As BlackBerry service goes down, confidence is shaken and many questions on reliability surface

As BlackBerry service goes down confidence is shaken and many questions on reliability surface

Some eight million global users (including this blogger) lost all BlackBerry service last night and part of this morning. I can tell you from my own personal experience that in just that brief window of time, this shut down caused some real pain in our inability to communicate within the firm and deliver important guidance and counsel to clients.

Research in Motion (RIM), the parent company, said it is now “looking at the cause of the breakdown.” In other words, the company has no clue why this happened, or simply isn’t telling us yet. A number of analysts believe that the company’s rapid subscriber growth coupled with the boom of junk e-mail equal a recipe for disaster, as the company’s networks may have simply reached their capacity to handle any additional volume.

The word BlackBerry has become a brand unto itself.  It symbolizes 24/7 un-interrupted email/wireless service and many in the workforce now interchange the word BlackBerry and wireless email the way consumers think of tissues and Kleenex or cola and Coke. That is a hugely powerful position to own. And, most of us never even think about the critical resources that BlackBerrys (and other wireless devices) have become to our everyday communications, until they stop working.

Now, for the first time, millions of customers have experienced a major crack in the BlackBerry armor and have to question the ongoing reliability and sustainability of this product. A minor disaster such as this undoubtedly has Corporate IT Directors everywhere focusing in on the need for adequate redundant systems and/or replacements for blackberries all together.

RIM has a real crisis management dilemma on its hands. It successfully found a means to survive and even prosper after losing its behemoth patent infringement case last year. But, in many ways this crisis is actually worse because the backbone of its product (sustainable wireless networks) has been shaken to the core. It will be critical for RIM to quickly communicate openly with its users about what happened and then make the right business decisions so that this type of disruption never happens again. Otherwise, the trust in this first mover brand will continue to erode very quickly.

I know that I’m wondering what will happen next...

Comments

[med supply guy]

ed- i agree that the shutdown was a big pain and it felt like i was living in a box for those 10 or so hours (even though most of the hours were during the night) but i dont see this as the crisis you write about it. reason is this- blackberry has these outages every 6 months or so and they typicaly last a few hours. this one lasted a bit more and was all over the news so it seemed bad, but the reality is that as we depend more and more on technology to live, there are going to be kinks and the world will keep spinning.

[ed]

Five million people lost service for 10 hours. Don't underestimate how this impacts the way users feel about Blackberry or the parent company.

[med supply guy]

8 of those hours were while people were sleeping and 99% of those people forgot about it the second they got the first ping or vibration...

[Ed]

Well... obviously, you don’t conduct any international business Med Supply Guy. Because if you did, it’s painfully clear that executives in China or Australia are up and certainly emailing you during the night here.

[med supply guy]

incorrect, mr. moed. i actually do conduct international business but i typically don't reply to emails in my sleep. also, don't know if you are aware, but it is still possible to email from your PC or a laptop and if you aren't in the office, there are ways to access that computer as well. point is, not having a working blackberry doesn't mean the world has ended...