Can Microsoft Weather Its Hailstorm?

[BigBlueBall News]

CNET

July 9, 2001

A partial outage of Microsofts MSN Messenger service, now in its seventh day, is casting a shadow over a wide-ranging services strategy that Microsoft hopes will be its future.



Not only has Microsoft been struggling to restore full service, but on Thursday the company also shut down MSN Messenger as it restarted the network of servers that handle messaging traffic. That "reboot" failed to immediately fix the problem.



The outage, which began Tuesday, affects as many as 10 million people, or roughly one-third of MSN Messenger users. Initially, many people simply lost buddy lists of friends, but as Microsoft tackled the problem more aggressively, service collapsed completely for many of those users. MSN Messenger customers continued to report service problems Monday.



For Microsoft, the outage is a black eye as it puts more emphasis on instant messaging--and network reliability--as part of its forthcoming .Net software-as-a-service strategy, which includes an ambitious services plan called HailStorm. [Discuss]

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