[LINK] 'Cloud Computing doesn't fly'

[Frank O'Connor]

Ahhhh .... Accenture.

Why am I not surprised.          :)

					Regards,
---
At 7:42 AM +1000 28/9/10, Roger Clarke wrote:
>[Airline reservation, check-in and boarding systems are hardly
>critical from the viewpoint of survival of the species, or even
>public safety.  But they can be for the survival of individual
>corporations.
>
>[The Virgin Blue event appears to have established that:
>-   solid-state memory isn't necessarily more reliable than disk-drives
>-   outsourced service provider and Accenture subsidiary Navitaire,
>      whose New Skies system is used by 70 airlines, incl. Virgin Blue
>      and Tiger, failed to switch over to what is presumably a 'warm-site'
>      fallback arrangement, and instead tried to fix the hardware failure
>-   an 18-hour outage isn't *quite* long to drive an airline bankrupt
>
>
>Back-up for airline's check-in system delayed for 18 hours
>Date: September 28 2010
>The Sydney Morning Herald
>Rick Feneley and Paul Tatnell
>http://www.smh.com.au/travel/travel-news/backup-for-airlines-checkin-system-delayed-for-18-hours-20100927-15u5f.html?skin=text-only
>
>The Virgin Blue check-in system that crashed and left tens of
>thousands of passengers stranded was meant to be backed up by a
>parallel ''disaster recovery system'' within three hours, but it did
>not work for 21 hours.
>
>When a hardware failure crippled the system at 8am on Sunday, it
>created a cascading crisis: the airline was forced into manual
>operations; 400 flights and almost 50,000 passengers were disrupted;
>113 services were cancelled. At least 18 more flights were cancelled
>yesterday as Virgin Blue dealt with the backlog of angry passengers.
>
>Since June, Virgin Blue has been using a check-in and reservation
>system provided by Navitaire, a subsidiary of the American firm
>Accenture.
>
>Navitaire has a recovery system on a separate server, Virgin Blue's
>group executive of operations, Andrew David, said yesterday.
>
>''That system was supposed to come up within about three hours,'' Mr
>David said. ''But it wasn't until 5 o'clock this morning - 21 hours
>later - that we got the back-up system up and running.''
>
>The Herald understands Navitaire told Virgin Blue on Sunday morning
>that the back-up would be working within the three hours, then made
>assurances throughout the day.
>
>The airline put up about 1000 passengers in hotels on Sunday night.
>It moved almost 50,000 passengers yesterday and by late in the day
>the backlog was down to about 6000, most of whom were to be put on
>flights last night. Some spent a second night in hotels before the
>last - ''in the tens, not the hundreds'' - were to be cleared today.
>
>All passengers would be reimbursed for taxis and accommodation worth
>up to $220 a night. They would be offered a free flight as
>compensation. ''Clearly, we will be looking for compensation [from
>Navitaire],'' Mr David said, ''but our focus now has been on our
>guests.''
>
>Navitaire found the original failure ''relatively quickly'', Virgin
>Blue said, but a decision to attempt to repair it ''proved less than
>fruitful and also contributed to the delay'' in switching to the
>recovery system. Jetstar and Tiger Airway also use Navitaire but both
>said they had robust systems to deal with IT failures.
>
>
>--
>Roger Clarke                                 http://www.rogerclarke.com/
>			           
>Xamax Consultancy Pty Ltd      78 Sidaway St, Chapman ACT 2611 AUSTRALIA
>                     Tel: +61 2 6288 1472, and 6288 6916
>mailto:Roger.Clarke at xamax.com.au                http://www.xamax.com.au/
>
>Visiting Professor in the Cyberspace Law & Policy Centre      Uni of NSW
>Visiting Professor in Computer Science    Australian National University
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