Why Cisco flipped over the Flip Video Cam (and paid $590 million for a small dose of simplicity)
What is simplicity worth; to Cisco Systems apparently quite a lot. One can visualize the PowerPoint deck from Cisco’s investment banking group showing how acquisition of Pure Digital Media (maker of the Flip Video Camera) would: A) be a potentially decent financial investment and B) would imbue Cisco, a company whose products are arguably among the worst in terms of usability on the planet, with a much needed dose of positive brand equity. Recently, Cisco has apparently gotten religion around the idea of usability and user experience design, first by hiring a team of “user experience architects” and now through the acquisition of a product whose main feature list consists of basically one word, “Simplicity”. This comes as no surprise to anyone who tracks technology adoption trends. It has been known for some time that IT products overall are being driven toward less complex set up, use, and maintenance interaction sequences. This trend is known to impact products in all segments ranging from consumer applications to serious commercial IT offerings.
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