A major interruption with communication has caused Black Berry RIM users to scramble.  Why do we rely on technology so much?  Because technology has proven to be a useful, efficient and inexpensive tool that allows intra-company communication and communication with outside clients.  The majority of U.S. companies offer blackberry devices to its employees as a means to stay in contact at all times.

But when technology doesn’t measure up, it can be detrimental and even costly.  According to the The Roland Martin Report “Mike Lazaridis, founder of BlackBerry’s Canadian parent company, Research In Motion, appeared this morning in a YouTube video to say, “Since launching BlackBerry in 1999, it’s been my goal to provide reliable, real-time communications around the world. We did not deliver on that goal this week. Not even close.”

Now, I  must admit I have relied (and still do) on my device to keep me in touch with work related emails and personal messages alike.   That’s a good thing. Technology has been monumental in many new arenas of our society, but with anything, nothing is absolute.

Our society has evolved dramatically in more ways than not – one being, the ways in which we communicate.  Twenty years ago, TXTNG was unheard of!  There was a time (before my time) when a boy and girl liked each other, they would write love letters back and forth.  That form of communicating as we know it is now outdated.

Businesses that rely on technological devices to increase productivity should use these mishaps as a learning curve to find ways to keep things moving, if this should happen again – hopefully it won’t. Otherwise, we’ll continue to experience these disruptions all over again.

RIM has provided a very useful service to many companies local and international.

I read an article in Thursday’s WSJ, by Will Connors, Ben Drummett and Christopher Lawton which said “hardware failure began in Europe, Mideast and Africa since Monday.  The company was forced to “throttle” data traffic through its world-wide servers in order to deal with the backlog, triggering fresh disruptions in previously unaffected markets, including Japan, Singapore and  – starting early Wednesday morning-North America.”

For many professionals, this is a must have.

“Service disruptions affected a wide array of U.S. federal agencies, including the Federal Reserve and the U.S. Treasury, as well as emergency services.”

During the email chaos yesterday afternoon, my boss hadn’t received one email since ten o’clock that morning.  But he didn’t mind.  Others that were affected, vented their frustrations on Twitter and Facebook instantly.

With dwindling sales of Blackberry devices, this serves as ammunition for customers to move to the iPhone and HTC smartphones.

Sources: Wall Street Journal, pages A1 & A2 (Thursday, October 13th)

Roland S. Martin’s blog:  http://rolandmartinreports.com/blog/2011/10/blackberry-outage-rim-apologizes-says-service-returning/

Miranda A. Walker is currently in her freshman year in the B.A. in Communication & Culture program at CUNY School of Professional Studies.  She works in the multi-media industry as an Executive Assistant at the New York Daily News.  In her spare time, she enjoys spending time with her children and reading immensely.  Her dream is to one day run her own company.

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