RIM's Single Point of Failure

I've got to chime in with Jon Gruber of Daring Fireball on this: No matter how much Research in Motion (RIMM) promotes their NOC approach to running its Blackberry service, it's still a single point of failure for all Blackberry subscribers. And given that this weakness has been demonstrated to Blackberry subscribers with two multi-hour outages in the last 11 months, at some point, businesses are going to scream "Fix it!" I'm surprised someone from the high-availability computing world hasn't pilloried RIM already.

For those who don't think RIM's outages are any big deal, here's a fun fact. If RIM were trying to meet a 99.999% availability for its Blackberry service, the three-hour outage on February 12, 2008 would have used up its allowed downtime for the next 34 years. Oops.

It's easy to forget that until the Internet came along and demonstrated that distributed and decentralized networks really were more reliable, most of the major computer companies built networks with centralized command and control systems, yet those networks never achieved anything like the resilience of the Internet. It's a shame Anywhere business customers using Blackberrys are going to have to learn that lesson again the hard way. It's not a question of if that will happen; it's a question of when.

Meanwhile, everyone who wants to avoid the Anywhere school of hard knocks should repeat after me:

I will not accept single points of failure in my Anywhere service. I will not accept single points of failure in my Anywhere service. I will not accept single points of failure in my Anywhere service.

Comments

[User 162827:]

This is a crazy statement. You are going to tell me that two minor outages in a year is bad service? Cellular telephones in general could not compare to that with the number of dropped calls and no service areas they have. Blackberry users can afford to miss out every once in awhile unless the are obsessive compulsive e-mail freaks. It's not that big of a deal so settle down old man.

2008 Mar 11 04:40 PM

[User 162827:]

By the way, you are obsessed with Apple.

2008 Mar 11 04:42 PM

[Dale:]

The author should state he is long APPL - unless his position is now different than it was back in January. After a brief review of his last several posts gushing over APPL and their upcoming dominance of the smart phone market it is pretty clear he is reacting to the February stats on smartphones - "Surprisingly, the iPhone also slid for the second consecutive month in our survey, garnering 1% of mentions versus 7% last month and 14% in December," the survey read.
If you are going to pump your stock by criticizing another, at lease have the common courtesy to state your long positions. I expect better from Seeking Alpha! www.thestreet.com/_yah...;cm_cat=FREE&c...

2008 Mar 11 05:09 PM

[Hayweed:]

What if Verizon's phone service for the country went down for 3 hours. I bet that Congress would hold hearings. Considering that state and federal agencies use the blackberry they should demand better. Carl is dead on with this story.

2008 Mar 11 05:44 PM

[bryanz:]

I love the AAPL comments. I don't think before this article I'd ever seen one written by the author that didn't promoted AAPL. Of course, this article is nothing more than a thinly-veiled promotion of AAPL's recent announcement that the iPhone will work with Exchange. I haven't read much into the implementation of the technology yet, but if it's like GOOD for Windows Mobile smart phones, then businesses typically either use a BES or use a Goodlink server. If a business already has a BES, they probably aren't going to drop all their BBs and run out and buy iPhones and a Goodlink server. The outage stories I feel are overblown. Uptime is still well above 99%. The most recent outage apparently occurred as a result of adding increased capacity rather than some glaring glitch in the system that caused the service to choke. That being said, AAPL will certainly make some inroads into the business market, but RIMM will also make inroads into the consumer market as they've been doing with the Pearl and the Curve, and they're prepping to do with the 9000 series. New software upgrades will render HTML emails as part of the OS and will allow video recording.

For the record, I'm long both AAPL and RIMM.

2008 Mar 12 03:02 AM

[Blue collar...:]

Well............Duh!!!... on the "for the record" but I don't believe the "long" on RIMM; more likely SHORT.
and......by the record. I don't use anything in the technological that doesn't go down at least twice per month and that includes satellite, cable, wireless and whatever else being foisted on the U.S. consumer complete with glitches.

2008 Mar 12 08:44 AM

[carol b:]

Your loyalty is showing and it's on the side of RIMM!
You must not work in corporate America..i.e. a fortune 500 company where things like down time for systems of any kind happen at least 4-5 times in any year. I have and employees exalt these times as favor from above.

2008 Mar 12 09:09 AM

[tom1234:]

i am long on aapl---rimm is a good phone ---rimm is a one trick pony ---unless they have entered the diverse fields like an aapl--i just like aapl better and not just their iphone alone--

2008 Mar 12 09:20 AM

[snarfuffle:]

I think we can be more zen about this situation. I agree, small outages should not be compared to terribly inefficient points of contact for support 24 hours a day from other service providers. I have had a RIM BlackBerry device attached to the side of my tumor for the past 8 years. The few and far between service outages have been excellent points of reality to how valuable the service is when it is up and also a good resting point to remind us that there are things that can wait and work life balance is healthy. I feel my tumor shrink during those outages and my kids see the whites of my eyes. Chill out and accept that RIM handles their support and technology with decent effeciency and still dominate the corporate business wireless solutions.

2008 Mar 12 01:18 PM

[.crazylegs..:]

I greatly respect Carl's opinions on Apple as he always has very intelligent things to say, usually on the marketing side of things. Too bad his recent change of employment doesn't allow him to post as much on the company.

That being said, I believe this piece is comedy. RIM's "single point of failure" could be compared to iPhone's "single" point of failure if EDGE on ATT were to go down and one didn't have wifi access. Then what?

RIM's long term service reliability speaks for itself and as one poster above noted, the core system is extremely reliable with outages only occurring when upgrades or tweaks are being applied. This doesn't excuse the outage, but it is a noteworthy point, that the core system just tends to work (kind of like a Mac!). No doubt I do hope RIM increases the number of NOCs from 2 to 4 or 8 to achieve redundancies on top of redundancies. It should be noted, though, that there currently is a third secretly located NOC for certain customers that require 100% uptime (read US gov't) that was put in place after the outage last year.

I'm long both AAPL and RIMM because it obvious to see the growth of smartphone adoption worldwide is huge and both are positioned in the space to benefit. (There are many more reasons than iPhone to own AAPL, but that's for another time)

2008 Mar 12 04:26 PM

[JIM:]

Someone must be paranoid here; I don't see one mention of A---E. Carl studiously avoided it. Seems we all know the 800lb gorilla that was not mentioned anywhere here.... Go A---E!

2008 Mar 13 02:23 PM

[nietschele:]

There should be a rule that writers who are supposed to be neutral -- after all, people read information to get the facts, not bolster their own opinions -- have to state their positions and bias. Carl, your piece is a blatant example -- I expected a lot better from Seeking Alpha.

2008 Mar 20 11:16 AM