MS Says All Sidekick Data Recovered, But Damage Done 279
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."
As Rob Pegoraro of The WaPo points out (Score:5, Informative)
here [washingtonpost.com] the damage to T-Mobile is compounded by their tone deafness on customer support.
This is why you have press people (Score:5, Informative)
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.
Re:Don't blame t-mobile for Danger's failure (Score:2, Informative)
Except Hotmail
Re:Backups are unimportant; restore is everything. (Score:3, Informative)
I think you're overstating your point. Unless you are saving your data in a truly useless format, having a practiced procedure for getting that data back into production only lets you get the data back up faster. We have one backup system in particular at my office - although we have never built a production machine from it, we do (manually and automatically) test the data to ensure that everything from production made it in. Will restoring that data be slow and sketchy? Sure. Is it fair to say that nobody will care if we have the data backed up? No.
The point isn't to have a practiced procedure that your technicians can run through with their eyes closed... The point is to actually test your backups and know whether they are working, whether the data is usable, and whether it is possible to get a production server up and running from that backup.
Most backups aren't going to be as easy as insert tape, walk away, come back to a working production server an hour later. Most backups will involve some kind of re-pointing or importing or configuration or whatever. That's kind of expected.
But if you never test your data, you don't know if there's anything being written to the tape (disk, cloud, whatever). Sure, the backup program (script, monkey, whatever) claims the task was completed successfully... But you don't know. The data could all be corrupt. Or you could have skipped some innocent-looking database that turns out to be truly essential. Or you might have re-named a directory since the backup was configured, and now you aren't getting something that you need.
The point is that you need to test your backups periodically.
It was T-Mobile's name on the contract and device. (Score:5, Informative)
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
Re:Cloud computer (Score:5, Informative)
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.
Re:Trusting in Microsoft's servers? Hah! (Score:2, Informative)
BBC news reports today that Microsoft has in fact recovered all data
Re:Don't blame t-mobile for Danger's failure (Score:4, Informative)
SuiteSisterMary's post [slashdot.org] was probably wrong about who should be "shot" but right about the releases.
Hey, now, let's not fight over who should be shot. There's plenty of bullets for everyone.
Re:Huh? (Score:5, Informative)
This is much like when MS bought Hotmail and promptly screwed it up in their attempt to move it to Windows servers.
Re:Don't blame t-mobile for Danger's failure (Score:2, Informative)
If the Danger data loss was a result of transitioning to Microsoft technologies, (which is a point of utter speculation) this would be the opposite of dogfooding.
Not So Fast (Score:5, Informative)
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.
T-Mobile didn't get hit that hard. (Score:1, Informative)
I use to work for T-Mobile, and if you think for one minute that this interuption is going to cost T-Mobile, you're kidding yourself.
T-Mobile makes mad, mad money. This doesn't hurt them one bit. They are not loosing a single cent, even if they give money back to their customers, because it's all "expected income".
And it's only just and right that a huge Telco that rips off it's customers has to finally payout for a their screw up.
This didn't hurt T-Mobile at all, it hurt the customers who are locked into that damn 2 year contract! GO BOOST OR CRICKET!
Re:This is why you have press people (Score:3, Informative)
Microsoft is often the first guinea pig for Microsoft software, and frankly, isn't that how it should be? If they aren't willing to run IIS 7.5 on their homepage, why should anyone else? If they aren't using SQL Server as their data warehouse application, why should anyone else? If they don't trust Hyper-V R2 to run virtual machines...