The most significant example of that was the fumbling of a major equipment migration by hosting provider NaviSite. The company, migrating business it acquired from Alabanza, warned customers that their sites would be down for several hours over the weekend, but unexpected difficulties cause the sites to remain down for days. By Monday, customer complaints had popped up on message boards and blogs, with dissatisfaction building momentum.

As of Thursday afternoon, the company had reported that 90 percent of affected sites had been put back online, and that 100 percent of those sites would be back up by Friday. After an outage lasting six days, the company is dealing with a base of irate customers that will no doubt require a significant act of contrition if they are to remain customers.

Similarly unusual circumstances drew similar customer ire at C I host recently, as details began to be revealed about a break-in at the company's Chicago data center in October. In a letter to customers, the company explained that masked intruders had entered the facility after cutting through reinforced walls. A night manager was repeatedly tazered and intruders took at least 20 data servers. Some of the customers affected by the incident are meeting to organize a lawsuit against the company, which they claim was negligent in its security, having suffered a similar break-in in the past.

C I host representative James Eckels spoke to theWHIR on Monday, offering the company's side of the story, which saw Chicago police arrive at the facility in response to a midnight disturbance, only to return at 3:15 a.m. and discover the robbery. C I Host says it has been contacting customers affected and dealing with them on a case-by-case basis, though the company is struggling to provide the kind of compensation some customers are demanding. Eckels was careful to point out that C I Host was victimized as much as its customers in this situation, but it remains to be seen how successful the company will be in explaining that point of view to those customers.

Along with the controversial customer-outcry side of this week's news was a string of fairly significant, if someone ho-hum by comparison, data center announcements.

Most notably, Microsoft announced on Tuesday that it planned to invest the considerable sum of $500 million in a new data center to be based in Dublin, Ireland. The largely automated center will support Windows Live services and will store data for the company's online services. The facility will cover more than 51,000 square meters, and will be completed by the summer of 2009.

Also on Tuesday, colocation provider Switch and Data announced that it is adding capacity in the New York Metro area to meet growing demand. The company has signed a 25-year lease for a site in North Bergen, New Jersey. The site will add 163,000 gross square feet to the company's capacity, and will be interconnected with its existing New York Metro area sites.

And on Wednesday, data center operator Equinix announced that it had opened its fourth Internet Business Exchange in the New York area. The first phase of the $95 million NY4 center, located in Seacaucus, New Jersey, is 50 percent reserved by customers, mostly from within the financial services industry. The 340,000 square foot facility is the company's largest to date, and is located close to Equinix's existing NY2 facility.

Any other week, the major data center news would have been of greater significance, but amid this week's customer outcry over incidents at NaviSite and C I Host, the data center news seems a little less urgent. Both providers will be worth watching in the coming weeks to see how successful they are in satisfying the demands of upset customers.