Friday, February 13, 2009

Dear Nokia: Servers fail, get used to it

I will first state that I admire Nokia and that it is one of the few companies that has managed to reinvent itself so many times in the past 100 years: From lumber to rubber boots, radios and eventually mobile phones and mobile networks.

It is currently in the midst of its latest transformation evolving from a hardware manufacturer to a service provider via its new Ovi brand. In a late night conversation with a Nokia executive last January a Google colleague made a bold statement about how Nokia would quickly realize that being service provider is harder than just launching a website and how we would realize that being in the phone business is harder than just launching a phone.

The statement seems to be holding true, as Nokia learnt yesterday when its Ovi Contacts system crashed because of a broken cooler. Folks, its not like just getting rid of defective phones.. ... build redudancy and backup capabilities. People might forgive a dropped call here and there but they will not forgive you loosing their contacts database!

Maybe Nokia will want to co-locate their data center along with Google's supposed new data center in Finland.

In any case, I look forward to having a front row seat to Nokia's latest evolution.


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