[clug] [OT] Virgin Blue outage: All things come back to Open Source?

[steve jenkin]

A Good write up of the recent Virgin Blue outage.
Wonder if we'll ever hear the full facts?:
<http://www.zdnet.com/blog/projectfailures/cloud-based-it-failure-halts-virgin-flights/11061>

VB had contracted for service to be restored within 3 hours.
I don't think them having clunky manual systems was unreasonable...

Searching for another piece, it seems MSFT had a little similar trouble
just recently:
<http://news.techworld.com/data-centre/3239053/microsoft-apologises-for-cloud-service-outage/?>

There was this major outage on 09-Oct-2009: T-Mobile and Sidekick
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_data_loss_2009>
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Danger_Hiptop#Data_service_outage_2009>

It seems the operations are:
 - too complex for 'mere admins' and
 - the system designers aren't building in robustness

Here's another article I hadn't seen before that makes a point about
FOSS being better to run your business on :-)

"Can open source software stop IT failure?"
<http://www.zdnet.com/blog/projectfailures/can-open-source-software-stop-it-failure/6601>

Their thesis is about IT/Business 'Alignment' being improved.
What's clear from the Virgin Blue debacle, is that the value of IT
systems is much lower than the business costs of outages.

Original ZDnet piece:
<http://www.zdnet.com/blog/open-source/the-chief-value-of-open-source/5106?>

"Open source doesn’t even cut costs, because code licenses represent
only a tiny portion of a major product’s cost."

"The chief value of open source is visibility."

cheers
steve


-- 
Steve Jenkin, Info Tech, Systems and Design Specialist.
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