IBM’s Backup Plan for Air New Zealand Smacks the Deck
October 12th, 2009I casually Googled my way around some infrastructure vulnerabilities in New Zealand. All I’ll say is that you wouldn’t believe me if I told you. There’s an address in Auckland that would take the breath away of anyone who knew what they were looking at.
As I was looking at it, marveling at it, via Google Earth, I thought:
The average person doesn’t get it. The companies involved don’t get it. The local government doesn’t get it. The national government doesn’t get it. (Let the invisible hand of the market figure it out: The result is that it would be a simple matter to deliver a kill shot to this country’s economy and much worse.) Does the military even realize that this is one of the most important locations in the country? Probably not, since someone could walk up and kiss the glass on the front door if they wanted to.
I mention this place only because you should have heard the braindead media talking about this Air New Zealand thing… How could this happen? Bleat bleat bleat. Shock horror. Bleat bleat.
I used to think that U.S. infrastructure was vulnerable and inappropriately centralized. Woooooh. HAHA. A picture of this place in Auckland is what one should find when looking up the meaning of, “Don’t put all of your eggs in one basket.”
Via: New Zealand Herald:
Air New Zealand chief executive Rob Fyfe described IBM’s service during a crippling computer fault yesterday as “unacceptable” and “amateur”, and Air NZ may look for another IT supplier, according to an internal email.
An IT outage crashed airport check-in systems, as well as on-line bookings and call centre systems about 9.30am yesterday, affecting more than 10,000 passengers and throwing airports into chaos.
The airline said most systems were restored around 1.30pm, but the passenger backlog did not start to clear until self check-in kiosks were up and running again about 3.30pm.
Air NZ and IBM were to meet today to discuss the fault.
Meanwhile, the contents of Mr Fyfe’s email were made public by Computerworld.
He said he struggled “to recall a time where I have seen a supplier so slow to react to a catastrophic system failure such as this and so unwilling to accept responsibility and apologise to its client and its client’s customers” during his working career.
“We were left high and dry and this is simply unacceptable.
“My expectations of IBM were far higher than the amateur results that were delivered yesterday, and I have been left with no option but to ask the IT team to review the full range of options available to us to ensure we have an IT supplier whom we have confidence in and one who understands and is fully committed to our business and the needs of our customers.”
Air NZ’s short haul airlines group general manager, Bruce Parton, told Radio New Zealand the fault appeared to have been caused by a power failure, followed by a delay in a back-up generator running.
“Ten thousand-plus customers affected on the last day of holidays, and millions of dollars of revenue not going through our online site, you can be assured we’ll be having some very serious discussions with IBM today.”
i was reading that article in the Herald yesterday, and i was mumbling, “if Rob Fyfe is so smart that he deserves a high-six-figure compensation package, then why the fcuk does he outsource all his backbone IT to HAL? but, as you allude, we all know who HAL’s biggest clinets are in NZ, don’t we. and i also thought about someone i know who until about seven years ago used to be a front-line negotiator of major outsourcing contracts at the Blue Behemouth. needless to say, he eventually got hired by a consultant who provided services to organizations who were sick of getting screwed by their IT outsourcer. HA!
“you wouldn’t believe me if I told you.”
oh yes i would!
really!
oh, and when it doesn’t rain, there’s no power either.