Once Again, RIM Blames Upgrade For Outage; Time To Do Weekend Upgrades

from the just-a-suggestion dept

Last year when RIM's Blackberry service had a major outage, the company blamed a software upgrade, which made many folks question why RIM would be doing a major software upgrade in the middle of the week. Since most Blackberry users are corporate users, it would seem to make sense to do upgrades over the weekend -- or at least late at night. So, with this latest outage, it's a bit surprising to see RIM fall back on the old "software upgrade" excuse again. The company doesn't say that's definitely what happened, but suggests that's what caused it, failing to explain why the company would run an upgrade in the middle of the afternoon on a weekday.
Hide this

Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.

Techdirt is one of the few remaining truly independent media outlets. We do not have a giant corporation behind us, and we rely heavily on our community to support us, in an age when advertisers are increasingly uninterested in sponsoring small, independent sites — especially a site like ours that is unwilling to pull punches in its reporting and analysis.

While other websites have resorted to paywalls, registration requirements, and increasingly annoying/intrusive advertising, we have always kept Techdirt open and available to anyone. But in order to continue doing so, we need your support. We offer a variety of ways for our readers to support us, from direct donations to special subscriptions and cool merchandise — and every little bit helps. Thank you.

–The Techdirt Team

Filed Under: blackberry, outage, software upgrade
Companies: rim


Reader Comments

Subscribe: RSS

View by: Time | Thread


  • identicon
    Steve, 12 Feb 2008 @ 5:44pm

    Sometimes, not all is what it seems

    I wonder if this has anything to do with their virtualization efforts?

    link to this | view in chronology ]

  • identicon
    TNP, 12 Feb 2008 @ 5:49pm

    Blackber-CARRIER LOST

    "...failing to explain why the company would run an upgrade in the middle of the afternoon on a weekday."

    Well, that's what the text message told them to do!

    link to this | view in chronology ]

  • identicon
    Rob Steenwyk, 12 Feb 2008 @ 6:11pm

    Testing?

    How can this effect literally every Blackberry user? I guess I still do not understand how some software RIM is updating can interrupt service for all users... does all the data run through RIM?

    link to this | view in chronology ]

  • identicon
    Guy Davis, 12 Feb 2008 @ 6:18pm

    Upgrade at night

    They almost certainly did the software upgrade at night, however the fault the new software didn't reveal itself until the load got high enough. That's the most likely scenario.

    link to this | view in chronology ]

  • identicon
    inc, 12 Feb 2008 @ 6:44pm

    where I work the outage windows starts at 2 AM eastern so even the west coasters only see it at 11 PM. Sucks for me but this is also when usage is at it's lowest. The bad part is you won't see what the system is like under load until the next morning. This make me wonder if the upgrade went smoothly at night and then broke horribly under mid-day load and a roll-back needed to happen.

    link to this | view in chronology ]

  • identicon
    inc, 12 Feb 2008 @ 6:46pm

    Guy, you got a key logger on my box? hehe

    link to this | view in chronology ]

  • identicon
    yoshi, 12 Feb 2008 @ 7:55pm

    yawn

    I don't know a single company that makes changes on the weekend unless its a MAJOR change (usually a cutover of sorts). The majority of change requests happen during the week with Wednesday being the most popular day. RIM fails at properly testing their changes. Not at scheduling. Besides if this happened on Sunday - everyone would still be bitching about it.

    link to this | view in chronology ]

  • identicon
    Albert, 12 Feb 2008 @ 9:57pm

    I think its crazy to think that any company is going to actually achieve 24/7/365 uptime, when capacity only keeps going up, and there's really no way to say to customers look you'll possibly have downtime for 4-12 hours. Unlike websites that are not necessarily 24/7 throughout everywhere all the time, Blackberries apparently are given the amount of criticism flung at RIM. Can they do a better job of informing customers, of course the answer is yet. The problem is when we criticize services for being down as a result of an update then we give no room for error, and people doing their best to hide the truth.

    link to this | view in chronology ]

  • identicon
    moe, 13 Feb 2008 @ 12:52am

    The reason to update on weekdays is ...

    If you update on a weekend and everything goes wrong, then there is no way for the BB users to get help/answers from their techs or get messages the old-fashioned way (ha ha!) using their email client.

    When you upgrade during the week and something breaks people aren't completely cut off, they just have to accomplish it without the BB.

    Also, everyone talks about the "massive outages." Although it was massive in terms of the number of users cut off, RIM has an outstanding uptime record. Whether it's the most efficient set up or not, to handle that much traffic 24/7-365 with only one big outtage a year is nothing to be alarmed about. I heard that on the radio yesterday and just thought I'd add it to the discussion.

    link to this | view in chronology ]

  • identicon
    Anonymous Coward, 13 Feb 2008 @ 1:28am

    OMG 6 HOURS OF OUTAGE IN A YEAR TIMEFRAME, THE ZOMBIES ARE COMING OMG

    link to this | view in chronology ]

  • identicon
    James, 13 Feb 2008 @ 7:34am

    Rediculous

    A system upgrade caused that? In my experience you upgrade on your downtime (middle of the night, weekends, etc.) when the least amount of user's are affected, you build in redudancy in case you have to fall back and YOU TEST BEFORE YOU RELEASE.

    It doesn't sound like they have a clue.

    link to this | view in chronology ]

  • identicon
    Joseph Durnal, 13 Feb 2008 @ 8:27am

    Single Point of Failure

    This is one of the many things I dislike about RIM and blackberries. It adds yet another network to your e-mail delivery system. The company’s network, the internet, RIM network, and the Mobile carrier network. Other solutions such as Microsoft Active sync or something like Apple's IMAP access only depend on 3 of the above four (a little simplified of course). I still got my e-mail when RIMs network wasn't working - but then again I'm not using a Blackberry. That should tell you something.

    link to this | view in chronology ]

    • identicon
      Anonymous Coward, 13 Feb 2008 @ 10:36am

      Re: Single Point of Failure

      [Single Point of Failure,] This is one of the many things I dislike about RIM and blackberries.
      Absolutely. I can't believe any competent IT person would recommend these things. All email going through another company's network.... no thanks!
      I love how people tout the "end to end encryption" on Blackberrys, I wouldn't call an encrypted connection terminating at a foreign company "end to end".

      link to this | view in chronology ]

  • identicon
    KevinW, 13 Feb 2008 @ 10:20pm

    One more example of decisions being made by high level management without regard for the programmers in the trench. Every time you see a glitch like this I can guarantee there are a bunch of programmers sitting back saying to each other "see, I told you that would happen, but noooo, they wouldn't listen, and now WE have to work our asses off to fix the mess"

    link to this | view in chronology ]


Follow Techdirt
Essential Reading
Techdirt Deals
Report this ad  |  Hide Techdirt ads
Techdirt Insider Discord

The latest chatter on the Techdirt Insider Discord channel...

Loading...
Recent Stories

This site, like most other sites on the web, uses cookies. For more information, see our privacy policy. Got it
Close

Email This

This feature is only available to registered users. Register or sign in to use it.