was an issue for me.  I don’t want to consider this as purely a Con, which is why I listed the size also as a Pro.  The smaller size is convenient for taking the Playbook around, but that convenience evaporated for me when I needed to use the device  for certain tasks.  Screen size is a personal preference and in many ways, it’s benefit or drawback is based on the task you are trying to complete, but for me, more times than not it was a hinderance.  I prefer the larger screens on tablet (same was true for the Android Galaxy tab…I simply found the 10″ to be more usable than the 7″ when I tested those).

All in all, releasing OS 2 for the Playbook has made the device more usable and more valuable.  It is a shame that it took so long for RIM to get the update out – if it had arrived a year ago (or had been the initial OS upon launch) it would have made the Playbook a stronger contender in the tablet market.  You can see glimmers of potential when you use the Playbook in it’s current form – here’s hoping that RIM approaches the next version strategically, meaning a) shorter release cycle b) increased and new functionality and c) aims at developing an ecosystem that delivers value to end-users.

I am glad to have given the Playbook a real world test where it became my day-to-day tablet.  I’m even happier, however, to now have my iPad back out of the drawer – not having it as my tablet for just under two weeks made me realize just how versatile a device it is for me.

You can watch the video below or head over to the Insegni Centre video channel as well.

Presentation on Social Intelligence from Insegni Centre on Vimeo.

OneNote for the iPad lets you create a series of Notebooks, collections of information.  You can integrate all kinds of content into these notebooks, making them versatile for many different types of daily usage.  Within each notebook, you can create various sections to organize whatever content you are assembling.  It has some decent formatting tools so you can make notes look good while working on the iPad.  I also like the ability to email notes from the app on the iPad to another user.  The email recipient receives an embedded version of the formatted note.  It’s not a picture, which is good, because it means that the recipient can edit the content when they receive it (and they don’t need OneNote).

The app is free, and with that you can have up to 500 notes.  If you want to go beyond that, you can purchase the upgrade for $14.99

If your organization is progressive and using Office365 then you can further find advantage to using OneNote for iPad.  The cloud version of OneNote in Office365 gives you easy, secure access from anywhere.  If your organization doesn’t use Office365, you can still take advantage of a cloud-based version of OneNote through Microsoft Windows Live.

Let’s hope that Microsoft continues to bring iPad versions of Office to the iOS platform.  It would be a win for them and for consumers.  Here’s hoping the current batch of rumours is true! In the meantime, grab OneNote and experience this great application for yourself.

Social Intelligence you ask?  Think Social Media Data + Business Intelligence!

I look forward to sharing a more detailed post tomorrow with snippets from an upcoming presentation I am giving.

In the meantime, to read the press release, please click here or read below.

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TORONTO, Feb. 15, 2012 /CNW/ – Project X Labs Ltd and Insegni Centre Inc. today announced a new solution that brings together Social Media Data and Business Intelligence (BI).  The solution, called LikeInsight^TM, aligns Social Media strategy, social data and a company’s existing data assets to increase the insights available to organizations.

As with all BI visualization solutions, richness of data and relevance is crucial.  Social data provides a level of relevance from some of the most active sources of data that enrich the sentiment analysis. Through this innovative solution, LikeInsight^TM allows organizations to segment their Facebook fans based on their interests and motivations, developing a never before available picture of their customers’ online sentiment.

Leveraging a jointly integrated process for business intelligence strategy and delivery, Project X Labs Ltd. and Insegni Centre Inc. have a solution to enable social insight for organizations in a way that has not been previously possible.

“Everyone is talking about Big Data. Working together we have built a solid framework to readily take advantage of some of the rich data that is available for our clients,” said Stephen Hayward, president of Project X Labs. “By partnering with Insegni Centre we’re able to take their proven strategic approach and Social understanding, combine it with our Rapid Results business intelligence visualization tools and create real results for current and new clients.”

“Social media usage by companies has been predominately a one-way marketing channel,” said Michael Ianni-Palarchio, Founder of Insegni Centre.  “The strategy of leveraging social media data has been an increasing business priority, and partnering with Project X Ltd and Project X Labs, a leader in business intelligence development and deployment, allows us to move clients from Social Media data strategy to Social Media Insight reality.”

For more information on LikeInsight^TM and how your organization can tap into the insight of your customers’ social media data, request a demonstration and an initial consultation.

About Project X Labs
Project X Labs combines innovative product development with rapid results thinking to bring global customers business intelligence and data visualization software products. Focused on breaking down the barriers around enterprise scale software and delivering solutions that show results in weeks, not months, Project X Labs is redefining access to business intelligence for every size company.   Project X Labs is a wholly owned subsidiary ofProject X Ltd. They can be found at www.pxlabs.ca.

About Insegni Centre Inc.
Insegni Centre is a strategy advisory firm that specializes in assisting organizations develop strategic positions across a wide variety of business technologies and solutions.  With a focus on understanding business objectives and ensuring that IT initiatives are strategically aligned to enable those goals, Insegni Centre utilizes an approach that focuses on rapid innovation to obtain strategic differentiation.  In the area of Business Intelligence (BI), Insegni Centre works to provide the strategic framework that allows companies to identify BI opportunities within their organization, develop their BI Vision & Objectives and define their BI Requirements.  To find out more visit us atwww.insegnicentre.com .

For further information:

Stephen Hayward - shayward@pxltd.ca  – 416.422.8900 ext 201
Michael Ianni-Palarchio - mip@insegnicentre.com - 416-900-1055 ext 100

I have often spoken, written and practice that for IT projects to be a success, they need to be rooted in strategy.  That being said, it’s imperative that change management is a part of that strategy.  Be sure to include a discussion on change management at the onset of your strategic planning exercise and ensure that it is embedded a process throughout implementation.

People often think that change management is something to be done at the end of a project, if it’s done at all.  This approach of tacking change management on at the end of an initiative is sure to cause bumps in your project deployment.  The technology is often the easy part of any implementation, with the people part and gaining acceptance being much more challenging.  While this is true, we often see the exact opposite in technology projects, where most of the attention is given to the technology, and the end-users are a secondary thought. On your next IT project, work to bring more balance to that effort and ensure that adequate attention and planning are given to managing the change that is being introduced to your organization.  After the initiative has been completed, be sure to go back and measure how well you did not only in the technical aspects of the project, but also in the areas of change.  If you do this, you will see the successes of your IT projects increase and that will make everyone in your organization happy.

Insegni Centre was created out of the idea that in order for companies to truly realize the value of technology, they need to approach it strategically. By starting with business goals & objectives and assessing where in the technology spectrum a company falls, the Insegni Approach to strategy will allow organizations to experience the rapid realization of value from their IT investments.

The word Insegni is Italian for “teach” and that is the crux of our approach, where members from our client teams teach us about their business and we in turn bring knowledge & resources for technology usage. Our goal is to learn quickly, foster mutual learning between our clients and our team, and to ultimately create innovative strategies for leveraging technology. It is a client-centric approach where we integrate members of the client team and the Insegni team so that an intimate understanding of the business is coupled with the best practices of strategic IT. The Insegni Approach delivers the rigor of classic strategy, coupled with a nimbleness and creativity that organizations demand in today’s dynamic marketplace.

As I said earlier, stay tuned for some follow-on exciting news including a new joint-service offering in the area of social media and business intelligence,  the launch of an upcoming strategy book and the creation of an innovation centre where clients can come onsite and participate in our unique strategic workshops to create breakthrough innovation strategies for their use of technology to create new advantages in their businesses.

Thanks to everyone who have been so supportive and enthusiastic about this new venture!

This dated model of IT has been radically (and thankfully) changing within companies today where IT is viewed as a strategic asset rather than a necessary evil.  Progressive IT leaders work hard to make their IT resources champions of innovation within organizations to ensure that business goals and objectives can be supported.  We’ve all heard about the “consumerization of IT” – the idea that consumer technology (like iPads) is being brought into organizations and is driving what IT needs to support.  This is true, but there is another exciting aspect to this trend.  That is the “technifying of consumers“!

By technifying of consumers I mean this, that our end users in organizations are more sophisticated than they were before.  They are more technical from the point of view that they leverage technology in numerous ways outside the organization.  My strategic approach has always been to learn from my clients or the organization I’ve joined with regard to their business.  The end user is always going to know more about the business than an IT person. The end user is the subject matter expert and now that they’ve been technified, as an IT leader I have this wonderful opportunity to recruit them into the strategic IT planning cycle.  Today’s end users will brainstorm great ideas to how different technology can be used to enhance their business.  That is a fantastic paradigm as it sets up progressive organizations to realize exponential value from IT.

To capitalize on this trend, however, IT leaders need to transform their IT group.  You have to create an inviting space for end-users to come to so that they can bring those ideas to the IT team.  You also have to evaluate and change your IT processes and procedures so that they are more enabling.  Rather than being threatened by end-users and their technology requests, progressive IT teams should be welcoming and look for ways to enable those ideas, not block them.  I find it frustrating when inside an organization and I see IT teams hiding behind corporate IT rules (often cloaked under the need for security) so that they can effectively block any good ideas that come from within.  Too often companies look to transform their IT groups by simply offshoring the support function for tier one support and having a bunch of runners to handle break fix issues.  Sure this reduces costs but does it allow for innovation.  In my experience the answer is no.

Instead of embracing that model, or being stuck in the old “IT-against-the-company” paradigm, begin the process to truly change your IT team from “break-fix” people, to thought leaders & enablers.  Carry out a strategic organizational redesign where you look to support the people in your company, not just the hardware in your data centre.  Done correctly, this new paradigm will unlock untold potential for innovation, yield efficiencies in your business and ultimately give you a greater competitive advantage in the market.

That’s a great question.  It ensures you don’t just run off and start at the top of your list or worse, in some reactive fashion just focusing on the latest fire. In today’s blog post I will provide you with a way to take your identified risks and do some analysis on them.

I am going to use my favourite 2-by-2 matrices to perform two sets of analysis on a hypothetical risk list.  Let’s say you’ve completed a thorough inventory of risks within your own organization and have generated the follow list of risks.

1. Backup power not sufficient for long power outage
2. Data being copied onto USB sticks despite corporate policy
3. Security for server room doors
4. Data storage of backups not being done offsite
5. Lack of processes to audit IT usage of systems
6. Need for penetration testing for network
7. Redundant servers for email 2 years out of warranty; may fail.
8. Laptops are not encrypted; risk of data being comprised if lost

Risk Score

This is a hypothetical list and short one at that (I’ve seen some lists that have 20-25 items on them.  I’ve kept it short because it will suffice for illustrative purposes.  When you look at the list it’s hard to know where to start.  What’s most important?  The first step is to establish a Risk Score. For each item you ask yourself two important questions a) what is the likelihood that this risk will happen, and b) if it does happen, what is the impact to my organization.  Score each of those questions on a scale of 1 to 10 where 1 is LOW and 10 is HIGH.  Once you’ve done that, you can plot each risk on a 2×2 like the one I’ve embedded to the right (click to enlarge).  Immediately you can see in the top right quadrant the risks that should be keeping you up at night!  In non-technical terms, those are known as “scary risks”.  Now you might be tempted to just run off and begin tackling those items, but don’t do that.  Not yet.  Now we need to do the second piece of analysis.

Risk Prioritization

Remember how for each risk listed above we gave them a score, one for likelihood to happen and the second for impact if it happened.  Good, now add those two numbers together and divide by 2.  Now you have your Combined Risk Score for each item.  Now for each risk ask yourself this question, “how complex will it be to address this risk?”  In this question, complexity is a combination of how hard the work will be, how much time it will take, how much money it will take and how much change it might introduce to your organization.  Come up with a score between 1 and 10 for this Complexity Score.  When you’ve done that you can then plot each risk on a new 2×2 with the Combined Risk Score and the Complexity Score.  This piece of analysis will now provide you a snapshot on a single slide that easily depicts where you should start.  Risks that have a HIGH Combined Risk Score but a LOW Complexity Score are your low hanging fruit.  Typically, you should start there and develop the rest of your plan accordingly.

You can see that with only the first half of the analysis, you’d be faced with risks 2,7,8 all having a serious impact and high likelihood to occur.  What if you couldn’t do all of them though…where would you start?  By layering in the second piece of analysis, it becomes clearer that issues 2 and 8 are the easier to begin with in this example.

I hope that you found these two tools useful in prioritizing your own risk.  If you are having trouble identifying or prioritizing risks, drop me a line.  I’d be happy to chat and talk about possible ways forward.

I’m talking about the Bloomberg TV+ app – after having installed it a short while ago, I find that I am often opening it each day when I want to get some good business content.  The content itself is excellent, but content alone doesn’t make a good app.  The app itself has an excellent user interface to allow for a natural ease of use.  It’s packed with various video feeds and dynamically updates itself.  It gives you a mix of On Demand content but also the ability to watch live content.  The other awesome thing is the ability to have video sent via AirPlay to my Apple TV when I’m using the app at home.  Add to that the ability to create your own Playlists and you have a tremendous app delivering top notch content.  Truly a great user experience.

I encourage you to check it out for yourself.  Once you’ve had a chance to use it, please feel free to let me know what you thought of it via the comments.  Getting end-user feedback is always a pleasure and highly valuable to me.

Happy App Wednesday!