BlackBerry suffered a
system-wide network failure Tuesday night into Wednesday morning,
stopping mobile email in its tracks for millions of BlackBerry
users.
BlackBerry maker Research In Motion (RIM) said little of the
outage, aside from a recorded message at its customer support
hotline that said: "Please be advised that we are currently
experiencing service interruptions that are causing delays in
sending and receiving messages. We apologise for the inconvenience
and will provide updates as soon as they become available."
As of press time, RIM did not return phone calls seeking
comment, and the company's Web site had no information on the
outage. The cause of the problem was still unknown.
Around 10:30 a.m. EST in the US, BlackBerry issued a statement
via email that said, "A service interruption occurred Tuesday night
that affected BlackBerry in North America. Email delivery was
delayed or intermittent during the service interruption. Phone
service on BlackBerry handsets was unaffected. Root cause is
currently under review, but service for most customers was restored
overnight and RIM is closely monitoring systems in order to
maintain normal service levels."
Worldwide, there are roughly 8 million BlackBerry users. It was
unclear yesterday morning just how many were affected by the
outage, but most of the trouble appeared to be confined to North
America and other portions of the Western Hemisphere. The outage
prevented the sending and receiving of emails on BlackBerry
devices.
One user described the outage as sudden and scary on a major
BlackBerry user forum message board. The user wrote: "It was
frightening. My BB [BlackBerry] just shut down earlier this evening
-- no reason. Tried not to panic. I took the battery out and then
couldn't get the EDGE technology. Then I tried again. I did get
EDGE, however emails have been significantly delayed … hopefully
this will be taken care of quickly."
Gilbert Villaroman, BlackBerry administrator for Ross Stores,
who manages a BlackBerry deployment of more than 300 devices, said
he noticed some message failures last night, but didn't know the
true extent of the outage until Wednesday morning. Instinctively,
Villaroman checked the BlackBerry server and found no problems.
Villaroman was contacted by at least one of Ross Stores'
BlackBerry users who was experiencing spotty or on-and-off
messaging, but he said it may still be too early for others to
realize they're without service. He said that because the outage
happened after business hours on Tuesday, many BlackBerry users
might not have even realized there was an outage until they went to
retrieve messages in the morning.
"It would be good for RIM to send out a notification or
something," he said. "If there was some sort of issue in the
evening, I rely on BlackBerry to receive those messages, especially
if it's a critical message that needs to be disseminated to other
users."
Kathryn Weldon, an analyst with Current Analysis, said around
9:30 a.m. Wednesday that the problem was "already making [her] day
more difficult."
Weldon said a quick fix is necessary to prevent the BlackBerry
blackout from becoming a more major problem.
"Carriers have had significant outages throughout the years with
varying repercussions," she said. "In some cases, they led to the
carrier having to provide stricter, more standardized SLAs so that
customers could get some money back at the end of the month in the
case of network problems. In this case, since it's not
carrier-specific but RIM specific, there is an extra layer of
complexity because data goes through RIM's NOC."
BlackBerry has often advised users to have a backup plan in case
of a widespread outage, but Weldon said she doesn't feel the most
recent outage will prompt too many users to give BlackBerry the
boot altogether.
"I wouldn't assume a massive defection of mobile email users –
if it lasts a day it will be annoying and frustrating," Weldon
said. "If it lasts a week, I would say there may be more lasting
effects."
Current Analysis analyst Avi Greengart agreed.
"If this is a short-term outage, all will be forgiven," he said.
"BlackBerry users are a loyal bunch, RIM offers unique security and
management features, enterprises have already invested in the
middleware, and there are real switching costs when moving to a new
device, new OS, new mobile email solution. However, if outages
become common -- even short-term outages -- it will drive users
crazy, and many will start looking at alternatives."
Greengart said the NOC-centric nature of RIM's solution has
always been a target for its competitors, and NOC service outages
are a "huge gift to competitors' marketing departments, because
service outages are real. End users feel those. If a BlackBerry
solution can be positioned as unreliable, it gives Microsoft,
SEVEN, Motorola, Nokia, etc. a big leg-up when courting accounts
who do not currently have a mobile email solution."
According to Daniel Taylor, managing director for the Mobile
Enterprise Alliance, the BlackBerry outage could have two
significant implications.
"The first is that RIM – as a company – is terrible at handling
crisis communications," he said. "I mean, where's the information?
Where's the corporate statement? Why isn't someone from RIM
appearing on major business news television shows? Why isn't there
a statement on the company's Web site?"
Taylor continued: "The second is that a major criticism of RIM's
architecture has been demonstrated to millions of users today. An
outage like this is good for marketing teams at Nokia, Motorola and
Microsoft."
Taylor said that if he was managing mobile email for a company
that plans to use BlackBerry for emergency communications, similar
to those needed during the shootings this week at Virginia Tech or
during other crisis situations, he'd be looking for something with
better uptime, mirroring and crisis support.
"Either way, I'd look long and hard at solutions that IT
departments can manage without depending on a third-party NOC," he
said. "It's one thing if BES [BlackBerry Enterprise Server] goes
down in a corporate data center. IT departments can plan for
situations like that. But with the way RIM manages mobile email,
there's absolutely nothing an IT manager can do when RIM's NOC goes
down. It's embarrassing."