A major com­plaint by IT against Apple is that Apple doesn’t share long-term roadmaps so busi­nesses can’t plan or man­age risk.

RIM, a com­pany closely tied to busi­nesses is in free-fall. Take a look at their 5-year plan, and based on their migra­tion to QNX (their exe­cu­tion to plan over the last 12–18 months), you can’t trust a thing they’re say­ing. The Play­book was a dis­as­ter, and now their new oper­at­ing sys­tem is pushed until late next year.

How are com­pa­nies react­ing? Are they react­ing? I’ve not heard any­thing, though I wouldn’t nec­es­sar­ily be in the know.

How good has RIM’s 5 year plan served IT at large corporations?

How are com­pa­nies mit­i­gat­ing the risk that RIM won’t be around in 5 years, which is cer­tainly in the real of pos­si­bil­ity at this point?

So, basi­cally IT gets their col­lec­tive panties in a bunch, mak­ing it a require­ment to have a 5-year plan, and do all sort of inter­nal plan­ning around it. When the 5-year plan is totally off the rails (I mean, RIM’s not even in sight of the freak­ing rail-yard at this point!), what? No col­lec­tive cor­po­rate response? What was the pur­pose of the 5-year plan in the first place? All that plan­ning? Were you just bored? Killing time? Ven­dor bash­ing? What?

Where’s the accountability?

Oh yeah, I labeled this “part I” because I’ve got a few obser­va­tions about IT idiocy (that I hear from friends and oth­ers, not nec­es­sar­ily based on my personal/current expe­ri­ence) in my head that I’m try­ing to fig­ure out how to share constructively.