BA global IT system failure

Publius Ovidius said:

Speaking as someone who works in the, what used to be called , DR, disaster recovery business, something doesn't quite fit here.

BA Have more that 1 backup site, in fact they have a series of failover sites that are tested to death on a regular basis.
All CER sites have N+1 as standard failover and in the case of the bigger sites, we have n+ 4 or 5 ( yes I know that is not a technical term but you know what I am getting at) depending on the generator capacity.
All cer sites are covered by UPS systems that are now linked to systems that monitor flow and report on power outages, spikes, blips or whatever you want to call them.
To suggest everything went down because one centre had a power issue I said nonsense.
To suggest it is cutting costs, is not wholly plausible. Yes they have outsourced to India, the Philippines and really really cheap places, but if it is a power issue, that is covered at th local site, let's say Didcot for example. Whilst the itSystems will be looked after by offshore companies, the power systems and CER maintanance wil all be done, and is, locally at the shop floor.
ALl engineers are highly trained and constantly undergo disaster scenario training so this must have been a hell of a catastrophic failure to take out as much as it did.

Something doesn't add up.

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wellquickwoody said:

I really don't get BA. Me and Mrs W needed flights to Oz, one way only, Emirates was £600 odd each, BA was £2k each! Both economy fares, and I understand that Emirates are subsidised but not to that degree. A basket case that can only go bust if it continues that pricing policy.

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dejavuatbtn said:

They need to say Ta Ta to their IT department. It's amazing just how many UK firms have outsourced to India. Personally I think the outsourcing of IT abroad is dangerous from a UK security position.
Having said that, we went to the US two weeks ago with BA and their service was faultless. The only aggro we had was US customs breaking open our suitcases in a random search of baggage. Caused a bit of panic as we weren't able to check contects thoroughly until we got home. I don't have a problem with their levels of security and for once their immigration officer was quite pleasant and chatty!

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ozzygull said:

Exactly, I don't know anything about the BA infrastructure, but having systems that can cause that much trouble susceptible to a power failure, is either rubbish or irresponsible.

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Publius Ovidius said:

Speaking as someone who works in the, what used to be called , DR, disaster recovery business, something doesn't quite fit here.

BA Have more that 1 backup site, in fact they have a series of failover sites that are tested to death on a regular basis.
All CER sites have N+1 as standard failover and in the case of the bigger sites, we have n+ 4 or 5 ( yes I know that is not a technical term but you know what I am getting at) depending on the generator capacity.
All cer sites are covered by UPS systems that are now linked to systems that monitor flow and report on power outages, spikes, blips or whatever you want to call them.
To suggest everything went down because one centre had a power issue I said nonsense.
To suggest it is cutting costs, is not wholly plausible. Yes they have outsourced to India, the Philippines and really really cheap places, but if it is a power issue, that is covered at th local site, let's say Didcot for example. Whilst the itSystems will be looked after by offshore companies, the power systems and CER maintanance wil all be done, and is, locally at the shop floor.
ALl engineers are highly trained and constantly undergo disaster scenario training so this must have been a hell of a catastrophic failure to take out as much as it did.

Something doesn't add up.

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hampshirebrightonboy said:

I don't believe the power failure excuse. BA saying systems not yet back to full capacity. And we are into the third day!
Looks to me more like the people trying to sort it out aren't up to it.
Airline systems are hugely complex and it takes many years to build up the knowledge required to develop and support them. Not something you should send out to India. Especially with the added issues around communication.
Senior managers don't seem to value knowledge and experience. Maybe in BAs case they might start doing so. Unfortunately reports suggest they have already got rid of a lot of experienced staff.

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ozzygull said:

I have seen this many times, people who run business take a stable IT environment for granted. They see no problems so assume nothing is done, and any joe blog can do it. They then think why do we pay all these staff, when outsourcing is so cheep. They then want the outsourcing company to do a thing that the local IT person would have done without thinking, but to the outsourcing company this is an extra. After many of these instances they find that their infrastructure is not as stable and the costs of all the extras costs more then having own local staff. They break contract with outsourcing company and hire local IT, until new boss **** arrives and the whole thing happens again.

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