5th Annual RIM Wireless Enterprise Symposium (WES)

The annual RIM Wireless Enterprise Symposium (held May 14-18, 2006) has become quite predictable. Not that that is necessarily bad; The event remains a "who's who" of the BlackBerry carrier and partner elite (a high value wireless executive schmooze-fest.) The fact that it is highly attended by this profile alone makes it worth attending. Attendance was definitely up, especially among international attendees, and the Gaylord Palms facility and preparation were top-notch!


Keynote Speeches
The keynotes were a little less than awe inspiring. The highlight, by far, was Jim Balsillie's assertion that Microsoft has been "dicking around" trying to figure out how to do wireless solutions. His flippant remark was almost a "come-and-get-me" or “catch-me-if-you-can” style dare. The balances of the speeches were the standard “We’re #1” rhetoric.

Technical Information
For those that have attended any WES in the past, the quality of the information has been "dumbed down" presumably to not overtax the minds of all of the new international attendees with the flood of information. As always, the technical roadmap information remains at the 50,000 foot level and delivery dates are far on the horizon. To really get the low down, you need to corner one of the RIM techies and try to extract the real truth. Luckily the Canadians generally like to drink.

The Sponsors & Parties
Having attended all 5 WES shows, what has been most interesting is to watch the big companies come and go. Many of the bigger sponsors of past years were largely absent or reduced their presence.

REGARD’s Partner Party on Monday night was attended by a few hundred fellow sponsors and customers. The DJ was a nice touch and the drink coupons were in high demand. Some clever attendee found the color copier in the business center as a good way to bring along more colleagues for free drinks and desserts. The REGARD team didn’t mind the party crashers!







Sadly, the competing BIG carrier party spend levels were WAY down from past years. Verizon and Cingular both had nice small parties but strictly limited the number of attendees. T-Mobile typically was the big spender at WES with headline acts and big parties. Not this year…but being the bargain basement leader in the US must have takes its toll. Sprint/Nextel didn’t show up with a big party either. This must mean the fight for subscribers has now moved to a different battlefield.

As always RIM threw a great blowout party on Tuesday night with the Stray Cat’s Brian Setzer backed up by his 18 piece orchestra. The free food and bottom-shelf booze were all flowing nicely!



Platform Vendors
Antenna, AppForge, Dexterra, Flowfinity, METAmessge, Vaultus, Vettro, Donner and Blitzen (last two of course are Santa’s reindeer) are all slugging it out to be the middleware platform vendors of choice. Most have chosen a tight vertical focus, some remain horizontal and ALL promise a cross platform play to Microsoft. Everyone has their success story to tell with a particular software vendor or five. What is clear is there IS NO CLEAR Rudolph in this crowded space. Our hunch is a big player will end up owning all of them or pushing them out. Don't count Sybase, SAP or even RIM out of this race! We believe most of these companies will end up with a reasonably attractive Sendia Play, but it is doubtful any will be crowned the winner without someone big stepping in to the game.


Point Solutions
Steve Beauregard, President and Founder of REGARD Solutions Corporation presented R-Approval Case Studies. In addition to R-Approval and R-Survey products which were both received nicely, there were a number of noteworthy solutions that should gain traction.

Newcomer QuickPlay showed a PODCasting solutions and ScoreMobile. The latter being a push sports score board with a very clean navigation interface and the Berry Casting solution, with broand consumer appeal, gained a lot of attention from the RIM. Telenav spent and extraordinary amount on the show. There navigation system for the 75xx series BlackBerry is very nice, but this space is crowded as well.

Summary
We still believe the opportunities are very significant with BlackBerry even in spite of the 4.1 scalability issues they are desperately trying to keep quiet. The vibe on the street is that NOBODY thinks Microsoft has it figured out how to do wireless right. They have afterall...been “dicking around” for the past several years. As for where the opportunities lie … we will reserve those thoughts for the REGARD Advisory Board and internal strategy discussions.