Microsoft in Danger after Sidekick debacle

T-Mobile Danger Sidekick (T-Mobile photo)

UPDATE: This story has been updated with new information.

Microsoft and T-Mobile are in damage control mode today after a server outage appears to have deleted all the backup data of users of the Danger Sidekick device and revealed the danger of the cloud computing model.

T-Mobile, which is the exclusive carrier for the phone, Internet and messaging device, told subscribers on the Forums section of its Web site Saturday, “personal information stored on your device - such as contacts, calendar entries, to-do lists or photos - that is no longer on your Sidekick almost certainly has been lost as a result of a server failure at Microsoft/Danger.”

A T-Mobile spokeswoman, after first telling me this morning that it was not true that T-Mobile halted sales of the Sidekick, told me this afternoon that it has. Sales have been halted at retail stores and, on the T-Mobile Web pages listing devices for sale, all the Sidekicks are described as "temporarily out of stock."

The trouble started last week, when Microsoft reported an outage at its Danger servers that stored data “in the cloud” for Sidekick users. Microsoft acquired Danger, which makes the Sidekick, in 2008.

A review of subscriber posts on T-Mobile’s Forum showed reported problems dating to October 2. Typical responses to the trouble: “I cannot stand it anymore;” “This is ridiculous;” and, from someone in Seattle, “Since ‘Danger’ is a Microsoft product, I may just drive over to Redmond and yell at them in person.”

At the T-Mobile and other online forums, users are also unsatisfied with T-Mobile's offers of compensation. They don't seem impressed with an offer of a month of free T-Mobile service and have scoffed at the idea of getting a new device at the new-customer price, or even free, if it means being required to enter into another two-year contract for service. Some have demanded to be let out of their contracts without penalty to go to another carrier.

There are only three places where Sidekick data is stored, the T-Mobile spokeswoman explained: on the device's internal memory; on its SIM card; and on the Microsoft/Danger servers. The Sidekick is not designed to sync with a personal computer, as many brands of smartphones can be, to restore data on the device.

In its message to subscribers Saturday, T-Mobile warned subscribers not to remove the battery from their devices because that will delete the data presently stored on the device. On an FAQ page on its site, T-Mobile provided Sidekick owners some options for rebuilding their contacts. If they have a SIM card from another Sidekick, perhaps an older model they still have, that can be inserted into their current Sidekick to restore some data. Also, if the user has contacts stored in a vCard format, those contacts can be imported into their Sidekick via e-mail, text, Bluetooth or MMS. E-mail addresses can also be imported from Microsoft Outlook, Gmail or Yahoo programs.

In a joint statement, T-Mobile and Microsoft/Danger profusely apologized for the trouble: “We recognize the magnitude of this inconvenience.”

Left unexplained as of this writing is why there was no backup for the Microsoft/Danger servers or, if there was, why it failed. Redmond’s got some ‘splainin to do. Cloud computing is touted as a new cost-efficient way for people and businesses to access software and other computer services at a remote data center, saving them the cost of building and maintaining their own computer infrastructure. But one of the reservations users have of going to the cloud is the reliability of the service provider.

While thousands of planes take off and land safely every day, when one crashes, it gives a lot of people pause about the reliability of the service.

I will update this post as new information comes in.