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."
Not likely (Score:4, Interesting)
"That could seriously damage the potential success of the firm's other 'cloud computing' plans, such as web-only editions of Office."
I can't tell whether this is spin put on the summary by the submitter or some other third-party (because we all know submitters are, absent any editorial constraints on /., free to post what they want without attribution). That said, it's highly unlikely Microsoft will suffer from this. Wisely, they offloaded all responsibility the moment they created this entity known as Danger. They've effectively washed their hands of the entire affair, because it wasn't really a Microsoft problem in the end, but a problem with an affiliated company.
It is simply wishful thinking on the part of the submitter (or whomever) that Microsoft will be tainted by this deal. In all likelihood, Microsoft will simply walk away from their relationship with Danger, and it will be business again as usual.
said it before and will say it again (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Stormy weather (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Backups are unimportant; restore is everything. (Score:4, Interesting)
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.
Hehe. I raised this issue when this broke. We have a huge amount of critical data outsourced to a hosting company. I sent this fiasco up the food chain asking what is our backup strategy should this happen to our host.
I got back some pablum about "well, they have 2 geographically separate datacenters, blah blah blah" from the guy who administers the contract.
Maybe they did at one point but I know the folks we use fired most of their devs, including the lead developer, back in March as a cost cutting measure. and I wouldn't be surprised if one of the "two data centers" disappeared along with the developers. Regardless, no one on our end seems to be concerned and no one is taking any precautions (like local backups.)
Maybe one day I'll get to say, "I Told You So."
Danger, Will Robinson, Danger! (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Huh? (Score:4, Interesting)
What's up with all the editorializing in the summary?
You must be new here.
Danger was bought by MS only 18 months ago.
A year and a half later and they don't have a handle on it? Someone's getting paid WAY too much.
What the heck has this got to with Office and cloud computing
Nothing to do with office (unless they're using Access, which would explain the data loss), but "cloud computing" is what a couple here have more logically and less buzzwordily renamed "OPS" -- Other People's Servers. This is EXACTLY what "cloud computing" is.
All data recovered? (Score:4, Interesting)
So here's what confuses me... "BBC news reports today that Microsoft has in fact recovered all data, but a minority are still affected." If all the data has been recovered, wouldn't NO ONE still be affected? I mean... being affected by this means your data was lost in such a way that it couldn't be recovered. So...
Microsoft and Danger (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Re:Cloud computer (Score:3, Interesting)
One reason not to use Cloud Computing is that I can avoid Ribbon Interface crapola (as was in Office 2007), and just keep using my older software. Or I can ignore Vista/ME and just keep using older XP/98 operating systems. With cloud computing using older programs won't be an option, because it will be forced upon you.
Re:Huh? (Score:4, Interesting)
So is there NOT a reason to blame Microsoft for any of this? I guess you also don't remember all the talk about Microsoft trying to get the Danger product moved onto a Windows platform instead of it's BSD and Java platform. Microsoft is well known for either buying a competitor and shutting them down or buying them and dictating the product be ported to Windows. They bashed the engineers at SoftImage for a few years on dropping the UNIX versions of their software even though they did get a Windows version running. Customers and engineers didn't want Windows and wanted to keep the UNIX versions. Microsoft finally sold the company and walked away with its tail between its legs and you can see by what the film industry uses that Windows was not welcome much in that environment. BSODs really piss off people who spend hours crunching data and don't see BSODs or the like on nix boxes. IMO
LoB
Re:Cloud computer (Score:3, Interesting)
You might want to check it out sometime.
Re:Cloud computer (Score:3, Interesting)
Ya, "all the time". I worked for a company that outsourced its data center to IBM. They "accidentially" deleted our Oracle database - twice - and it often took two weeks to get things simple done on the servers, like add an entry added to the /etc/hosts file. I was hired as the senior Unix SA and we purchased our own equipment ($2 million worth), brought the operations back in-house, paid the early-termination fee and still came out ahead financially and in operational support for the year with no further screw-ups. Even got an award for moving the data center with no loss in production.
Sure, to each their own, but beware.
If you only knew (Score:1, Interesting)
Long term damage done (Score:3, Interesting)
I think this is more like 1984 scandal of Amazon Kindle, it will have long time impact on cloud computing and the general direction of things to come.
Even if you invent a system about e-ink/store tomorrow which has NOTHING to do with Amazon Kindle, you will still be asked "but will you delete my books remotely?". Just like some dead tech acquired by MS and not managed well will cost even IBM Mainframe dept. sales.
If one is a hopeless conspiracy theorist, he can easily suggest MS did it on purpose to lower general public trust to cloud which they have almost nothing. Cloud is all open source empire right now, Apache Hadoop etc. are being talked about, not some MS enterprise server or technology.