RIM founder issues BlackBerry outage video apology, services restored

Shawn Knight

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Staff member

Research in Motion’s founder and co-CEO Mike Lazaridis has posted a video apology to BlackBerry users regarding the recent service outage that spanned several countries and continents earlier this week. The service disruption left tens of millions of RIM faithful unable to check email, use BlackBerry Messenger and browse the web.

In the video, Lazaridis offers a heartfelt apology regarding the downtime and indicates that it’s still too soon to say the issue is fully resolved. The company is approaching normal service levels in Europe, India, the Middle East and Africa and they are continuing to monitor the system. The RIM founder does say that there could be some continued instability as the issue works towards being fully resolved, however.

The downtime is being blamed on a core switch failure within RIM’s infrastructure. The backup system did not initialize as it should have, resulting in extended downtime and delayed restoration.

The timing couldn’t be worse for the struggling handset manufacturer. Apple’s iPhone 4S is being launched in multiple countries tomorrow while Android already has several quality handsets on the market and even more attractive options looming on the horizon. It's highly likely that at least a few disgruntled RIM users could be making a switch very soon.

Last month we reported that the company was cutting BlackBerry PlayBook prices for a second time in an attempt to move what is believed to be 800,000 excess units in inventory. Additionally, several thousand job cuts were announced in July as part of a cost-cutting effort.

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Yeah! Death to a major Canadian employer and technology firm! Death to all those hardworking individuals within the company with their solid incomes and spending power who will soon be jobless due to bad corporate decisions! Death to them all!
 
DokkRokken said:
Yeah! Death to a major Canadian employer and technology firm! Death to all those hardworking individuals within the company with their solid incomes and spending power who will soon be jobless due to bad corporate decisions! Death to them all!

I never said that, hell i know a guy who lost his job at RIM, but the company has really lost its edge and personally, I hate supporting BES servers (expecially Express) and I hate there phones and I just wish they would stop making them.

If they came out with a phone that was of any good and got rid of the many faults with BES then i wouldn't be so negative.
 
You said 'Die Rim Die.' That sounds a lot like saying 'Die, Rim!' Which by extension, means all its employees' careers.

I'm not targeting you alone. It seems a lot of people want RIM to be 'gone.' Like RIM has is a complete and utter bear upon their lives, even though they don't have a Blackberry, or any actual affiliation with the company whatsoever.
 
RIM has got solid products and outages will occur.

I will not use an I-whatever if my life depended on it thank you very much.
 
DokkRokken said:
You said 'Die Rim Die.' That sounds a lot like saying 'Die, Rim!' Which by extension, means all its employees' careers.

I'm not targeting you alone. It seems a lot of people want RIM to be 'gone.' Like RIM has is a complete and utter bear upon their lives, even though they don't have a Blackberry, or any actual affiliation with the company whatsoever.

No, i have a reason to hate Blackberry's and RIM.

1) there server software sucks, once its working its ok, but the moment it doesn't you end up going through hours apon hours of loops and guides to try and get the darn thing working again! It would almost be easier to completely wipe the server and start from scratch, thats saying something.

2) when I owned a BB I had to pull the battery out on a regular basis just because it kept freezing. I then upgraded to a BB Bold which, again kept freezing. I don't use it as my main phone any more for that reason. I recently upgraded it to OS6 and guess what? it still freezes! I'm also not alone, alot of people have this problem. I mean come on! iPhone rarely freezes, Android products also seem solid, even Windows Phones rarely crash, so why do BB crash at least once a week?

Also the back cover of Bolds seem to snap and fall off after a period of time, The camera's are nothing special, web browsing on any of them is a horrible experience, the way email works on the phones haven't changed in years and feels dated when compared to the competition. The only thing BB had going for it at one point was BBM, which now the iPhone has, Android has and windows phone has?

One last thing, why does a company such as RIM, known for being "a great maker" of handsets that can recieve email. Bring out a product like the Playbook that cannot recieve email? Its just crazy?!
 
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