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MS Says All Sidekick Data Recovered, But Damage Done
nandemoari writes "T-Mobile is taking a huge financial hit in the fallout over the Sidekick data loss. But Microsoft, which bears at least part of the responsibility for the mistake, is paying the price with its reputation. As reported earlier this week, the phone network had to admit that some users' data had been permanently lost due to a problem with a server run by Microsoft-owned company Danger. The handset works by storing data such as contacts and appointments on a remote computer rather than on the phone itself. BBC news reports today that Microsoft has in fact recovered all data, but a minority are still affected (out of 1 million subscribers). Amidst this, Microsoft appears not to have suffered any financial damage. However, it seems certain that its relationship with T-Mobile will have taken a major knock. The software giant is also the target of some very bad publicity as critics question how on earth it failed to put in place adequate back-ups of the data. That could seriously damage the potential success of the firm's other 'cloud computing' plans, such as web-only editions of Office."
here the damage to T-Mobile is compounded by their tone deafness on customer support.
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Well, to be fair, whoever said 'All data is lost' to the press should have been dragged out back and shot. They should have said 'We're looking in to how long it will take to restore data, and to see if there will be any problems' and left it at that for a few days.
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It is hard for me to blame T-Mobile for the MS/Danger server / backups failure. Danger both makes the phones and runs the service, where as T-Mobile appear to be little more than common carriers and the customer service department. It is a bit unreasonable to suggest that T-Mobile could have prevented the outage. I mean it not like they could host the data somewhere else right? Sure they could have done a much better job handling the failure after it happened, much much better, but I just don't think they could have prevented it.
Hey, at least this fiasco took the heat off their crappy network for a while.
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Wow, this is a terrible blow for Microsoft. This might make people think that they produce unreliable products!
Worth repeating every time. Nobody cares if you back up your data. Take a blank server; take whatever it is that you store offsite. If you can turn the blank server into your production system then you are fine. If you can't then your strategy is failing. If you never try it then you are an amateur.
This incompetence is something far beyond serious for MS. T-mobile is a much bigger customer than almost anyone short of vodafone can ever hope to be. MS have been moving strategically into hosting servers such as exchange for many customers. If you're a CEO you should be calling your CIO in and asking him when he plans to be free of MS services. If you are a CIO you want to be able to answer "there's nothing business critical relying on MS services" by the time that meeting comes.
=~ s,(.*),<sarcasm>$1</sarcasm>,g if any_point_you_wish();
The worrisome part about cloud computing is putting your trust in someone else's hands. But keeping your backup process internal to the company is no panacea either. Bad management practice is what led to the cloud screwing up, just like bad management practice led to in-house data losses at other companies.
How many of you guys generate your own power 24x7? C'mon, you're really going to place the face of your business in the hands of people running off the wire? Wire power. Feh! That wire could be going anywhere. Real men run their own generators!
Sounds silly, right? Of course, that's only because we're used to power companies running like utilities, government-regulated monopolies allowed to exclusively service the public with a healthy, dependable profit in return for low rates and universal service. In such an environment having your own generators for anything other than emergencies is paranoia. But wow, you start deregulating things and let the businessmen go nuts and it almost seems like you'd have to.
The real question with cloud computing is whether the companies are going to operate in a fashion that brings to mind steady, sober, dependable service like a local utility, like a giant rapacious corporation uncaring of human concerns, or like a fly-by-night dotcom. My personal opinion is that I don't trust these fuckers. Current company's situation is that we have a major software product we run our business on and the publisher got gobbled up by a bigger company and that company got gobbled up by a bigger one. The big company has decided to discontinue the product and have been slowly dismantling the team that supports it. We know we're going to have to make a jump eventually but the conglomerate could pull the plug tomorrow and we'd still be in operation. If it was a cloud app, we could be dead in the water.
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What's up with all the editorializing in the summary? Danger was bought by MS only 18 months ago. What the heck has this got to with Office and cloud computing except wishful thinking by the submitter?
So... in a year and a half they shouldn't have toured their new acquisition and checked for basic things like:
1) Updated server software
2) Firewalls
3) Backups
And other "yer an idjit if you don't do this" kinda stuff?
For *any* kind of hosted service, having backups measures just slightly below "is it turned on" in terms of importance. And for a year and a half, NONE WERE DONE? Further, they did a major update to a SAN and didn't backup first?
This isn't about bashing Microsoft - highly successful businesses have had to close shop forever due to glaring, horrid oversights like this. This is gross incompetence.
I have no problem with your religion until you decide it's reason to deprive others of the truth.
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Years of BSODS.
Years of viruses.
Years of trojans.
Yet THIS "damages Microsoft's reputation"?!?!?!
Well, it's a bit of a non sequitur, to be sure. But the whole incident spells out in stark detail the dangers of "cloud computing", or as us folks who actually have worked with computers for more than than ten minutes call it; the client-server model. When explained as what it really is, it's a matter of ensuring adequate and timely backups. When described in some pathetic marketing term, it sounds like some magical new way of computing, no longer constrained by those old-fashioned good practices.
Quite frankly, I would never ever ever put any mission critical data or apps on a system that I couldn't back end the data on my own out of. If I can't move my data out of the app, then my data never gets there in the first place.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
You really don't see the connection?
Yesterday, you put all your cell phone contacts and calendar data up in the "cloud".
Today, your data is lost.
Tomorrow, the same companies responsible for losing your cell phone data now want to take over all your Office documents.
Well, since this is /., you take your car in for a routine oil change. The mechanic botches the job.
Are you going to go back to the same mechanic for a transmission rebuild?
Perhaps for people who don't care about their data... Privacy, security, accountability and reliability cannot be ensured by a third party. I'll keep my data in-house thank you.
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
Cloud computing and remote storage are not necessarily the same.
What we see here is a small device storing it's data remotely and I wonder why.
Considering how cheap a couple of GB of memory are and how precious wireless bandwidth is this can mean only one thing, having and thus exploiting that data is worth more than the cost of the bandwidth.
"The likes of Facebook and WhatsApp are free to those whose privacy is of zero value."
If T-Mobile plasters their name on the contract, the device, and the service, then the buck stops there. Period. Internally, T-Mobile can choose to blame the Easter Bunny if they like, but ultimately, it was T-Mobile's responsibility to ensure that their customer's data was properly protected. This absolutely could have been prevented by audits of Microsofts/Danger's operations, checks of backup integrity, tighter contracts, etc. T-Mobile can go try and sue MS to get their damages back, but in the meantime, customers can, and should, be blaming (and suing) T-Mobile.
SirWired
I don't see this as having a big effect on Microsoft. T-Mobile on the other hand....
I don't believe that customers care if your services providers have problems. They have an agreement with you, not your providers.
Why, without your clothes, you're naked, Miss Dudley!
Storing all of your data and the lion's share of your processing on a remote machine, with only the bare minimum stored and run locally? Sounds a lot more like the past to me.
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They have not had this problem in their first 8 years. Then, 18 months after Microsoft acquires them, they have a critical failure. You think that's all coincidence?
I suppose it's possible for one company to buy another and leave the company alone, but Microsoft certainly didn't do this. They moved most of the developers to Project Pink (and most of them have left MS entirely by now). I think it's pretty clear that the new MS was responsible. They managed the company. The data was stored at Microsoft's data centers.
Meanwhile, Microsoft is trying to sell people on the idea that their data should be hosted at Microsoft data centers. Am I not supposed to be skeptical about this now?
-- Don't Tase me, bro!
Perhaps for people who don't care about their data... Privacy, security, accountability and reliability cannot be ensured by a third party. I'll keep my data in-house thank you.
If you can setup offline synchronization and data encryption, there is no reason to not use cloud computing.
If your provider does not support this, then it's time to change it.
Love many, trust a few, do harm to none.
At this point, the name Microsoft is pretty much a synonym for danger.
But the damage is not limited to Microsoft's reputation, the damage extends to the concept behind 'cloud computing', whatever that is. I think it is safe to say that Microsoft will recover from this incident, after all, it's record is already pretty suspect, but cloud computing will have this example hanging over it from now on.
I doubt that people will take this as a lesson that Microsoft is not to be trusted or believed since they are the public face of computing, but that computing generally, and 'cloud computing' is what's untrustworthy. Microsoft can abandon this particular project, coin a new term to replace 'cloud computing', and move on.
This is an opening for Google or other competitors. Will they step up and displace Microsoft as the public face of computing? We can be rid of monolithic operating systems if someone can make a system that boots a minimal browser/front-end that connects to the internet. A combination of BIOS and replaceable flash drive. Sell flash drives with the kernel and the drivers for the display/keyboard and network interface.
Best regards.
Who decides that a server farm called "Danger" is a safe place to store backups?
This is much like when MS bought Hotmail and promptly screwed it up in their attempt to move it to Windows servers.
"But Microsoft, which bears at least part of the responsibility for the mistake, is paying the price with its reputation."
Microsoft bears ALL THE RESPONSIBILITY FOR THE MISTAKE!
They own Danger and they run the data center that stores the data!
It was their fault 100%.
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I have a Sidekick.
I still, a week later, can't get e-mail on it. My contacts were never lost, but the damn thing still doesn't work! I'm getting tired of waiting.
My contract is up in August and I'm going to find a phone that stores everything locally AND a new provider. I have learned my lesson.