Another BlackBerry Outage Cripples Services

Based on the volume of posts about the outage, I suspect other folks noticed

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.

@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.