Image Courtesy of Soft Sailor
BlackBerry users got a surprise Tuesday night in the form of another service outage. Ahhh, it seems like only last week there was an outage. Oh, wait, it was just last week. A platform and brand that used to be synonymous with reliability is definitely faltering. Impacted users were left without email delivery/receipt, BlackBerry Messenger was down, and even browsing from your ‘Berry was impacted. Both the consumer-side BlackBerry Internet Service (BIS) and business side BlackBerry Enterprise Server (BES) services were impacted. In a nutshell, your BlackBerry was a nice paperweight for 10 hours or so. Merrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrry Christmas!
The problem was reported to be due to an upgrade to the BlackBerry Messenger service. Right. So, let me get this one straight here. A company who’s bread and butter of business is to provide reliable, secure, real-time messaging services to consumers, businesses, and government agencies had a massive outage impacting ev-er-y-thing while updating their in-house device instant messenger. Is that what they’re really saying? Awesome.
RIM’S official report on the matter:
This e-mail is to inform you of network problem[s] that MAY have affected your Mobile Service.
Trouble Ticket: TT000012693195
Severity: 1-High
Location of Issue: All Regions; All Markets
Description of Issue: Degredation of RIM BlackBerry services
Start Time: Dec 22 2009 4:30pm PST
Time of Resolution: Dec 23 2:45am PST
Total Duration: 10 hours, 15 minutes
You just don’t see national Windows Mobile outages or iPhone outages. Why? Windows and Apple don’t have a single point of failure Network Operations Center (NOC) like RIM does to manage their services…from all carriers. If RIM is going to step up with the improvements to their web browser, gaming and applications, then maybe — just MAYBE — all these network infrastructure issues need to be ironed out first. I don’t know if they got the memo, but there are these other smartphones out there from Microsoft, Apple and Google that, amazingly, don’t go down. Just sayin’.
[DataOutages and FierceWireless]
Funny. My wife now has a Blackberry and she noticed no outage. My friend also has a Blackberry and he didn’t say anything either. Is it only us techie geek kind of people that notice these? Is it really an outage if the majority of users don’t notice?
Not disputing one didn’t happen. I just wonder what a few hours of an outage really DOES to people. Does it cause a real loss of money? Just askin…
Also, come to think of it, if I look at the time period stated, my wife DID get e-mail in this time on her phone because it was driving me crazy.
I DID upgrade the BlackBarry Instant Messenger on her phone too and it worked ok as well. Don’t know what all the hubub is ahout.
Based on the volume of posts about the outage, I suspect other folks noticed
Yeah the digerati did but did normal people? By Normal people, I mean people who DON’T live by e-mail. Those that don’t incessantly check their Crackberry for the next “big” deal.
Again not disputing that SOMEONE didn’t notice. I am sure there were plenty of people did. However, there’s a contingent of people who are just getting BlackBerries that just won’t care about this kind of an outage.
One thing is for certain about all of the carriers, RIM, ISP’s and web site developers is that you can no longer plan for only part of your community to actually use their services. If you plan your network and services as close to maximum as you can, outages due to load can be greatly reduced. You got to do the site/network/service test just like plumbers flush all of the toilets at new stadiums at the same time to make sure the building’s plumbing system doesn’t fail. Not doing so will cause growing pains as soon as users discover your service. I think this is why Google is such a fan of the limited beta. Get your service out there, create buzz with the limiting and while the limit is still in place, build the service up.
I’m really not following the train of though here….so, there is a service outage that impacts all BES/BIS users but it shouldn’t be addressed, or just shouldn’t be posted on this site? 1) It’s news; 2) It’s relevant as a tech-related “issue” and story; and 3) it, frankly, does impact maybe just a few of the site readers.
If there was an issue with Google, Twitter, or any other service going down I would expect it to be addressed and covered. Would it matter if I or a few other people didn’t notice the disruption in service? No.
Here’s the deal: If I purchase a product or pay for a service, I expect it to function. Call me crazy. Sometimes the carriers don’t have the best networks, and sometimes those carriers have legitimate network outages due to equipment failure or many other reasons. In this scenario, what is being pointed out, is that RIM — unlike other smartphone providers — has a specific messaging infrastructure whereby the traffic goes through their NOC. That’s usually touted along with the encryption and security (why more than just a few government agencies and businesses implement BES/BlackBerry architecture + handheld solution). In this case, the point is that NOC is also a single point of failure. Two massive outages in 7 days….again, call me crazy, but that — in my most humble opinion — is worthy of a post.
Honestly, if I “just got” a BlackBerry to use I would be interested in this issue — even if I didn’t notice it. I’m just not following why the post has gotten so much fervor over whether it matters to the average Joe or Jane. The fact is, the outage still impacted thousands upon thousands of users — regardless of whether they’re so called “crackberry” addicts who rely on the push email too much. That’s irrelevant. Fact is a major service outage — no, TWO major service outages — occured in seven days’ time and the excuse was that it was because of a messenger update server side (not the installation done by the customer on their device) just happened to bring down an entire messaging infrastructure for 10 hours.
Not something that affected just a few folks. I suppose I should have included the links to 50 or so other sites that had similar posts. But I didn’t. Mea Culpa.
I wonder what RIM promises when you sign up for BlackBerry Service? Would be interesting to see. I bet RIM and other providers don’t have a SLA that says it will be up all of the time. As a server admin, the bet most people promise is 5 9’s which is pretty darn near perfect.
@Joel: Correct, as both a consumer and corp/enterprise user there are no SLAs “promised” regarding the services or hardware provided by RIM, Apple, Google, Microsoft, Motorola, HTC, Nokia, or any of the other companies/manufacturers.
As a fellow server admin and someone who manages a few thousand mobile devices from all the major platforms on the enterprise side, I’ll just have to say that the TWO major outages impacting end users as well as fellow consumers was an issue. So much so, that all major wireless carriers and major corporations who do utilize RIM in their own messaging infrastructures were issued with the ticket info noted in the post.
Yes, buyer beware …5 of 9s, etc. At the end of the day does that mean a service outage shouldn’t be “news” …I don’t know. I tend to aire on the side that it does, indeed, have a baring. Maybe I’m biased, but since none of the people carrying iPhones, WinMo, Symbian, or anything else were having issues then — just maybe — it bares mentioning.
You know, mentioning, again, that the architecture employed by the RIM solution (you know, after failing *twice* in seven days for..again…almost every single user across the board for all BES/BIS services — except, evidently, for a handful of people that are completely irritated that the outage is even being mentioned
may need to be addressed by RIM in order to remain competitive with the likes of Apple, Google, Microsoft, etc.
It wasn’t just executies or companies impacted, it was all major BlackBerry services across, at least, North America for all users. Some evidently didn’t notice. I wouldn’t really expect them to spend a great deal of time on this post or continue to argue its merits when the ordeal is widely documented and available via news outlets and multiple other tech sites.
My humble two cents.
“In a brief statement, R.I.M. said its analysis showed that recent versions of its proprietary instant-messaging software “caused an unanticipated database issue within the BlackBerry infrastructure.”
A spokeswoman for the company said in an e-mail message that no one was available for comment.
Eric Miller, an e-commerce consultant in Philadelphia, said he had spent three hours trying to “debug” his wife’s BlackBerry on Tuesday night. He learned of the network problem on Wednesday morning.
“As a consultant, my time is money, and those three hours could have bought her a new iPhone and plan,” Mr. Miller wrote in an e-mail message.”
Pretty lame of RIM not to bother commenting to the NEW YORK TIMES, and the Miller guy is right – time IS money. The less time spent futzing with things you can’t fix, the better.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12.....updateema1