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Web gremlins hit RM and OFSTED
publication date: Apr 4, 2007
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author/source: Richard Taylor
March must be a cursed month for educational IT. A four-day email outage with RM’s EasyMail Plus stretched brand loyalty but RM’s response, led by CEO Tim Pearson, is a textbook example of good crisis management. Apparently, the outage was spam related. RM’s servers, which were being upgraded to cope with the tsumani of spam, broke down and a power failure then wiped out the backup system. In a poll of those affected, undertaken by RM, 68% voted that instead of compensation they wanted RM make a series of charity donations. RM has now agreed to donate £50k, split between the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children (£20k), The Woodlands Trust Tree Campaign (£5k), The Children’s Society (£5k), ChildNet (£5k) and Volunteer Reading Help (£5k). Any customers who still want compensation can also still make a claim. OFSTED also had problems with its website, which has been either offline or operating with very limited functionality. Unlike at RM spam was not the problem and we suspect the problems may relate to an IT upgrade being deployed prior to the launch of the new super OFSTED on April 1. |