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.

Related articles by Zemanta

• Nokia Ovi crash results in three weeks of lost user data (engadget.com)
• Nokia comes clean as Ovi bombs (theregister.co.uk)

Nokia N97

Earlier this week some Nokia exec told TechCrunch that the internet was not ready for what was about to be announced...

And then they came out with the N97 instead...




I think that the real announcement, however, is the definition of a new word. It seems there is humankind and now...mobilekind.

I love my finnish friends and their mul-ti-media com-pu-ters!