What went wrong?
For the past week, I have watched and listened as absolutely no Microsoft C-level executive stepped up to the plate, and owned the meltdown, on behalf of Microsoft, the company.
That was totally disheartening!
For over a week since I first heard of the incident, I didn’t hear a peep from Microsoft.
As you would expect, tongues started wagging, and every one started piling on with their conspiracy stories. I am not going to give credence to those rumors by enumerating them here, though.
A couple of things bothered me:
- Didn’t Microsoft have backups? For real! Did Microsoft, a company that wants all of your cloud business, and on the cusp of releasing Azure*, not have a backup strategy or regimen for Sidekick users’ data?
- Doesn’t Microsoft have a unit charged with rapidly responding to situations like this? This one is particularly painful. Especially since I almost always get someone to contact me when a product goes bad. Yes, they are that responsive! Which makes the anomalous silence during the Sidekick episode even more alarming! I am sure many a prospective candidate for Azure is asking themselves if they should still take the plunge.
- Didn’t the Program Manager for the product, have enough pride in the product to stand up for it? Where is pride in your work? No one stood up!
After utterly destroying the product, and the brand value contained therein, Microsoft came up with the following messaging, evidently crafted by lawyers to mollify their users:
This is what they could do?
Who get’s fired?
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*I have been a beta tester, and going forward, I am going to be a consumer of Azure, in all forms.