Sidekick users can mostly breathe a sigh of relief today. T-Mobile Sidekick data has been mostly recovered! Microsoft confirmed today that they have “recovered most, if not all, customer data for those Sidekick customers whose data was affected by the recent outage.” Microsoft will soon begin restoring data to Sidekicks affected by Microsoft’s recent server crash, but is waiting to verify data integrity and the viability of their restoration plan. The announcement from Microsoft comes on the heels of speculation late last night that had Microsoft employees optimistic that they could recover much the Sidekick data previously thought to be “almost certainly” lost.
We started off the with T-Mobile essentially telling Sidekick customers that their data was gone forever. In exchange for the hassle, T-Mobile gave all Sidekick users a free month of service. A few days later, T-Mobile changed their tune and indicated that at least some Sidekick data had been recovered, but would offer $100 T-Mobile gift cards to anyone with significant data loss. Today, the story changes for the better. Sidekick users left stranded without their personal data might soon see their Sidekicks back in full working order!
Microsoft has apparently been working around the clock to get things back in working order. They’ll continue to work hard to restore data and ensure that this kind of thing never happens again.
But, that still leaves T-Mobile and Microsoft burned by the Sidekick server crash fiasco. Cloud-based services are becoming more visible and more popular these days, and that puts extra pressure on service providers to ensure that data is protected and always available. Small scale service disruptions might be news worthy for a news cycle or two, but a disruption of this magnitude will be hard to live down. We have to wonder how public perception of Microsoft’s cloud-based My Phone backup service has been affected by this server crash. All we know is that the Sidekick crash has certainly left us doubting the reliability of Microsoft’s cloud data.
The lesson here? Backup your data. Especially if, for some crazy reason, you use a Sidekick for business.
Find T-Mobile’s update here.