Sky's Botched Google Migration In the UK

An anonymous reader writes "Rupert Murdoch-owned British ISP Sky is migrating their customers to the Google Apps platform, and the customer experience is terrible. Their 1 million customers were told that they need to change their client settings to enable SMTP Authentication and other settings on a certain date — but not to do it before then or their e-mail would break; but if you don't do it on the date your e-mail will also break. Oh, and if you're a POP user you also need to enable that manually in the 'Skoogle' interface, as seemingly they chose not to run a system-wide command to allow it for all users. In addition, if you want help then you're pretty much on your own. One user has made 7 support calls and still not been able to access his e-mail since the migration. Hardly surprising that the story has made the papers with their help-desk in meltdown. It does make you wonder why they simply didn't put proxy servers in place to proxy the new service by modifying the old settings in the network and give their customers time to switch over without their e-mail breaking in the meantime. Or even a simple ActiveX tool to help out the less technical users."

ActiveX???

Are you mad?

Actually, it's worse than that.

In fact, come to think of it, the entire article summary is built in a certain way:

1. Mention of Google Apps, a product that competes with Microsoft.

2. Mention of something being "broken."

A couple of important notes about that:

2.1. The thing with a potential issue, E-mail sending, has nothing to do with Google Apps, however it's mentioned to create a negative association with them.

2.2. The potential issue is exaggeration to the point of idiocy. Nothing actually gets broken; you just have to change a certain setting on a certain date, and if you don't, it's not like your house catches fire or anything. OR MAYBE IT DOES?!?!?! WHO CAN BE SURE?

And then, the coup de grace:

3. Mention of a Microsoft proprietary technology as a solution.

And of course, can't let that go by without adding:

3.1. A technology that forces everyone into vendor lock-in with the Microsoft Way Of Doing Things, and
3.2. A cure that is far worse than a disease, a technology that opens your system up to all kinds of hacks and attacks for the sake of preventing something that Grandma can easily be walked through fixing. (If you don't believe me, look at all the Grandmas who are walked through setting up their Email by Apple tech help and Evolution e-mail wizards every day.)

In other words, ladies and gentlemen, the summary above has all the hallmarks of a professionally-written Microsoft FUD-job.

Someone was paid to write this article and submit it to Slashdot so that all of our geeky eyes can see it and wonder, "Oh, the horrors of Google Apps! They should have gone with Microsoft," when not only do Google Apps have nothing to do with the problem, the problem itself would have been made worse by the proposed solution.

And they would have gotten away with it if it hadn't 've been for you kids!

general result of change for the sake of progress

is confusion among the less experienced. I was just looking at the instructions they provide and I will certainly admit it's less than just a few mouse clicks. Any user guide that is like 12 pages of interaction is probably a bit much to ask of the average user. Looks more like a user manual than a quick set of instructions for a "simple change".

I would not thoroughly enjoy following those instructions, and I'm quite certain it terrifies at least 15% of their customer base.

And to the previous comment of "active x - are you mad?" I would add a "me too", for reasons too numerous to get into here.

This is the kind of thing I'd expect to find on an install CD from an ISP, that configures your computer for their service when you insert the CD. Setups like that are either provided on disc or are a "deliver and setup" option for ISPs when they have this level of setup required. Expecting Joe User to do this is just plain crazy.

I bet their phone support is buried for quite some time to come.

Re:general result of change for the sake of progre

I'm sure it isn't "change for sake of progress," it is almost certainly because it is MUCH cheaper.

Running a responsive e-mail server has always been expensive. Now that google has set people's expectations at 2+GB quotas, it is just ridiculous.

Google used their massive infrastructure to make scalability affordable, and ISPs can't compete. Most of their customers probably already use gmail, so why continue offering the service?

Software development is just a bunch of guesswork.

Thats all it is, guesswork because nobody really knows what effects their changes will have on a system. Usually the response is it "should" work when asked a simple question of a developer.

BTInternet

Had a similar problem when BTInternet moved to Yahoo!. Took a month to get it fixed.

ActiveX to migrate Google?

<troll>

Wow... now I've seen everything. I mean, granted it was a kdawson post, but still... someone suggesting using ActiveX to help a Google migration... talk about crazy.

</troll>

Risk Trifecta

1. Crash transition with no fallback. Risky.
2. Having less technical users handle the changes without ramping up the help desk. Risky.
3. Breaking peoples' email. You're a bloody idiot. I used to be able to break almost anything and people could deal with it, but break the phones or the email and things get very bad, very fast.

Here is a simple answer

It does make you wonder why they simply didn't put proxy servers in place to proxy the new service by modifying the old settings in the network and give their customers time to switch over without their e-mail breaking in the meantime. Or even a simple ActiveX tool to help out the less technical users."

Its because they are incompetent or they want the whole project to fail. I'd put more faith in the first reason. You see, I have seen more incompetent "computer gurus" in the past few years than one can imagine.

It's a support problem, not a Google Docs issue

This was obviously caused by stupid, useless instructions from Sky's tech support people, and not a Google Docs issue. All the same, I smell a big fat troll here... ActiveX? Are you out of your mind?

This explains a few things

Being an IT bod, people ask you about their home computers, and why has Sky BB email suddenly stopped with some bizare msgs.

I told him, if you haven't changed anything and its been going on for a day or two give em a ring. So he did. Got through all the usual stuff. Only on the fourth call did they inform him he needed to change his settings. The guy didn't elaborate, but I wasn't that interesting.

What a mess.

What could the technical problem be?

The guide or howto for the migration appears to be fool proof. But I wonder whether there could be any technical problem with the migration. Is it possible that Google servers have been overwhelmed by the change that appears to be abrupt?

What does this have to do with google docs?

I see where Sky mentions Google docs in their instructions, however the instructions they gave their users only pertained to changing a few email settings. What does this have to do with Google docs? I use Google docs; is this something different Sky has set up with Google to make their customers think they are getting something special? You know, like AOL use to do with their "free" virus "protection", and their super "fast" dial up, and all their "crappy" adware.

Furthermore, unless Sky is a strange ISP, their customers should still have access to web based email, so why all the hoopla?

It was a very bonehead thing to do, however, to depend on customers to change email settings when a small setup app could have done the job without any fuss.

but not to do it before then or their e-mail would break; but if you don't do it on the date your e-mail will also break.

Well of course. If you change before, you have the wrong settings. If you don't change afterward, you have the wrong settings.

Similar experience with my own domain

I had a similar experience when i migrated my personal domain to google apps personal (no fee) from dotmac.
I had a set of family groups for my dotmac domain and email IDs.
When i moved it to Google Apps i ended up trouble shooting homepage and pages issues so much that i stopped with mail, docs and pages.
The homepage is still hosted by my dotmac.
Secondly google apps personal does not allow you to upload a custom-made homepage.
I use a PDF as a homepage for my family newsletter as it is easier for all browsers (yeah, some nerds in my family do use Windows 98 SE and some use Nokia N95 internet tablet.).

The main issues i saw were the issues with domain rerouting, pages and some issues with docs.

I can't complain...

...this problem has so far earned me GBP 70. I am a freelance computer repairer for home users. I have been to two homes to enable POP and alter the mail client settings. I charged them GBP 35 each. Enabling POP was a struggle because the Sky website didn't seem to want to work properly. After half an hour of trying in both cases I finally managed to reach the necessary check box on the webmail settings page and click Apply.

Both the householders were completely baffled by this change that they never asked for. I told them both that Sky's helpline must be inundated by people literally crying on the phone, unable to understand what has happened and why their mail client doesn't work any more.

How many users are really affected?

This is one of many reasons most people I know don't use their ISP email. Apart from the obvious one that it doesnt usually follow you across ISPs.

I have my work email for business / high priority stuff and web mail for my personal life, I thought this kind of setup was actually the norm.

Hardly surprising the story has made the papers

Might have surprised Mr Murdoch - he thought he owned all the papers.

Ownership of Sky

It's a bit misleading to say the Rupert Murdoch owns Sky, New International holds about 40% of Sky, and the Murdoch family hold just over 30% of News International. It's really an object lesson in how to maintain control with large but minority shareholdings.

SRV Records? Why POP and not IMAP?

Why POP? Why not IMAP? and secondly, why are there not Mail SRV Records in their DNS Tables to automatically redirect the E-mail clients transparently?

How did this make it to execution?

How on Earth did this "plan" make it through to the execution phase? I'm sorry Sky techs, but when I read this, sitting as I am on a Sunday with nothing in particular taking up my sweet time, all I could think was "Ha ha...ha ha haa haaaaaaaa you poor bastards!"

All I can imagine is that nobody who was anywhere near reality was behind this...i.e. consultants. Anyone with a passing regard for humans using computers would have come up with something better.

Gmail + POP3 + mailing lists = Broken

In Google there exists a paradigm that states email is all about the "conversation". Because email is all about the conversation the result is for people to not receive their own posts to a mailing list. (Instead they simply have a copy of it from their sent mail folder in the "stack".) This might work great for the web interface, but not at all for POP3.

POP3 clients (simple or advanced) do not following this "conversation" paradigm, and by not getting a copy of their own post two things happen: A) You have no confirmation the post made it to the list and B) you break threading on the email client because now people are responding to a message that never made it on my list.

The sad part is attempting to send yourself a copy of the message via CC: or BCC: does not work! Its like Gmail went out of its way to ensure you do not get a copy of your own post. Additionally while Google searching suggests there is an option to get yourself a copy of your own post, I was unable to find it anywhere.

I feel sorry for any of these people who are being switched over to Gmail's POP3 and are on mailing lists.

Others have written about the situation as well: Gmail + POP + mailing lists = broken [playbacktime.com]

I don't get it

I really don't get what all the fuss is about. For over a year now I've used gmail with an MUA (sylpheed) for all email. It was no harder than setting up ISP email. There are no magic tricks or anything, just enter settings and use email! I have to wonder, what would these people do in case of a real problem? And who set up their email the first time?

Bad Migration != Bad Google Service

Let s be serious... Any Senior Sysadmin will have a better plan to migrate all this account. Currently in my University we have 4000 accounts and going to 44000 on December. We cant plan everything but the first batch was a success. What make the first migration batch a success: 1- More staff on Help Desk; 2- No choices ( the more choices the user has, more expensive it gets). 3- Communication, Personal Letters, Banners, Kiosks. 4- Feedback and control. What what is going wrong and fix it fast. Google apps is a great service. Until now we only have 20 trouble tickets from people who lost the communication letter or lost the password.. And it is way better than Microsoft Live-Suck-Miis-Pay-License..

1 million users????

Good Lord. I thought we had it rough when the local ISP I work for migrated mail servers internally for 20000+ users this summer. Even shifting people over in small batches and providing instructions for multiple e-mail clients(unlike Sky), we still ended up with about half our userbase calling in over a 2-3 month period as we rolled it out. Regular staff was putting in overtime and some temps* were brought on to help out, but it was still quite the nonstop parade of callers. And of course, they're running anything and everything from OS 8/Win95 onwards, along with just about any version of any mail client that will run on those systems. Oh, and on top of changing serverse, we also switched to requiring SMTP authentication in the process, so yeah, fun times trying to convince people to upgrade to something that supported it or coerce clients to properly use it :coughOE5Mac:

Scale that to a userbase a million strong and try to do it all at once? Even the lowly support monkey that I am could tell you that's a very dumb idea.

*I was one of those oh-so-lucky temps, and managed to earn full time employment out of it, huzzah.

Erm, is this worse?

I am a sky ISP subscriber and I hadn't even heard about this!!!

Shocking service.

Karem

BBC blames the users

Well according to a doughnut at the BBC he seems to think it is the users and not Sky at fault But I am starting to think that anyone who can't follow the step-by-step guide to updating their Outlook account settings really shouldn't be using e-mail at all - they clearly have so little understanding of the technology in their hands that it's like letting a small child play with an unlicensed nuclear reactor. http://www.skyuser.co.uk/forum/sky-news-announcements/18145-sky-customers-clearly-have-so-little-understanding.html [skyuser.co.uk]

Apps migrations are sometimes tricky, but worth it

My company does Google Apps migrations as a service to ISPs and other companies. Yes, it is sometimes tricky. However, it looks like Sky did the right thing here in providing a service window for people to be able to access their old email, and use the new Google Apps (Gmail Client). There are some shortcomings to the Google Apps API that make some bulk management tasks cumbersome, but they are improving it all the time and for the most part the advantages to the ISP (low cost, reliable service) and the user (user experience and storage) are well worth it.
I blogged about this today over here: http://blog.ltech.com/2007/11/19/understanding-google-apps-migration-issues-sky-moves-1-million-users-to-apps/ [ltech.com]

Re:"Oh, it's really not that complicated"

OK, Steve, but you've got plenty of minions to fix it for you.

What has Linux to do with this?

said the Linux user to the Windows newbie.

"You can dual boot your computer with Linux, but if you don't defrag and partition the HDD, you'll lose all your data."

Hi there, Mr. Ballmer!

To begin with, your post is wildly off-topic, and that's generally disliked by the moderators here, I suppose that's why you posted AC.

Second, 1997 called and they want your "defrag and partition" statement back. Oh wait, is that still needed with a Microsoft Windows install? Certainly not with Linux. Unless you want to specify manually your partition scheme, it's done automagically for you without disturbing your existing data.

Third, the mess TFA mentions would not exist if all users had Linux installed. In a system that has a proper command scripting language, it's a very simple matter to perform an automatic migration. The problem starts when you need a "simple ActiveX tool" to do the job.

Re:good ol sky

Posts like these that remind me why I should "never" get a job in tech support.

Re:Easynet Superbly Managed Networks and Hosting

For a 'free' ISP like Sky (i.e. it's part of your TV subscription), it makes sense to outsource services such as email which cost a lot of time and effort into managing to someone like Google who has already committed resources to the problem. The customers will get a better experience, the sysadmins will have fewer headaches and the ISP will save a lot of money on hardware.

Mod parent troll

Please mod-down the parent. It simply copies a paragraph from the grandparent post and adds a spam link at the end. I accidentally modded it informative and thanks to Slasdot's wonderful new auto-apply feature the only way I can undo it is to post this fucking reply.

Re:antichrist

While I can certainly see why there would be concerned about privacy, saying that this is what happens when they do a deal with Google makes you look like a moron. Sky is the one who botched the migration, and it was solely Sky's responsibility to insure that something like this didn't happen with THEIR customers. There is no way Google could've prevented this.