Sidekick Users Start Seeing Data Return

Well Sidekick users are bound to rejoice in the most recent follow up to the 2009 Sidekick Debacle. As it stands right now, Microsoft is stating that they have recovered most, if not all, user data. “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.” Well, that is a terrific resolution to a problem that was just days to becoming lost beyond repair, though it may be too little too late for the Sidekick line. The mainstream media–down to the blogosphere–has trashed the reputation of the line and users who otherwise might have sworn by their Sidekick device are almost sure to look at alternative devices. While this outage may have been a fluke, sabotage or someone falling asleep at the proverbial wheel, it is just another reason to show that cloud computing is not fully ready for prime time.

I hope that I am wrong, Sidekick users flock back to their otherwise prized devices, and we see a resurgence of the line in the wake of this entire experience. Otherwise, T-Mobile has to shoulder the blame for a problem they had little to do with.

The entire press statement follows the break.

T-mobile

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 these forums 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.

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