 "RIM May Relook Centralised Network Architecture")
Now that BlackBerry maker Research In Motion (RIM) has finally opened up channels of communication with customers and media about the unprecedented three-day BlackBerry service outage, there is clear indication that RIM may also relook its centralised network architecture strategy, since one datacentre fault resulted in an outage across four continents.
While countries like India have demanded in the past that RIM set up data centres inside the respective country of operation in order to ensure traffic surveillance for reasons of national security, RIM has resisted such attempts. However, the three-day outage may result in RIM setting up local datacentres in order to minimise the effects of any future outage.
Patrick Spence, Senior Vice President and Managing Director, Global Sales & Regional Marketing, RIM, in a telecom with Indian media earlier this evening said that RIM would do whatever is necessary to ensure the smartphone maker wouldn’t face the same situation again. “Nothing is off the table, even relooking at our architecture if necessary.” He added that besides the technology aspect, RIM would also overhaul its communication strategy that has come in for widespread criticism—for three days RIM’s top leadership did not come forward to speak on the disastrous outage, and despite widespread customer frustration expressed across social networks, RIM’s response was feeble and unsatisfactory and only served to enrage customers further.
Despite global telecom operators talking about compensating users for the three-day outage, Spence refused to be drawn into questions of whether operators in India would compensate BlackBerry users here and whether RIM would foot the bill. He insisted that currently most of RIM’s energies were going into stabilising the network and said that RIM was drawing on the collective experience and skills of its 17,000 global employee base in order to get things completely back to normal.
When questioned on the absence of a clear crisis management strategy, Spence insisted that RIM had one in place and said that top management was busy working day and night to solve the problem and hence perhaps didn’t comment earlier. However, in the light of further criticism that has come RIM’s way from respected IT advisory firms such as Gartner, the wisdom behind RIM’s top leadership taking three days to comment on the situation saying they were busy solving the problem seems suspect.
A widespread hoax on BlackBerry Messenger (BBM) further complicated matters for RIM and may have increased traffic levels when RIM managers were struggling to get things up and running. Many BBM users across the globe got a BBM instant message from friends which asked users to broadcast the message to all their BBM contacts in order to update the BBM app or risk losing all their contacts.