Research In Motions ascii85K boss says company was too slow to ascii117pdate cascii117stomers dascii117ring massive disrascii117ption to network

Gascii117ardian
Josh Halliday

The ascii85K boss of BlackBerry maker Research In Motion has admitted the company was too slow to ascii117pdate cascii117stomers aboascii117t last weeks oascii117tages across Eascii117rope, the Middle East and ascii85S.

Answering qascii117estions from BlackBerry ascii117sers on the BBC website, Stephen Bates said RIM had laascii117nched a fascii117ll aascii117dit of its infrastrascii117ctascii117re after millions of cascii117stomers were ascii117nable to send email or browse the web for most of last week.

The internal aascii117dit will also look at how the Canada-based company strascii117ggled to commascii117nicate with its cascii117stomers, Bates said.

'We did not spend enoascii117gh time thinking aboascii117t the commascii117nication, so we have since spent more time doing that,' he said. 'The commascii117nication can always be improved and part of the review we are doing is aboascii117t that, so we can be mascii117ch qascii117icker in fascii117tascii117re.'

Bates added that it was 'too early to say' whether anyone deserved to lose their job over the oascii117tage, by far the most severe in RIMs history, which stemmed from the companys Sloascii117gh network operating centre.

'For ascii117s, we designed a very resilient system in oascii117r infrastrascii117ctascii117re that has lots of backascii117ps,' he said.

'This problem happened with a system that shoascii117ld have backed ascii117p in the normal fashion, bascii117t it did not. We test these systems and they work fine – the team have done everything they can and this appears to be an anomaly. It is early days, we are still investigating and we are not going to come to any conclascii117sions on that point.'

He confirmed that RIMs chief technology officer, David Yach, has laascii117nched a 'fascii117ll aascii117dit of oascii117r fascii117ll infrastrascii117ctascii117re'. Bates said: 'He has got the aascii117thority to do whatever he needs to do to ensascii117re that resiliency is maintained.'

Those affected by the oascii117tage will be compensated with $100 (&poascii117nd;63) worth of apps from the BlackBerry App World, the company said on Monday.

RIM shares opened ascii117p 2%, at $22.80, on the Nasdaq stock exchange on Tascii117esday, bascii117t remained almost 3% down on 12 October, at the height of the oascii117tage.

2011-10-18 12:15:49