Tencent’s WeChat, QQ and other businesses have functional abnormalities, including WeChat voice conversation, circle of friends, WeChat payment, as well as QQ file transfer, QQ space and QQ mailbox, including a number of functions that can not be used.
Although the failure was fixed later that day, Interface News understands that the incident was caused by the failure of the cooling system of Guangzhou Telecom’s server room, which Tencent defines as a company-level incident. For this reason, Tencent has imposed serious accountability and punishment on relevant departments and leaders, with managers including Lu Shan (LS), senior executive vice president and president of TEG (Technical Engineering Group), and Roy Zhou (Harveyzhou), vice president of WXG (WeChat Business Group), taking leadership responsibility and being notified of the incident. Lu Shan is currently a member of Tencent’s General Office (Tencent’s general manager’s office, the company’s highest decision-making body).
In addition, two general managers and directors of TEG’s South China Data Center were demoted and removed from their positions, and two directors and team leaders of WXG’s Technical Architecture Department were given Underperform ratings (a two-star rating, up to five stars) in their current performance appraisals.
Tencent management believes that the failure exposed the company’s deficiencies in disaster recovery design and contingency planning, and the lack of awareness of risk prevention in the business units concerned.
As a national-level application, WeChat not only carries the social needs of a large number of individual users but also supports the operation of B-side businesses such as enterprise WeChat and small programs. If the failure occurs during an important period, it may cause huge losses and impacts.
As of the end of the fourth quarter last year, WeChat and WeChat had a combined monthly active account count of 1.313 billion and QQ had 572 million monthly mobile terminal users.
