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."
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.
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.
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.
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.
here [washingtonpost.com] the damage to T-Mobile is compounded by their tone deafness on customer support.
Uh, T-Mobile, can I offer a hint here? This is not the time to nickel-and-dime cranky customers. Let them go now, and maybe they won't spend the next nine months telling everybody they know to avoid your service -- instead, if you're lucky, they'll find a new hobby after only two months.
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.
From stories circulating it looks as if they are doing this by recovering the structure of the database, not restore from backup. Note that they say that most customers should have all data restored. Not just "data up to last week" or something similar. Of course this could all just be misplaced speculation and misunderstandings.
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.
But Johnny SidekickUser can't contract directly with Danger, he has to deal with T-Mobile. T-Mobile has some responsibility for making sure the service they're reselling operates as advertised. This shouldn't be a "best-effort" service.
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.
T-Mobile and Danger were partners long before Microsoft ate Danger up. It's not like Microsoft had a history of failed backups and horrible transitions.
This whole sorry saga just puts the two companies in silhouette. Data loss is directly caused by Microsoft & their shoddy stuff
T-Mobile, who only sells this Microsoft stuff, on hearing of the problems, immediately issues a statement & offers advice & compensation.
Microsoft, who caused this, "Not me Guv! 'onest!"
The "Pink" project was a Microsoft creation based on their technology, NOT a Danger product. It was the brainchild of Microsoft's Roz Ho. Microsoft may have bought a terribly run company, but that happens all the time in the real world. After a year and a half under the leadership of Microsoft, problems can no longer be blamed on the previous company's leadership. Most of those people don't even work there anymore. It's all on Microsoft's head.
The problem is not that the Danger division is run like a separate company. The problem is that every little division of Microsoft is run like a separate company. That's their biggest flaw, and they really need to get an effective leader (as in replace Steve Ballmer) who isn't afraid to fire anyone who is more concerned about protecting his/her own empire than with the good of the company. That pretty much means replacing large swaths of the management hierarchy. That's the only thing that will save Microsoft from eventual total failure. That or a huge government bailout in twenty years for being "too big to fail".
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.
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.)
This point absolutely cannot be overstated: A backup that has never been through a restore/recovery test is just as bad as having no backups at all.
Your admin team or hosting company should be able to tell you what is involved to get from your backup to a fully functioning production system (a truly well thought-out backup scheme will have a step-by-step recovery checklist), and they should be able to provide a worst-case data loss estimate based on your backup scheme.
No, he's NOT overstating his point. Unless your data is a bunch of flat text files or Word documents or whatever the restore is a critically difficult process.
Enterprise data like this often has never been in a flat or "dead" state since the original implementation. Complex applications frequently have delicate interactions between the live application and the contents of the database at any particular moment. Having a bunch of database tables on a tape somewhere doesn't do you much good if the application can't actually start from the state contained on the tapes, and it's a two-week manual process to clean up the issues.
If you can afford a "slow and sketchy" restore process, or your application is just not that complicated, then by all means, don't test your restore, and don't create a department with responsibility for backups and nothing else. It's still amateur work.
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 w
"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.
Except that people make decisions and don't really care if something is just "affiliated".
Microsoft and Google bid for the "cloud computing" "office" contract at some company. Do you really think Google isn't going to mention, with a bunch of references, this screw up?
With quotes from press releases like:
We have determined that the outage was caused by a system failure that created data loss in the core database and the back-up.
Roz Ho Corporate Vice President Premium Mobile Experiences, Microsoft Corporation
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.
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, [or] like a giant rapacious corporation uncaring of human concerns
Man, what fantasyland are your utilities located in? I wanna move there! In my experience, utilities *are* "giant rapacious corporation uncaring of human concerns".
Given how much of our internet access is being spied on by the government, how could ANYBODY want to trust their critical data to a cloud service? Sounds like Microsoft has Cumulonimbus clouds.
It's kind of like having a reference customer. It's all very well showing that they are incompetent in theory. It's good to be able to set up the production servers and run load tests. Here we have a real life demo that MS can really damage loads of customer's data. There are always cynics who say "yes, but they won't be able to do it in production". Now nobody will be able to claim that MS can't do an up to date full scale cloud screw up.
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.
Correction: locking the data into a closed service from which you cannot easily retrieve it, making you permanently dependent on their service for your contact information is worth more than the cost of the bandwidth. It's the Facebook of the cell phone world.
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.
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...
"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%.
What? That's not so bad. I mean if you really wanted a conspiracy theory you could surmise that MS bought Danger with some knowledge of how in bed they were with T-Mobile. AND seeing that one of the major carriers that Google's Android is T-Mobile, MS purposefully destroyed data to strike out against T-Mobile for partnering with their sworn enemy. Right now, Ballmer is sitting in his evil lair over an active volcano, cackling fitfully while stroking a white cat. Now THAT is a conspiracy theory.
Now that I said it, it doesn't seem unpossible. I better call Hollywood.
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 bet that most companies, when buying other companies, don't check a lot of basic things before buying them. As for "mickey-mouse outfit", in my experience, most corporations fit that definition well. The people running them really aren't that smart, and make all kinds of dumb mistakes.
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?
Er... because it is a form of cloud computing which failed? When a failure like this occurs, it rightfully raises doubt as to the reliability of other cloud computing services, one of which happens to involve office.
As reported earlier this week, the phone network had to admit that some users' data had been
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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.
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.
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?
except word out on the street is that Microsoft moved over the vast majority of the Danger employees who stayed over to Microsoft's Ping Project and left the Danger division seriously under staffed. It also is going around that Microsoft had been telling T-Mobile that everything at Danger was fine and they were putting much effort into improving the software. In other words, they were lying to T-Mobile to keep T-Mobile selling the products and paying lots of money when Microsoft was really just putting the division on life-support and biding their time in hopes that Project Pink would produce something Microsoft could move Danger customers over to.
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
Cloud computer (Score:4, Funny)
Not just buzz, it's the future bro.
Re:Cloud computer (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
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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.
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Re:Cloud computer (Score:4, Insightful)
If you can setup offline synchronization and data encryption, there is no reason to not use cloud computing.
All a local backup will give me is reliability.
If I can't encrypt my data on their servers I don't really have privacy or security.
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Re:Cloud computer (Score:4, Insightful)
I think you missed the point:
- With software you own, you can ignore Microsoft's mistakes (Office2007, Vista) and continue using their older products (Office2003 or 97, XP).
- With software you rent off the internet (cloud), the bad ideas are shoved upon you whether you like them or not.
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Re:Cloud computer (Score:5, Funny)
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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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.
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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:This is why you have press people (Score:4, Insightful)
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Don't blame t-mobile for Danger's failure (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
But Johnny SidekickUser can't contract directly with Danger, he has to deal with T-Mobile. T-Mobile has some responsibility for making sure the service they're reselling operates as advertised. This shouldn't be a "best-effort" service.
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
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Re:Don't blame t-mobile for Danger's failure (Score:5, Insightful)
T-Mobile and Danger were partners long before Microsoft ate Danger up. It's not like Microsoft had a history of failed backups and horrible transitions.
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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.
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AT&T says thanks (Score:5, Funny)
Microsoft's reputation (Score:5, Funny)
Wow, this is a terrible blow for Microsoft. This might make people think that they produce unreliable products!
Re: (Score:3)
T-Mobile, who only sells this Microsoft stuff, on hearing of the problems, immediately issues a statement & offers advice & compensation.
Microsoft, who caused this, "Not me Guv! 'onest!"
Re:Microsoft's reputation (Score:4, Insightful)
The "Pink" project was a Microsoft creation based on their technology, NOT a Danger product. It was the brainchild of Microsoft's Roz Ho. Microsoft may have bought a terribly run company, but that happens all the time in the real world. After a year and a half under the leadership of Microsoft, problems can no longer be blamed on the previous company's leadership. Most of those people don't even work there anymore. It's all on Microsoft's head.
The problem is not that the Danger division is run like a separate company. The problem is that every little division of Microsoft is run like a separate company. That's their biggest flaw, and they really need to get an effective leader (as in replace Steve Ballmer) who isn't afraid to fire anyone who is more concerned about protecting his/her own empire than with the good of the company. That pretty much means replacing large swaths of the management hierarchy. That's the only thing that will save Microsoft from eventual total failure. That or a huge government bailout in twenty years for being "too big to fail".
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Backups are unimportant; restore is everything. (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
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."
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Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Your admin team or hosting company should be able to tell you what is involved to get from your backup to a fully functioning production system (a truly well thought-out backup scheme will have a step-by-step recovery checklist), and they should be able to provide a worst-case data loss estimate based on your backup scheme.
This isn't a failure of "cloud compu
Re:Backups are unimportant; restore is everything. (Score:5, Insightful)
No, he's NOT overstating his point. Unless your data is a bunch of flat text files or Word documents or whatever the restore is a critically difficult process.
Enterprise data like this often has never been in a flat or "dead" state since the original implementation. Complex applications frequently have delicate interactions between the live application and the contents of the database at any particular moment. Having a bunch of database tables on a tape somewhere doesn't do you much good if the application can't actually start from the state contained on the tapes, and it's a two-week manual process to clean up the issues.
If you can afford a "slow and sketchy" restore process, or your application is just not that complicated, then by all means, don't test your restore, and don't create a department with responsibility for backups and nothing else. It's still amateur work.
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Re: (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 w
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.
Re:Not likely (Score:4, Insightful)
Except that people make decisions and don't really care if something is just "affiliated".
Microsoft and Google bid for the "cloud computing" "office" contract at some company. Do you really think Google isn't going to mention, with a bunch of references, this screw up?
With quotes from press releases like:
in big bold blocks.
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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.
Re:said it before and will say it again (Score:5, Insightful)
Man, what fantasyland are your utilities located in? I wanna move there! In my experience, utilities *are* "giant rapacious corporation uncaring of human concerns".
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Stormy weather (Score:3, Interesting)
Critics only *NOW* questioning MS's competence?!?! (Score:4, Insightful)
Years of BSODS.
Years of viruses.
Years of trojans.
Yet THIS "damages Microsoft's reputation"?!?!?!
Re: (Score:3)
One thing and another (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:One thing and another (Score:4, Insightful)
Correction: locking the data into a closed service from which you cannot easily retrieve it, making you permanently dependent on their service for your contact information is worth more than the cost of the bandwidth. It's the Facebook of the cell phone world.
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Danger, Will Robinson, Danger! (Score:3, Interesting)
Microsoft? No. (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't believe that customers care if your services providers have problems. They have an agreement with you, not your providers.
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...
Danger? Really? (Score:4, Funny)
Wrong wrong wrong! (Score:5, Insightful)
"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%.
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.
Re:Huh? (Score:4, Funny)
Now that I said it, it doesn't seem unpossible. I better call Hollywood.
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Re:Huh? (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
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Re:Huh? (Score:4, Insightful)
I bet that most companies, when buying other companies, don't check a lot of basic things before buying them. As for "mickey-mouse outfit", in my experience, most corporations fit that definition well. The people running them really aren't that smart, and make all kinds of dumb mistakes.
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Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Er... because it is a form of cloud computing which failed? When a failure like this occurs, it rightfully raises doubt as to the reliability of other cloud computing services, one of which happens to involve office.
Re:Huh? (Score:5, Funny)
Dear Sir or Madam,
The responsible Anti-Microsoft Troll that should have replied to this post by now is on sick leave and was unable to prepare a custom flaming reply to this particular post. In lieu of that, attached is our generic template which we use to write all our flaming responses.
1. Make a general anti-Microsoft jab
2. Blame Microsoft for it's stance against Free Software (and also for lack of network neutrality, the current state of patent laws, the Iraq war, and the extinction of the dinosaurs)
3. Accuse the poster who wrote something positive about Microsoft of being either a fanboy or a Microsoft employee. If the poster in question made a comment about Microsoft's actual support of Free Software in a particular instance, accuse the poster of being an oblivious idiot unable to see through their Embrace-Extend-Extinguish approach
4. State that the Linux revolution is inevitable
5. Finish off with another outpour of flames
We hope you will be able to infer the potential content of the post that should have been done by the respective Troll. Please accept our apologies.
Sincerely,
Assistant Secretary,
Anti-Microsoft Trolling Association, Ltd.
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Re:Huh? (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
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Re:Huh? (Score:5, Insightful)
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?
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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.
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Re:Huh? (Score:5, Insightful)
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?
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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.
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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
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