Last week we dropped word that RIM had scheduled a "planned outage" for 12am to 4am CST on Saturday, March 22nd while they set out to perform database upgrades.

I stayed awake for the planned outage, but as I mention in the CrackBerry Podcast I never noticed anything out of whack with my BlackBerry at all. As it turns out, RIM postponed performing the upgrades. From KSDK.com:

Director of Public Safety Mark James applauded the outstanding cooperation from Research In Motion (RIM) with Missouri's emergency response community. RIM postponed a scheduled 4 hour BlackBerry Database upgrade for all North American subscribers from early Saturday morning, until a future date. Several flooding rivers in the St. Louis and eastern Missouri are scheduled to be at their record peak at the same time of the scheduled outage. Many first responders and emergency management officials who are feverishly working to protect citizens from the record flooding rely on their "BlackBerry" devices for critical communications. Missouri Homeland Security officials requested RIM to postpone the scheduled outage late Friday afternoon.

"RIM officials recognized the criticality of reliable and redundant communications for our first responders in an ongoing emergency, and didn't hesitate to cooperate in putting the upgrade off until Missouri's crisis passes. For this, I am extremely thankful," James said.

There's a lot of discussion going on about this in CrackBerry Forums... check it out!