Intermedia's Exchange hive goes titsup ... and no one's answering calls Intermedia, the world's largest third-party provider of hosted Microsoft Exchange services, today delivered a masterclass in how to mismanage customers' expectations when cloud services crash. Hordes of angry customers on both sides of the Atlantic took to Twitter this afternoon to complain about "issues" with the company's …
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" no one thinks the phones are any good, till they stop working!"
"Legacy" approach to office phones: 48v from a big fat central battery to drive both the switchboard and the phones connected off it.
"New improved" office phones: VoIP, PoE. Distributed UPS instead of central 48v. DIsconnect ALL analog phones (and phone lines) in the office.
Some months later: Network (and thus phone) UPS battery fails in 200+ person office comms cabinet. UPS is obsolete. WIll cost all of $400 to replace. Times are hard, networks aren't essential services.
IT Department action: throw away the UPS, don't replace it, thus losing any capability for working phones in that office during a power outage. If the power outage is a wide area outage (outside the office as well as in the office), most of the cellphone base stations in the area will also die as very few now have mains backup. Cellphone coverage will be very much reduced so there will be limited ability to make emergency (or indeed any) calls.
It's called progress, apparently.
Well, that's about as useful as a roof rack on a helicopter, right? All you get back is the value of the proportion of time that your subscription for the services covered, not the value of the financial loss you suffered to your business - assuming it survives the hit - while the service was down.
As to not being able to, or not wanting to, answer the phones (whatever it was) in this situation, I'd say they just pissed away any goodwill their customers had left.
However you look at this TARFU, heads are very much likely to roll at InterMedia, and fairly quickly as well
All you get back is the value of the proportion of time that your subscription for the services covered, not the value of the financial loss you suffered to your business - assuming it survives the hit - while the service was down.
Which is something DAMAGEMENT WILL NEVER COMPREHEND!!!!
When DAMAGEMENT starts spouting the cloud bullshit, it is time to get the fuck out.
A clusterfuck is heading your way, and you don't know when it will hit.
"heads are very much likely to roll at InterMedia"
You think? I doubt it tbh.
Take it from someone who works alongside one of the "largest private clouds in the UK", they know how shite the service is, therefore when this shit happens, they just prop it back up again and carry on.
The only rolling that takes place is punters cash, falling in through the front door.
If this is the same firm that back in the early 90's, that, based on the south coast (Kent, or maybe Sussex, visited there once with a Project Consultant for my then-employer at the time), was involved in data translation/compatibility, with a hefty dose of Kurzweil OCR kit added for flavour, then you may well be right.
Absolutely Useless Service from Intermedia - tech support is poor to say the least and now they have this major outage. Poor service levels at the best of times and now this !!!! I am jumping this sinking ship. Been a customer for 3 years now - too expensive and tech support operatives who's first language is not english. No interest.
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