Thread: Blackberry Crumbles

I thought this problem would go away, but it seems RIM are making a right pig's arse of it.

BlackBerry's Thorny Problem Chokes Service in North America



By Richard Adhikari
TechNewsWorld
10/12/11 11:51 AM PT
The Great BlackBerry Blackout of 2011 has spread to cover North America, bringing the days-long problem to even more users. RIM says the messaging and browsing problems impacting BlackBerry subscribers were due to a core switch failure within its infrastructure. Apparently, the system's designed to failover to a backup switch, but the switch didn't work as it should have, resulting in a large backlog of data.

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Research In Motion's (Nasdaq: RIMM) continuing BlackBerry service disruptions hit customers in North America Wednesday.
This makes the disruptions, which first emerged in Europe, the Middle East and Africa on Monday, a worldwide phenomenon.
RIM states that subscribers in the Americas may be experiencing intermittent service delays this morning, that it's working to resolve the situation as quickly as possible, and that it will provide a further update when it can.
"I don't know why, but RIM won't say anything other than that they know what the problem is and they're working on it," Craig Mathias, a principal at the Farpoint Group and a mobile communications expert at Focus.com, told TechNewsWorld.
Asked whether the outage has affected BlackBerry Enterprise Server or is limited to BlackBerry Internet Services, Mathias indicated the situation is unclear.
"Nobody seems to know anything," he said.
RIM's public relations agency Brodeur Partners declined to provide TechNewsWorld with additional comment beyond a statement posted on the company's website.

Who's Hurt

The service interruptions didn't hit everyone in North America, although it did impact some major corporate RIM customers.
"I was watching MSNBC and this reporter said the last email he received was at 3 a.m.," Farpoint's Mathias said.
"Everyone on the business channels on TV depends on BlackBerry, so this is a very serious outage," Mathias added.
On the other hand, "Our internal email working off our BES server wasn't down," said Michael Morgan, a senior analyst at ABI Research.
BES stands for BlackBerry Enterprise Server.
"Everything that goes through RIM's servers is at risk, but it affects different people differently," Morgan told TechNewsWorld. "I'm sure everyone at least experienced a slowdown, and it affected Web browsing."
Corporate users often access the Web using the BlackBerry browser, Morgan said.
What Probably Happened

RIM said on Tuesday that the messaging and browsing problems impacting BlackBerry subscribers were due to a core switch failure within its infrastructure. Apparently, the system's designed to failover to a backup switch, but the switch didn't work as it should have, resulting in a large backlog of data that needs to be cleared.
That's quite possible, ABI's Morgan suggested.
"Equipment never works in real life the way lab tests show it will," Morgan said. "I can see a cascading failure happening -- the standard computer networking stuff. One part of the network fails, another part takes over but gets overloaded."
Or it could be a software crash.
"RIM likely updates its internal software quite often, to add features or find bugs," speculated Allen Nogee, a research director at In-Stat.
Failed software upgrades have impacted the BlackBerry service twice previously, Farpoint's Mathias pointed out.
If the software had some bug in it that was replicated across the entire network, that could account for the worldwide system problems RIM is facing, Nogee suggested.
RIM's process for handling its services could exacerbate system problems.
"For the most part, everything has to travel through RIM's servers, and if there's a problem, entire countries or more could lose service for hours," Nogee told TechNewsWorld. "It's happened many times before."
More Skull Sweat's Needed

RIM's system may have set itself up for a single point of failure, something IT assiduously tries to avoid.
"They can't have a single point of failure," Farpoint's Mathias said.
"This does point out that mission-critical systems need some rethinking -- and BlackBerry service is mission-critical in many organizations," Mathias added. "We need to address this as an industry."
Black Eye for RIM, or a TKO?

Between this days-long service problem and various other obstacles to the business, RIM has taken a battering in the past year or so.
The iPhone and Android smartphones are hacking away at its market share; its recently released BlackBerry PlayBook tablet isn't faring especially well in the market, and its Q2 results were dismal.
Some analysts have speculated that RIM's on its last legs.
Will the intermittent failure of BlackBerry services worldwide over the past three days put the kibosh on RIM?
"That depends on how quickly the service is restored," Farpoint's Mathias said.
"It's a black eye for the company both technically and from the financial perspective, but people have short memories, and switching from one IT system to another is not a simple matter," Mathias added.
"I'm one of the rare analysts who believes RIM will survive," Mathias remarked. "They have a huge installed base that's not going away any time soon."

Another chap having trouble with his blackberry.

BBC - Comedy - The One Ronnie Clips - Blackberry Sketch

Soon we will see Blackberry and Apple Crumble

the tards should have bought an iPhone

anyway, only teenagers use BB these days

Dependency on these gadgets will take it's toll.

This is probably already costing them a fucking fortune. If it goes on till payday they are going to lose a shitload of customers permanently.

It's nice to see Blackberry showing respect for the loss of Steve Jobs with 3 days of silence !

How do you know if someone has a Blackberry?
Their mate will tell you, before dropping into the conversation that they have an iPhone !

Originally Posted by harrybarracuda

I'm one of the rare analysts who believes RIM will survive," Mathias remarked. "They have a huge installed base that's not going away any time soon."

The corporate world, who run their own servers, are not affected and will not change. There is no credible alternative.

As I said, credible. Nobody got fired for specifying the IBM/Oracle route.

Originally Posted by OhOh

As I said, credible. Nobody got fired for specifying the IBM/Oracle route.

Credible? For Push email?

who would have thunk it

BlackBerry outage made roads safer, police claim

According to media reports, police in the United Arab Emirates have given a surprising explanation for a dramatic fall in traffic accidents last week: drivers' BlackBerrys weren't working.

It's claimed that last week's worldwide BlackBerry outage, which frustrated business people around the world who were unable to communicate with their colleagues, had one positive result - less texting and reading of emails by people who should have been concentrating on driving instead.

Road traffic accidents in Abu Dhabi are said to have dropped by 40%, and there was a 20% reduction in Dubai in the past week.

According to The National newspaper, Lt Gen Dahi Khalfan Tamim, the chief of Dubai Police, and Brig Gen Hussein Al Harethi, the director of the Abu Dhabi Police traffic department, both linked the drop to the service disruption experienced by BlackBerry users.

"Absolutely nothing has happened in the past week in terms of killings on the road and we're really glad about that," Brig Gen Al Harethi told the newspaper. "People are slowly starting to realise the dangers of using their phone while driving. The roads became much safer when BlackBerry stopped working."

There may be another explanation for the reduction in mobile-phone related traffic accidents in the UAE, however.At the end of last month, popular UAE footballer Theyab Awana was killed in a high speed crash near Abu Dhabi, and it was claimed that he was sending a message on his BlackBerry when he hit a lorry.

The football star's father, Awana Ahmad Al Mosabi, made an emotional plea to people not to use smartphones while driving, and a Facebook campaign against the use of BlackBerry Messenger while driving has grown in popularity.

Of course, texting messages or reading emails while you are in charge of a motor vehicle is insane. You aren't just putting yourself at risk, you're putting other innocent travellers in peril as well.

BlackBerry outage made roads safer, police claim | Naked Security

Contrite RIM offers $100 worth of free BlackBerry apps

By Shane McGinley

• Monday, 17 October 2011 3:15 PM

Research in Motion, the Canadian maker of BlackBerry, is offering classic games such as Bejeweled and The Sims to users for free in compensation for a four-day service blackout.


BlackBerry subscribers will be able to download more than $100 worth of games, productivity tools and more until the end of the year, RIM said in a statement announcing the giveaway.


“We are grateful to our loyal BlackBerry customers for their patience,” said Mike Laziridis, co-CEO of RIM. “We have apologized… and we will work tirelessly to restore their confidence.”


The 11 downloads will be available on BlackBerry App World until Dec. 31, and RIM said more would become available over the coming weeks.



Business customers are also being offered a free month of technical support. Those who already have a support contract will be offered a month of Blackberry's enhanced support service.


RIM was blasted by critics over its sluggish communication response to customer complaints during this disruption – the worst since an outage swept North America two years ago.


Users from Delhi to Dubai took to Twitter to complain over the blackout, which began in Europe and the Middle East and spread later to North America, RIM’s largest market.


Analysts warned the company may face compensation claims from network operators as well as reputational damage to its brand.


“This has been such a high-profile outage and everyone knows it’s not the operators’ fault but RIM’s fault,” said Ben Wood, an analyst at CCS Insight in London. “The big challenge for the operators is that it’s cost them a lot in terms of managing the problem.”


UAE telcos Etisalat and du and Doha-based Qtel said they would compensate BlackBerry customers for the network failure.
Vodafone Group, the world’s largest mobile-phone operator, is reviewing its options regarding compensation, spokesman Simon Gordon said.
RIM said the delays were caused by a core switch failure within its infrastructure. While the system is designed to transfer to a backup switch, that didn’t happen, it said. The result was a large backlog of data.