Microsoft sends Danger signal by not taking full responsibility for Sidekick service failure

Microsoft should be lauded for doing what days ago seem miraculous: The recovery of Sidekick service data lost sometime last week. But Microsoft has failed to take responsibility for the data disaster, in statements issued publicly and given to the Los Angeles Times. The company's pass-the-buck position is simply inexcusable. Sole responsibility falls on Microsoft, because Danger is the company's subsidiary.

As Betanews' Scott Fulton reported earlier, Microsoft took credit for the data recovery, but not its loss. A Microsoft spokesperson told the LA Times that "the Danger Service platform, which experienced the outage, is a standalone service operating on non-Microsoft technologies, and is not related to Microsoft's cloud services platform or Windows Live." She continued: "Other and future Microsoft mobile products and services are entirely based on Microsoft technologies and Microsoft's cloud service platform and software."

The position is clear: Microsoft is distancing its cloud services from those provided by Danger, which acquisition was announced in February 2008. Microsoft closed the deal about two months later. Clearly Microsoft is concerned about the negative perceptions the outage could create for its cloud services, about a month before Azure Services Platform makes a big real world debut at the company's Professional Developers Conference in Los Angeles. Following the data outage, there appeared many blogs or news stories -- I wrote one of them -- questioning Microsoft's data services reliability or cloud services in general.

But is it really true that Microsoft services infrastructure wasn't involved in the outage? Last week and over the weekend, unattributed news reports suggested that the failure occurred during a server/services upgrade, which could mean to Microsoft's cloud services infrastructure. If that's true -- and Microsoft says absolutely nothing clear about circumstances -- then the company's cloud services are partially at fault here.

Even if not, Microsoft cannot abdicate responsibility because:

• Danger is a Microsoft subsidiary
• Microsoft closed the Danger deal about 18 months ago
• If Danger services weren't adequate, Microsoft should have migrated to its systems sooner

Before continuing, here is the official statement issued today by Microsoft:

Dear T-Mobile Sidekick customers,

On behalf of Microsoft, I want to apologize for the recent problems with the Sidekick service and give you an update on the steps we have taken to resolve these problems.

We are pleased to report that we have recovered most, if not all, customer data for those Sidekick customers whose data was affected by the recent outage. We plan to begin restoring users' personal data as soon as possible, starting with personal contacts, after we have validated the data and our restoration plan. We will then continue to work around the clock to restore data to all affected users, including calendar, notes, tasks, photographs and high scores, as quickly as possible.

We now believe that data loss affected a minority of Sidekick users. If your Sidekick account was among those affected, please continue to log into the T-Mobile Sidekick forum at http://www.t-mobile.com/sidekick for the latest updates about when data restoration will begin, and any steps you may need to take. We will work with T-Mobile to post the next update on data restoration timing no later than Saturday.

We have determined that the outage was caused by a system failure that created data loss in the core database and the back-up. We rebuilt the system component by component, recovering data along the way. This careful process has taken a significant amount of time, but was necessary to preserve the integrity of the data.

We will continue working closely with T-Mobile to restore user data as quickly as possible. We are eager to deliver the level of reliable service that our incredibly loyal customers have become accustomed to, and we are taking immediate steps to help ensure this does not happen again. Specifically, we have made changes to improve the overall stability of the Sidekick service and initiated a more resilient backup process to ensure that the integrity of our database backups is maintained.

Once again, we apologize for this situation and the inconvenience that it has created. Please know that we are working all-out to resolve this situation and restore the reliability of the service.

Sincerely,

Roz Ho

Corporate Vice President

Premium Mobile Experiences, Microsoft Corporation

Distancing from Danger is the wrong approach. It reflects badly on Microsoft as a corporate citizen. Trust isn't just about technology, but corporate character. Microsoft has shown bad character by not taking responsibility for a data disaster that happened on its watch.

More significantly, Microsoft has failed T-Mobile, a partner. Mirosoft's business is almost entirely built around partnerships. Microsoft develops software that is largey distributed and serviced by third parties. Microsoft's response abandons T-Mobile, which sends another message of mistrust: Partners can't rely on Microsoft to step up for them when it makes mistakes.

The Sidekick data disaster is potentially catastrophic for T-Mobile. Sidekick users are among T-Mobile's most loyal customers. Related, T-Mobile's customer demographic tends to be younger users than other US carriers. The Sidekick brand may never recover from the stigma of mistrust that data outage caused.

Microsoft should do right by T-Mobile, by setting aside a sizable marketing kitty -- perhaps $50 million -- for rebuilding the Sidekick brand and confidence in Danger services. TV commercials should as inviting and exciting as those for Bing.

Something else: Microsoft must understand that its short-sighted approach of protecting the larger cloud services brand is a hole in which conspiracy theorists will bury the company and erect tombstone: "Microsoft killed Sidekick to save Pink." Microsoft's much rumored Project Pink is supposedly coming from the same Premium Mobile Experiences group responsible for Danger. Conspiracy theorists -- and I'm not one of them -- will see the data failure as a Microsoft plot to kill off Sidekick, which sales T-Mobile suspended. According to product leaks, Project Pink appears to be a Sidekick competitor based on the same Danger software platform -- or at least its extension by Microsoft.

The data recovery is largely inconsequential -- except perhaps to Sidekick users -- because Microsoft failed to take responsibility for its loss, too. Apple and Mac fanboys love to debate about whether Microsoft copies Apple. Apple is notoriously image conscious, media manipulative and secretive. Microsoft's response to the Sidekick data disaster seems awfully Applesque. This is one way Microsoft shouldn't want to copy Apple. Shame on you, Microsoft. Shame on you.