Microsoft and the case of the missing backups

By Steve Malone

Posted on 4 Sep 2003 at 09:59

If you are the largest software company in the world with a business culture that relies on email you make sure that everything is backed up on a regular basis just like you tell your customers to do. Right?

Apparently wrong.

According to columnist Robert X. Cringely there is something odd going on in Redmond. Last week, Microsoft was in court with a little known company called Burst.com. It's a familiar story. Burst, which holds a number of patents to optimise video and audio streaming, alleges that Microsoft contacted them about wanting to license their technology. However, after being strung along for seven meetings over two years Microsoft simply lifted the technology.

In order to get to the bottom of the case, Bursts lawyers asked to see all of Microsoft's internal emails relating to Burst during the period of the negotiatons. Microsoft duly complied and delivered some 140 boxes of emails. However, once the Burst lawyers had strung them together they noticed something odd. There is a 35 week gap in the narrative. When asked where the missing emails were, the Microsoft lawyers stated that they had been erased from the servers because the technology wasn't important and by the way, there were no backups.

This raised eyebrows all round, especially amongst the Burst lawyers one of whom pointed to the Sun vs. Microsoft case where Redmond stated that all emails were backed up and kept off site. The judge in this case has now ordered Microsoft to produce the missing emails forthwith.

Of course there may be a logical explanation for all this. Microsoft might have genuinely forgotten that it backed up everything. Alternatively there were no emails relating to the Burst negotiations during this critical period or Microsoft decided to take an email holiday during that time. However, the suspicion is that there is a timebomb lurking in the missing period that Microsoft doesn't want to come out in court.

Whatever the reason, this obscure case that Microsoft would prefer to be kept out of the public domain, is sure to be packed to errr - bursting - when Microsoft does or doesn't produce the errant emails when the case resumes.