REGARD Venture Solutions at VentureNet 2007

On Friday, October 5, 2007, REGARD Venture Solutions will introduce a software incubator division for "seed" stage entreprenuers with ground-breaking ideas, but limited budgets.

REGARD Venture Solutions infuses expert intellectual & technological capital to innovative entrepreneurs. We focus on emerging growth-stage technology companies that either need to transform ideas into a working proof of concept, or need to evolve a software product for investment consideration.

Incubated on a full or partial equity payment basis, our ideal candidates are focused on (i) software as a service, (ii) mobility & wireless solutions, or (iii) internet-based businesses. REGARD Corporation and Indian subsidiary REGARD Solutions, Pvt. Ltd employ their 14-years of expert software design, rapid application development, and commercial product launch experience to quickly build the entrepreneur’s vision.

REGARD will be exhibiting at VentureNet at The Westin South Coast Plaza in Orange County.

BlackBerry - Not Just for Business Anymore

We are quickly closing in on a decade that RIM's BlackBerry platform has owned the enterprise messaging space. Hands down it has dominated all would be "BlackBerry Killers" with ease. Some newcomers overheated, some overrated, some oversized, and ALL over-promised!

With that, RIM has been late to the game of consumer features such as integration of camera, removable memory, and most notably multi-media functionality. This is all predictable as these features were not in high demand especially among security conscience IT types.

In the September 2007 edition of Entrepreneur Magazine (page 38), I am quoted as saying “the BlackBerry isn’t just for business anymore.”

When REGARD released the RV-Pileup game for Sony Pictures Entertainment, my kids began fighting over who is going to play games on my BlackBerry. It got so bad, that I put together three older units from spare parts in the REGARD BlackBerry graveyard and loaded them with every game I could find.

Everyone was happy until I switched to the BlackBerry 8300…now the new fight is over who is going to use my BlackBerry to take pictures.

Our children are growing up in a vastly different high-tech world! Below is a picture my 4 year old took this morning in my office using the Curve…ironically of Robin Williams on the RV movie poster. Don't expect too much...she is after all just 4!

Let the Smartphone WARS Begin!

BlackBerry Curve vs. Apple iPhone






Today marks the beginning of a new era in the Smartphone battle in the consumer space. RIM, as the category killer for mobile email and PIM integration in the enterprise market, first invaded the consumer Smartphone market with the introduction of the BlackBerry Pearl last year. Albeit lacking the needed integration of the multimedia functions to make it a meaningful consumer competitor, the Pearl was a very solid first offering which was quickly reflected in the stock price (NASDAQ: RIMM). Further, the Pearl did give the enterprise users already familiar with BlackBerry their first taste of a camera phone experience whetting their appetite for more consumer centric functionality.

With all of the iPhone hype, I decided to upgrade to the BlackBerry Curve (8300) to see (i) how the BlackBerry multimedia offering has advanced and (ii) to prepare myself for a comparison to the iPhone features.

Let me preface by disclosing that REGARD is one of RIM's longest standing BlackBerry partners and I have tried every single BlackBerry model RIM has released with few exceptions.

In a word... "WOW" ...Not since the introduction of the 7200 series has RIM made such a GIANT LEAP FORWARD!

Thankfully, they have once again "nailed" keyboard feel. After a few mediocre efforts, the Curve returns to an easy to use, hard to "fat finger" layout. The trackball is solid and more efficient than repositioning the hand to use the TrackWheel. It is the best composing experience since the 950 (and that is saying A LOT).

Now this is where the fun begins...within minutes of activating my 8300, I had loaded a 2 GB memory card with pictures of my wife and kids. I also loaded hundreds of songs with playlists which I listened to on the stereo headset at the gym. When a phone call arrived the Curve paused the music. I made dinner plans to meet another couple at Boss Sushi (highly recommended on Yelp and now by me) and, upon disconnecting from the call, the BlackBerry resumed the music right where it left off...a very nice experience!

After sushi, we took our friends at a Hollywood night club. Despite the dim lighting, I took a group self portrait and forwarded it to Flickr right from the BlackBerry Curve.



Today the iPhone was officially launched exclusively on the AT&T network today. I have read much of the iPhone hype and, being an iPod consumer that has also purchase car and external speaker accessories, I am very much looking forward to trying the Apple offering as well.

A few words of warning to those anxious customers that leaving their current carrier in the mad iPhone rush to AT&T. The iPhone "suggested" rate plans top at $99 plan giving you only 1350 voice minutes a month. The profile of consumer that will drop the $500+ to purchase the Smartphone, will likely blow through 1350 minutes very quickly. So if you simply ask for the top iPhone plan, you are likely to get hit with huge overage charges. There are 2000, 4000 and 6000 plans also available, but you have to know to ask for them.

This is amazingly clever of Apple and AT&T to craft these plans a such. Almost as clever, that is, as RIM announcing blockbuster earnings on the eve of the iPhone launch and skyrocketing their stock (NASDAQ: RIMM) $34 in one day!

WES 2007

The annual “BlackBerry Lovefest” (formally known as RIM’s Wireless Enterprise Symposium or “WES”) draws to a close today in Orlando Florida. If the movement in RIMM stock price this week is any indicator, it was a very successful show for RIM.

Having now attended all six WES events, I’d say this year had an especially unique blend of old and new faces with many of the veteran BlackBerry Alliance Partners opting to send smaller teams and, in many cases, not exhibiting on the showcase floor. With overflowing enthusiasm, the new kids on the block sent large teams to explain to the BlackBerry faithful how their new product or service is a little bit better than the competitor across the floor.

RIM filled up any idle booth space advertising their new “Top Shelf” professional services, training and accessory offerings. These offerings have been years in the coming and will effectively serve the largest customers in North America. These teams are intentionally lean to keep overhead down with the tradeoff being scalability.

The prevailing theme at WES was “BlackBerry is not just for business anymore…it is an integral part of your personal life.” Based on the number of people walking around the show at all hours of the day and night frozen in the "BlackBerry Prayer" stance, I would have to agree.

I was very encouraged that the other prevalent theme was “wireless applications.” This was true among RIM, the carriers and customers alike. Even Jim Belushi at the evening party used the term 2 or 3 times during his performance as did the Robin Wilson (lead singer of the Gin Blossoms) during the AT&T Wireless Party at the House of Blues.

New BlackBerry Smartphones

This consumer focused impression perfectly introduced the BlackBerry 8300 or “Curve”. This sexy little number morphs the QWERTY keyboard with many of the features that made the Pearl such a winner. The Curve gets an upgraded 2 Megapixel camera, a stereo headset jack, stereo Bluetooth A2DP capability and spell checker. To round out the multimedia offering, more formats will be supported (i.e. WMA files) and Roxio for BlackBerry will be provided on the desktop to manage all the pix, movies & music files.

The other exciting smartphone announcement was the BlackBerry 8830 for US based Verizon Wireless and Sprint. This little beauty will be the first of its kind offering seamless international roaming on GSM/GPRS while connecting via the CDMA/1x/EVDO antenna when in the US.

BlackBerry Software Roadmap

As a natural evolution, RIM continues to enhance the handheld and server side software marginalizing the ISV Alliance Partner offerings. Many thrifty ISVs were whispering among their colleagues as RIM announce their future intension to bake-in monitoring, roles based security, .Net and Eclipse snap-in for developers and a number of other features under partner NDA.

After years of trying to downplay the need for the Desktop Manager, it is BACK! It will become the mechanism to manage multimedia files on the BlackBerry family of smartphones.

ISV Partner Products and Services

There were few products and services that I would categorize as new or revolutionary. Many things that one would naturally expect to be built were now being demoed. There were RSS readers, geo positioning & emergency contacts and the like. Most were varying twists on one of the following themes: CRM, Dispatch, Geo-tracking / mapping / directions, business process improvement, content / document management, voice recognition, IT admin tools (monitoring / remote control / security / failover), software "middleware" platforms and 31 flavors of professional and hosted services.

I saw many strong and valuable products for customers to solve unique problems. Of the products that I reviewed, I found the following to be most memorable.

GPS Snitch offers BlackBerry client for 8800 (or GPS puck) that reports back via the cellular data network the precise location of the device. Projecting forward, the service could be used not only for monitoring, but also for social networking purposes. eTrace is an on-demand enterprise dispatch service based on the same technology. Both products can monitor and alert users if a driver is speeding or not where they should be.

Chalk Mobile’s Content Management Solution showed very well. From a BlackBerry 8800, Chalk showed a technician’s training demo complete with audio and video (stored on MicroSD not streaming) with step by step instructions and a test at the end of each section. The results were tracked back at the server. The Chalk demo was the best produced at the show.

REGARD’s R-Approval v3.0 product which enables traveling managers to receive approval requests for timecards, expense reports, purchase requisition and the like into a unique approval inbox received a lot of interests from tier 2 US carriers and tier 1 international carriers. The goal of this carrier class is to find sticky solutions that are easy to install, support and deliver high utility out-of-the-box.

WES Summary

Year after year RIM continues to produce a high quality show that continues to grow among the customers, partners and carriers internationally. The momentum of the Eco-System they have built is very compelling and should be for some time to come.

I remember the first meeting I took with RIM in 1998 they told me they felt they had an 18 month lead on their nearest competition. I believe they continue to extend that lead as they push into more international markets.

Aliph Jawbone Bluetooth Headset w/ BlackBerry

Four years ago, I was speaking with a VC friend that told me about one of his portfolio companies that had utilized military technology to create a Bluetooth headset that would virtually eliminate background (or ambient) noise from a wireless call.

Naturally, this sounded rather futuristic and far fetched.

About 3 months ago, I received a Jawbone Headset in the mail. After pairing it with my BlackBerry, I jumped right into my M3 Convertable ... top down, stereo cranked, I accelerated to 60 MPH on PCH and was ready to road test the Jawbone.

When I told the other parties of the hostle "noisy" environment from which I was calling, they were astonished! Initially, I was not able to hear conversation very well until I traded out earbuds and the ear loop to adjust the fit (4 earbud and 4 earloops are included).

With California poised to join the states that require hands-free calling when driving, I must say I am thrilled the Jawbone has been released in time!

The Virtual BlackBerry on Windows Mobile 6

Yesterday, Research in Motion announced a BlackBerry® vitural machine that will run on Microsoft Windows Mobile 6® smartphones.

Tom Taulli quotes me in his Motley Fool article today stating that this is a smart move by RIM.

"This opens up RIM's wireless push network to an entirely new class of smartphone devices," said Steve Beauregard, president of REGARD, which has developed applications for BlackBerry smartphones for the past 10 years. "Not only does RIM win by selling additional software licenses and support fees to enterprise customers, but the company receives a small recurring fee from the carrier for each user sending traffic over the BlackBerry network."

Hopefully this will not be a long wait in vain as the BlackBerry Connect® and BlackBerry Built-in® RIM initiatives were. That is, hopefully, the Windows Mobile platform and the supporting hardware have now matured to offer a pervasive platform alternative to customers that want the rich features of Windows (i.e. MS Office, Media Players, etc) that hamstring the BlackBerry offering.

Coupling the speed, security and reliability of the BlackBerry service with a Windows Mobile user experience should truly serve well a user base that RIM has thus far been unable to tap.

******************************************************

-Steve Beauregard

REGARD – “R-Solutions Liberate People From Their Desks”

310.883.2205 (direct dial)

310.450.2400 (main line)

http://www.regard.com (Corp Website)

Opportunities for Resellers & VARs

In a recent Computer Reseller News "CRN" article by Jennifer Lawinski, I wanted to clarify my quote below.

"The device business was a very booming business for a number of years and we did quite well with that, but pretty much anything meaningful they've taken direct"

By "anything meaningful they've taken direct" , I am referring to the wireless carriers (Cingular, T-Mobile, NEXTEL / Sprint & Verizon). That is to say the largest customers and activation deals are being sold by the carrier sales reps directly to the customers. This is simply the natural evolution of any technology business. Now that the carriers have come up to speed on BlackBerry® and other Smartphone devices (as much as they feasibly can), their sales reps don't need to rely (as much) on the expertise of companies like REGARD to help close these deals.

As for the second part of that quote...

"...The most opportunity is in emerging software development companies, getting in early with them before their products start to go with distribution," Beauregard said. "A lot of those guys you can get margins of up to 40 [percent] or 50 percent because they're anxious to get their products out there."

Small technology companies must evolve with the changing dynamics. The big opportunities in wireless for resellers and VARs has now migrated to off-the-shelf wireless products like R-Approval®. In addition to making money on the sale of the software, VARs can also provide professional services to document and streamline approval workflow processes. Designing R-Approval templates based on existing paper approval forms can also be quite lucrative.

Other products are available for Flowfinity, Antenna Software and Wallace Wireless that offer similar opportunities for VARs on BlackBerry® and other wireless Smartphones.

******************************************************

-Steve Beauregard

REGARD – “R-Solutions Liberate People From Their Desks”

310.883.2205 (direct dial)

310.450.2400 (main line)

http://www.regard.com (Corp Website)

In the News

A number of customers and colleagues recently asked me what I thought of Jim Balsillie's resignation as chairman of Research in Motion (RIMM).

From the time I saw my first BlackBerry in 1998, I knew a revolution on par with the introduction of the laptop computer was coming for mobile professionals.

I first had the pleasure of meeting Jim Balsillie in 2000. What was immediately evident was Jim's deep passion for driving this revolution according to his vision. He was already speaking like an evangelist of applications beyond email and PIM data before those "mobile killer apps" had been adopted in mainstream corporate culture.

It was Jim's leadership and passion that encouraged partners like REGARD to adopt the slogan "Liberating People From Their Desks" and to develop products like R-Approval & R-Charter. Mobilizing critical business application to BlackBerry Smartphones today is the realization of Jim's late 1990's vision.

I feel regardless of Jim's decision to step down as chairman, he will continue to pour much of his heart and soul into RIM products as ever. After all, Jim has not stepped down as co-CEO.

That said, Jim's recent highly publicized purchase of the Pittsburgh Penguins leads one to believe he may begin to pursue other interests as well. Clearly, he has earned it!

Perhaps we will see the Waterloo Penguins before long?

Below is a link to my comments in Computer Reseller News (CRN).

http://crncanada.ca/content/networking/balsillie-steps-down-as-r.shtml

2007 Changes at REGARD

Over the past 12 years, REGARD has supported a wide diversity of customer's IT needs. With technologies and best practices changing at a frantic pace, we have found it impossible to be an effective partner to our customers in both software development and IT Support.

In order to continue to delivering the quality of service our customers demand and deserve, REGARD has set focus on project based software development of mobility solutions. Our sales priority will be focused on solution surrounding our R-Approval, R-Charter & R-Survey products for wireless handhelds.

I would like to personally thank all of our customers for whom we have been a trusted technology partner over these 12 years, and I hope you will consider REGARD should you have software development or mobility solutions needs (such as Microsoft .Net, Java, J2ME, Windows Mobile, BlackBerry and the like)

******************************************************

-Steve Beauregard

REGARD – “R-Solutions Liberate People From Their Desks”

310.883.2205 (direct dial)

310.450.2400 (main line)

http://www.regard.com (Corp Website)