Microsoft Reimburses Customers for Latest BPOS Crash
Microsoft UK has promised to give its BPOS customers vouchers against future credits after a seven hour service outage last weekend.
This is the latest in a string of service interruptions for the tech giant this summer. This time however, it is being labeled as an “Act of God” incident, as human error was not to blame, but thunder storms.
A bolt of lightning struck a transformer close to the Dublin-based data centre powering BPOS, causing an explosion and fire, resulting in a total power failure.
According to a Microsoft Spokesman – “(We will) proactively provide impacted customers with a 25 per cent credit on a future monthly invoice”.
Fortunately for Microsoft, the outage occurred over the weekend. The outcry could have been much, much worse.
Of note, The SLA does not apply when the service is hit by availability issues arising from “factors outside of our control”.An interesting boast from Microsoft, and one that appears of equally dubious value, is its claim that blackouts should never be a concern for prospective cloud customers.
“When you switch to cloud power Microsoft, you never have to worry about a power outage. You can rest easy. Our financially backed 99.9 per cent uptime guarantee means a steady stream of power is pumped directly into your business at all times and include 24/7 support if anything ever does go wrong,” said the vendor on its website.