Seriously after so many years you would think RIM would have learned how to remove Single Points of Failure from mission critical services! While this is not going to make people run out and buy a Windows Mobile device it will reduce peoples confidence in relying on their BlackBerry.
From Marketwatch.com:
…the interruption was brought on by the introduction of new software that was designed to improve the system’s cache.
“The system routine was expected to be non-impacting with respect to the real-time operation of the BlackBerry infrastructure, but the pre-testing of the system routine proved to be insufficient,” the statement read.
The problem was compounded by problems in the company’s backup systems, which “did not fully perform to RIM’s expectations in this situation” and caused a further delay in restoring service.
So RIM had a single point of failure and their backup systems failed them also. So that is three errors in a row. First they did not sufficiently test the upgrade, then they had a critical failure, and then their backup system did not perform! Talk about rock solid reliability.
The thing that really annoys me is that this would not be that bad if RIM would just communicate the issue to users. Is that really so much to ask? Can’t we just sign up to get a text message when services are out?
You can read more about the issue from the AP syndicated by Yahoo