[outages] News item: Blackberry services down worldwide

Thu Oct 13 14:35:06 UTC 2011

Like Blake mentioned, I for one will also be ditching Blackberry devices due to the poor, irregular service which Blackberry users continue to be subject to due to RIM's inability to provide a stable and reliable service. To add further insult to injury, it just simply is unacceptable to be subject to RIM's high service and licensing costs for BES to ultimately rely on a second-rate infrastructure that causes regular 'blackouts'.

Time to more to a standalone device that then relies only on the carriers, which in most cases are just as unreliable. None the less, I for one can't justify paying for an 'enterprise service' to subject to incompetence and instability of the provider. These situations simply arise to often with RIM, yet as a service provider they chose to ignore that impact these outages have on their customers in the corporate arena. Real-time communications in the corporate/enterprise world have no become one of the primary methods of communication, due to the technology RIM et al offer.

It is indeed a shame that the likes of Apple iOS & Google Android are yet to provide features that compete with BlackBerrys, such as encryption etc. (I am not particular clued up with regards to Windows Mobile however...) All of which, to date, are features which are leveraged in terms of justifying the cost of implementing a Blackberry solution.

Furthermore, I found RIM's somewhat patronising updates from RIM's CIOs and CEOs quite insulting, particularly when an official statement had already been released stating the issues were 'resolved' to later contradict this statement and simple refer to it as some kind of 'mistake'.

Unacceptable, as I am sure many of you would agree.

Regards,

P.

-----Original Message-----
From: Blake T. Pfankuch [mailto:blake at pfankuch.me] 
Sent: 13 October 2011 14:08
To: Matthew Huff; 'Jamie Bowden'; 'Joe Abley'
Cc: 'nanog at nanog.org'
Subject: RE: [outages] News item: Blackberry services down worldwide

Agreed.  Had a customer during the timeframe of this week ditch 90 blackberries for iPhone/android devices.  He actually sent me a video after BES finished uninstalling and he shut the server down "so help me I'm never getting another one of these damn coasters."  One user said when they got the phone "where is the silly wheelie clicky thing."  IT manager said "oh no you just touch the screen."  

I'm told it was like watching an 8 year old with a box of fireworks and matches....

For those who complain about security on windows mobile, iPhone or android... you can do l2tp vpn and then ActiveSync on top of that over https.  Mobile device policies in Exchange for user experience control.  Overall much easier than Blackberry, not dependent on someone else's equipment for things like mail delivery and internet browsing, and one less server to care about.