“Research In Motion has parted ways with a senior executive involved with the company’s move into ‘cloud-based’ services, adding to a string of high-level departures from the BlackBerry maker,” Alastair Sharp reports for Reuters.
“Jim Tobin, senior vice-president for software and business services reporting directly to co-CEO Jim Balsillie, left the Canadian company months ago, RIM confirmed on Thursday in an email,” Sharp reports. “It has never officially announced the departure.”
MacDailyNews Take: Likely the clueless bastages didn’t even notice he left. “Hockey team!” (It’s like “squirrel” to the dog in Pixar’s “Up.”) One half-CEO runs to press his nose against the window while the other one continues his daily nap.
Sharp reports, “His exit further depletes a management team that has lost a number of top executives in developer relations, sales, and marketing in recent months.”
MacDailyNews Take: Like rats from the SS DCW they flee.
Sharp reports, “In July RIM said it was slashing about 11 percent of its workforce because of falling sales and profit. Tobin was responsible for a recent move by RIM into cloud services – allowing its enterprise customers to use servers hosted by RIM instead of on-site computers to handle email and other corporate data. He also worked on a team that developed BBM Music, a song-sharing service run on top of RIM’s popular BlackBerry Messenger application as well as a wider push to incorporate Messenger into third-party developer applications.”
“RIM’s shares have lost some 70 percent of their value since a peak around $70 reached in February,” Sharp reports. “They were trading 2.5 percent higher at $21.24 on the Nasdaq by early afternoon on Thursday.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Congrats, Jim: Amateur hour’s over for you!
They are losing “senior executives,” but they are probably also losing even more key “technical” employees. That may explain the recent severe outage. Maybe RIM no longer has the necessary depth of expertise to keep their systems running reliably, and effectively troubleshoot problems that crop up.
MDN, I see you have a nautical theme going today.
“Hockey team!” (It’s like “squirrel” to the dog in Pixar’s “Up.”)
That one gave me a good laugh!
“ Tobin was responsible for a recent move by RIM into cloud services – allowing its enterprise customers to use servers hosted by RIM instead of on-site computers to handle email and other corporate data.”
Maybe he realised how compromised that was going to be and jumped ship before his sorry ass got kicked out following the Slough server fiasco.
Time to re-examine those inkblots, Rorschach.
It sounds like he left before RIMs collective 3 vacation in Slough.
There are a bunch of incompetent Managers in RIM; they all need to be fired. Then there is a good chance for RIM to resurrect. As far as those co-CEOs, they are dictators. Not sure who can or will remove them.
Since Kevin Simmons was forced out of Apple by Microsoft, Jim Tobin may be under the wings of Apple. No one has mentioned where he is since he left Rimm. Who Nows!
Here’s one of the deeper problems that RIM’s board has foisted upon the company: “Co-CEOs.” They can’t find a single person they have confidence in to run the company? Why would they think this would work? Looking at RIM’s ongoing woes, Tobin’s departure among them, it obviously isn’t.
“Who’s in charge? You?”
“Me? No, I thought it was you?”
“Well, shit, we’ll figure it out eventually. Lunch?”