Is it fair to blame Andy Lees for Microsoft KIN debacle?

By Richi Jennings. June 8, 2010.

This morning's IT Blogwatch rounded up the latest blog chatter about Microsoft's decision to can KIN, its latest not-quite-a-smart-phone project. Redmond killed it not two months after its launch, tossing away countless sunk dollars of now-useless investment. (KIN was the child of the Danger acquisition -- you know, the company that brought us the once-innovative Sidekick.)

Yep, it's a major embarrassment for all at Microsoft, including a certain Andy Lees, senior vice president of Microsoft's Mobile Communication Business. Certainly, the buck stops with Andy, as far as "global mobile communications strategy for business and consumer customers" goes.

However, managers at that level aren't usually making the day-to-day decisions that cause projects to fail. Where else should the finger of blame point?

A source sent me this earlier, which I've sanitized for taste and legal reasons. I don't want to identify this person, but their understanding of the background and Microsoft culture has always been strong, in my view:

MSFT's "allow people to fail" culture bites again. Andy Lees no doubt could have stepped in to save this but he had vested interests elsewhere. Roz Ho should carry the full blame for this. ... She ran MacBU [the Macintosh software business unit] for years and was only able to get out of there after having a qualified hit with Office Mac 2008. All the previous years were a debacle of sub-par meandering. The Office team saved Roz ... then she got her ... paws on the Danger group. It was game over for them at that point. She has no vision, can't motivate or even manage by objective.

Strong stuff. And, it should be said, the opinion of one anonymous IT veteran.

But it got me thinking: Roz Ho... from where do we know that name? Ah yes, the previous Danger debacle at Microsoft. October 2009's unmitigated cock-up, where "a failed SAN update" destroyed all the cloud data stored for T-Mobile Sidekick users. I vividly remember marveling at Microsoft's lack of backups, wondering how this could possibly have been allowed to happen.

Daniel Eran Dilger noted at the time that one of his sources placed the blame squarely and directly on Roz Ho. Cutting to the chase and ignoring Dilger's usual juvenile Microsoft-hatery, here's the money quote from his anonymous Microsoft source:

In preparation for this [SAN] upgrade, they were performing a backup, but it was 2 days into a 6 day backup procedure (it’s a lot of data). ... Roz Ho told them to stop the backup procedure and proceed with the upgrade after assurances from Hitachi that a backup wasn’t necessary. This was done against the objections of Danger engineers.
...
After the SAN upgrade, disks started ‘disappearing.’ Logically, Oracle [software] freaked out and started trying to recover, which just made the damage worse.

So, if we were to take this allegation at face value, the problem was indeed caused by a SAN upgrade failing. However, as anyone knows who's been involved with IT services at scale, these things do happen, and you have to plan for them happening.

It's vitally important to have a backup. Arrays are never a substitute for backups.

It's like something out of Dilbert. Managers overruling their engineers in engineering decisions -- these people deserve everything they get.

Speaking of which, I hear rumors that Roz Ho has been "reassigned" but can't yet get confirmation. Would any readers care to share their knowledge of Ms. Ho's current status at Microsoft?

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Richi Jennings is an independent analyst/consultant, specializing in blogging, email, and security. A cross-functional IT geek since 1985, you can follow him as @richi on Twitter, pretend to be richij's friend on Facebook, or just use good old email: TLV@richij.com.

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