Microsoft said yesterday that a hardware failure had crippled parts
of its instant messaging service, cutting off all or part of the
service to nearly one third of its customers around the
world.
MSN Messenger is Microsoft's free instant messaging software and is
used by almost 32 million people worldwide, according to research
firm Jupiter Media Metrix. As early as Wednesday, some users
reported being unable to log on to the system, or losing access to
their personal contacts or "buddy lists". The service was still
unavailable to many users as of Thursday afternoon.
"In this case, an extremely rare set of circumstances occurred when
one of our database servers had a disc controller fail," Sarah
Lefko, MSN Product Manager, said in a statement. "The backup for
this controller also had an error occur which resulted in it not
being able to fix this issue immediately, resulting in the current
situation."
The company refuted reports that the outage was related to its
Passport authentication service, a service that its e-mail
customers use to log on to Microsoft services and other Web sites.
"The issue is hardware-related and MSN is now working closely with
our vendors and taking appropriate steps on the back-end to resolve
the issue and restore service to all MSN users worldwide," Lefko
said.
Microsoft has said it will include a more advanced version of the
Messenger product with its new operating system, Windows XP, which
is due for release on 25 October. Called Windows Messenger, the
application will come with text, video and audio messaging
capabilities.
While many users have lost access to their buddy lists, Microsoft
said the information has not been lost. "When the issue is resolved
customers' personal buddy lists will be restored," Lefko said in
the statement. "There is no need for users to take any action to
restore their personal buddy lists."
Microsoft would not speculate on when the hardware problems would
be fixed, noting only that it is "taking action to resolve the
issue as soon as possible."