Since the Great Sidekick Disaster of 2009, there’s been a nearly endless torrent of tips on the matter barraging our inbox. Some weren’t so much “tips” as they were “mindless rants”, while others were obviously just angry customers looking to make stuff up.
Recently, however, a source which has proven itself reliable in the past has come forward with some incredible new details. It seems like Microsoft had a big, big reason to get the servers in shipshape as soon as possible – and it wasn’t because they wanted to satisfy T-Mobile customers.
According to our source, Danger, makers of the Sidekick and the keepers of the keys when it comes to the Sidekick servers, has a contract with the carriers and other service partners stipulating that the Sidekick services must maintain a 99.5% up rate. The lingering 0.5% was allotted to allow downtime during Over-the-Air updates and minor glitches. When the numbers start dipping below this point, the penalties would begin racking up. When Microsoft snatched up Danger in 2008, they also took on the contractual obligations of the company.
While our source couldn’t give specific numbers for the recent outage, they could shed a light on some relative counts: during a 2005 outage, Danger was forced to shell out around $700,000 per day when the active Sidekick userbase was around 800,000 subscribers; this number, says our source, grows in relation to the number of users inconvenienced by the outage. With the Sidekick subscription base having more than doubled since, the penalties have likely grown accordingly.
It’s important to note that, as far as I’ve been told, these fees only apply when the service is “down” – that is, mostly unreachable. Now that the service has returned sans much of the data it once held, it’s unclear what (if any) penalties are accumulating.
Our source also shared a plethora of details on the perils of the Sidekick line – from management being spooked away from making changes due to these contract stipulations to server elements that were “built on spit and glue” – but that’s another post for another day.
Microsoft probably makes $700,000 every minute of every day. I don’t think they really care that much about the penalties.
Hitting the 5 nines is probably more important than the penalties. And yeah, they probably don’t care about a couple of mils but this will do great damage to their “name” in the eye of cloud computing.
Cloud computing? This is just a straight up data service…
Uh, that’s not missing five nines, that’s missing two. BIG difference.
Sure, now. I was talking in general.
Five nines? They’re not even hitting 3 if their SLA is 99.5%. Five nines would be 99.999% which is a HUGE difference.
99.5% uptime = 43.8 hours of downtime/year
99.999% uptime = 8.76 hours of downtime/year
99.999% uptime is 5.25 *minutes* of downtime a year, not 8.76 hours…
you’re right. its 525 minutes = 8.76 hours.
2 of 3 cant do math here!!
min_a_year = 24(h)*60(min)*365(days) = 525600
minutes_a_day = 24(h)*60(min) = 1440
hours_a_year = 24(h)*365(days) = 8760
uptime 99.999% => downtime 0.001%
___________________________________________
0.001% of 525600
= 5.25 minutes per year
= 0.08 hours a year
= 0.00365 days a year
No this will do damage to the Danger and T Mobile names; most people don’t have a clue Microsoft owns Danger and are just learning about it because of this.
Microsoft is smart to not place Microsoft logo on all there products that’s the purpose of subsidiaries and brands to not bring recognition to the owner.
Most people only connect things to the company who name is on the package; look at car companies most car companies own 100’s of brands and with food companies which have there own brands and make things for retail stores such as walmart, safeway, cvs, riteaid, wholefoods etc.
They all could have the exact same shit inside but people are stuck on the brand name and will look down on something just because of that; it can also backfire when a company does something in secret and no one knows its them and that brand becomes more successful.
It’s good news that they got the data back, but now T-Mobile should release a free, personal backup application for Sidekick users.
They won’t though… it will be one of their insurance products at a “reasonable” fee of $5.99 a month.
Hm? They haven’t gotten their data back.
I don’t even understand how people nowadays don’t have their own personal back up application, or *habit.* I have a sidekick and I lost nothing even though my data was never recovered, why? Every so often I actually export contacts, appointments & other information manually to my computer via bluetooth or email. Is that really so hard?
People don’t have personal backup apps in general these are for all models not just sidekick.
There phone can not use one
There are none for phone
Computer does not support method used
Phone does not support method (can not back up via internet, bluetooth, wifi, anything else because they don’t have that on phone)
Not easy to find, not as easy as going to search engine typing in phone model and backup info does not pull information for every phone on market.
Have to buy bullshit cable/software that only works with particular phone model
and does not have computer.
“there phone”, is that a new brand of phone?
Can’t backup your data because you’re too stupid? Try pen and paper, it’s very reliable.
“It seems like Microsoft had a big, big reason to get the servers in shipshape as soon as possible – and it wasn’t because they wanted to satisfy T-Mobile customers.”
could you have written this any more slanted?
I don’t even understand how people nowadays don’t have their own personal back up application, or *habit.* I have a sidekick and I lost nothing even though my data was never recovered, why? Every so often I actually export contacts, appointments & other information manually to my computer via bluetooth or email. Is that really so hard?
I used Intellisync to keep Outlook and the sidekick in line. I have my contacts and calendar in Outlook. I DID lose my notes. And my Sidekick is just a oversized phone/sms/web device now.
Android here I come.
+1