Microsoft’s instant messaging develops glitch

Microsoft’s online problems carried into a second week as the software

giant said that during the past week it has been experiencing problems with

servers that handle the company's instant messaging system. Earlier, Microsoft

had denied the instant messaging system was affected by technical problems.

Andries van Dam, a member of Microsoft's research technical advisory board, said

the company’s recent online service problems show that Internet software is

still a vulnerable field.

"It serves as a wake-up call, not just for Microsoft but for the

software industry, that everything is just extremely fragile." He added

that Microsoft has reasons to be more concerned about Internet security and

service reliability than other companies. "When a game crashes, nobody gets

hurt. If an e-commerce program crashes, the ripple effects of mission-critical

software being brought to its knees are grave, and I think Microsoft as well as

every other serious Web producer is still learning how to build robust

mission-critical software.''

For Microsoft the recent rash of online service troubles couldn’t have come

at a worse time as the company has just launched a $200 million media blitz

touting the reliability of its software. Microsoft also announced it is changing

the way its MSN subscribers can use the company’s online long-distance

telephone service. Until now, MSN Messenger and Net2Phone have allowed MSN

subscribers to make unlimited free long distance phone calls over the Internet.

Starting this week, those calls will be limited to five minutes. The calls will

be discontinued, although users will be able to re-connect for another five

minutes.