Thinking inside the Big Blue box.
2004: 7-Eleven decides to switch its in-store computer systems to Microsoft Windows and SQL server.
2008: Russian hackers use SQL injection flaw to breach 7-Eleven’s in-store computer systems, and then use them to carry out a massive ATM fraud.
February 2008: Microsoft aquires Danger Inc, makers of the T-Mobile Sidekick phone. The phone is based on a NetBSD kernel with Java VM and APIs.
May 2009: Microsoft lays off most of the ex-Danger employees.
October 2009: Leaks indicate that the Danger OS is dying, with the Danger-based Project Pink phone to be replaced by Windows Mobile (of course), with some ideas from the Sidekick reimplemented and grafted on. Again we hear that most of the ex-Danger employees have been fired or have resigned.
Later in October 2009: A server crash at Microsoft wipes out the entire database of user data for T-Mobile Sidekick devices. It is rumored that a SAN upgrade was outsourced to a contractor, who decided to cut costs by not bothering with a backup, and then screwed up and lost all the data. Since all Sidekick user data is stored at the data center and there’s no way to back it up to your PC or SIM card, T-Mobile advises customers that if their Sidekick crashes or powers down for any reason, they will lose all their data.
On the plus side, Perez Hilton has lost his entire address book, and we will probably be spared more leaked celeb addresses and photos.
I always thought the Sidekick looked like a great device, but the fact that the data was stored on someone else’s server with no way for me to back it up made me steer well clear–and that was even before it was bought by Microsoft.
So once again, Microsoft buys a piece of technology in order to kill it. They acquire a company, take its IP, get rid of all the employees, and spit out a worthless husk.
Update 2009-10-15: Microsoft are now confident that they’ll be able to recover the data eventually.
The Queensland Police Service (QPS) will add a business intelligence (BI) layer to its core records management system used for basic police duties.
The records management system is provided by Canadian vendor Niche Technology and forms the basis of its integrated policing solution, dubbed QPRIME (Queensland Police Records and Information Management Exchange).
QPS said its current QPRIME implementation made use of Microsoft’s Reporting Services, Report Builder and Analysis Services tools to deliver information analysis and reporting.
These tools are delivered through the use of Microsoft’s SQL Server 2005 environment, also utilising the vendor’s Internet Information Services Web server software.
FRUSTRATED Queensland police are turning a blind eye to crime to avoid time-consuming data entry on the force’s new $100 million computer system.
[...]
"They are reluctant to make arrests and they’re showing a lot more discretion in the arrests they make because QPRIME is so convoluted to navigate," Mr Leavers said. He said minor street offences, some traffic offences and minor property matters were going unchallenged, but not serious offences.
[...]
"There was an occasion where two people were arrested on multiple charges. It took six detectives more than six hours to enter the details into QPRIME," he said. "It would have taken even longer to do the summary to go to court the next morning, so basically the suspects were released on bail, rather than kept in custody."
As part of its strategy to win more trading business and new customers, the London Stock Exchange needed a scalable, reliable, high-performance stock exchange ticker plant to replace its earlier system. [...] Using the Microsoft® .NET Framework in Windows Server® 2003 and the Microsoft SQL Server™ 2000 database, the new Infolect® system has been built to achieve unprecedented levels of performance, availability, and business agility.
Benefit: One-hundred-percent reliable on high-volume trading days
Or as Microsoft headlined it:
London Stock Exchange: Achieving Record Reliability Using Windows over Linux
Contrast with 2008-09-08:
The London Stock Exchange (LSE.L: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz) suffered its worst systems failure in eight years on Monday, forcing the world’s third largest share market to suspend trading for about seven hours and infuriating its users. [...]
The Johannesburg Stock Exchange, which uses the LSE’s trading platform TradElect, also suspended trading.
And then in 2009-07-01:
…the CEO that brought TradElect to the LSE, Clara Furse, has left without saying why she was leaving. Sources in the City–London’s equivalent of New York City’s Wall Street–tell me that TradElect’s failure was the final straw for her tenure. The new CEO, Xavier Rolet, is reported to have immediately decided to put an end to TradElect.
Meanwhile, the New York Stock Exchange uses AIX and Linux.
I wonder how long it will take Microsoft to take down the banner ad.
