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My colleague Christian Bogh in Europe posts an article that staggers me. How could IBM have got it so wrong?
Last week - on Wednesday 9th of April - IBM in Denmark have a massive breakdown. More than a hundred big and small companies who relies on the services from IBM have no contact with their server etc. Among the companies are one of the largest banks in Denmark - Danske Bank, the world leading shipping company A.P. Moller - Maersk Group, Carlsberg and Northern Europe’s largest dairy manufacturers Arla.
The effects…
The effect was frightening. More than 1.200.000 of Danske Bank’s customers couldn’t use their credit card. And it was not only affecting their Danish customers - the Irish and Finnish customers were affected the most. The employees of A. P. Moller could not send emails, Carlsberg could not produce beer, hospital and pharmacy were affected and Arla could not get the orders for milk from supermarkets.The breakdown was properly the most severely in the history of IBM in the Northern Europe perhaps all of Europe.
Christian then goes on to explain that IBM’s only comment about it was ‘no comment’. Even a week after the event. Asked by a journalist if the public should have been given an explanation during the breakdown, the answer was an emphatic “NO!”
As Christian says,
The parliament is now looking at the breakdown because IBM is one of the biggest supplier for the public authorities and the largest local municipality (Copenhagen) is now considering if IBM should be disqualified in a large invitation to tender.
All things which make it even more peculiarly why IBM have reacted the way they have.
As a PR professional this is not the way I would have recommended. Both the public and the clients need to be made to trust IBM again - and “no comments” is not a good way to do that.
Indeed it is not! Read Christian’s article…
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henriette weber andersen 04.16.08 at 9:33 pm
yeah it was bit of a mess up =) - anyway it didn’t get THAT much press coverage in Denmark - I think it’s a big deal though - what if it started to happen more frequently?
Christian Bogh 04.16.08 at 10:59 pm
@Henriette
I’m not sure how you define “much press coverage”?
In a week the danish press have written more than 200 articles in the offline media and more than 150 articles in the online media. Including several top front page stories e.g. Børsen, JyllandsPosten, Berlingske Tidende etc. I think that’s “much”.
And the media is still writing about it… and they are still wondering why IBM are not talking to the press. Several media including Version2.dk and computerworld.dk are asking the public to send in stories about the breakdown if they have any - because IBM aren’t telling them anything.