I’ve always been told that the first step in dealing with an problem is admitting that you have one. Based on Zach Church’s observations at Gartner’s Wireless and Mobile Summit last week, this sounds exactly like what Research in Motion co-CEO Mike Lazaridis needs to do when it comes to all of the BlackBerry outages Research in Motion has been experiencing as of late.

In an hour long presentation last week, Mr. Lazaridis downplayed and brushed off questions about recent BlackBerry outages.

One attendee who ditched out about halfway through the hour long presentation jostled away with his buddies, calling it the stupidest keynote address he had ever seen and for the next few days, just mentioning Lazaridis around the conference brought smirks and eye-rolling.

I know that many feel that I’ve been overly critical of Research in Motion when it comes to BlackBerry outages, however, having run data centers in a previous life, I just can’t give a company with the resources of Research in Motion a pass because “BlackBerrys are reliable most of the time” or because “a few hours without email won’t kill anyone.”

I am not saying that RIM should come out and tell everyone they suck for having downtime, however, at least be a bit contrite about it and acknowledge that you are at least working on trying to resolve the issues. I have no doubt the RIM is doing this, but, they could go a long way to take the bad taste out of IT administrators mouths by not brushing them off.