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    <title><![CDATA[Discussion on Virginia's IT outage doesn't pass management sniff test ]]></title>
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        <title><![CDATA[My answer to the two last comments.]]></title>
        <link><![CDATA[http://www.techrepublic.com/forum/discussions/102-335364-3352334]]></link>
        <description><![CDATA[It may happened in outsourcing (ERP) deals; initially the deal is lucrative for the outsourced (usually ca. -20%) but when he is ?locked-in? the savings starting to erode. In addition to savings made by economies of scale, some of the ERP providers trying to increase the margin by saving on cheap infrastructure. ERP deals should be benchmarked and re-negotiated before renewals however being in a lock-in situation impacts the leverage. Maybe it will make prompt some companies considering ?external clouds? to second thought.]]></description>
        <guid><![CDATA[http://www.techrepublic.com/forum/discussions/102-335364-3352334]]></guid>
        <dc:creator><![CDATA[josh.krischer@...]]></dc:creator>
        <pubDate>Thu, 02 Sep 2010 01:53:10 -0700</pubDate>
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    <item>
        <title><![CDATA[RE: Virginia's IT outage doesn't pass management sniff test]]></title>
        <link><![CDATA[http://www.techrepublic.com/forum/discussions/102-335364-3352198]]></link>
        <description><![CDATA[Question, where is the profit in this project? Where has Northrop Grumman spent it's capital in all this? My thought is that what they want is data storage, build the server farms and out source the rest, once I have your data stored I have you!]]></description>
        <guid><![CDATA[http://www.techrepublic.com/forum/discussions/102-335364-3352198]]></guid>
        <dc:creator><![CDATA[stokesje3@...]]></dc:creator>
        <pubDate>Wed, 01 Sep 2010 16:59:06 -0700</pubDate>
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        <title><![CDATA[RE: Virginia's IT outage doesn't pass management sniff test]]></title>
        <link><![CDATA[http://www.techrepublic.com/forum/discussions/102-335364-3351865]]></link>
        <description><![CDATA[VA state employees, who have been furloughed this year due to budget shortfalls, are not happy that Northrup Grumman has delivered such poor service at such a high price.  I invite the news media to look into what Northrup Grumman charges for their services and how slow they have been to deliver on all of their services, not just Contingency Planning.]]></description>
        <guid><![CDATA[http://www.techrepublic.com/forum/discussions/102-335364-3351865]]></guid>
        <dc:creator><![CDATA[kanugent]]></dc:creator>
        <pubDate>Wed, 01 Sep 2010 06:31:57 -0700</pubDate>
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        <title><![CDATA[RE: Virginia's IT outage doesn't pass management sniff test]]></title>
        <link><![CDATA[http://www.techrepublic.com/forum/discussions/102-335364-3351327]]></link>
        <description><![CDATA[I work in Northern VA and this situation was by far the WORSE in the nearly 6 years that I've been a county employee. This nightmare actually started on Thursday, 8/26 when our agency (not counting the other agencies that were affected had TWO MAJOR systems go down.To this date, the Commissioner of our agency (statewide) HAD NOT offered an explaination as to WHY THIS HAPPENED--what was the cause?That is UNACCEPTABLE. We could not do work. I work in social services and this outage has AND STILL WILL affect client's benefits, etc. We cannot serve the customers when our tools are INOPERABLE. I called our IT department (Help Desk-Tier 1) around 7:15 a.m. that morning to report it. They DIDN'T EVEN KNOW. This is so intolerable and I hope that your email reaches senior IT management in the state of VA and the Commissioner as things still are not 100 Percent.The DMV (Motor Vehicles) is STILL CLOSED (closed yesterday and today) because of this FIASCO!]]></description>
        <guid><![CDATA[http://www.techrepublic.com/forum/discussions/102-335364-3351327]]></guid>
        <dc:creator><![CDATA[WishtobeIT]]></dc:creator>
        <pubDate>Tue, 31 Aug 2010 08:08:59 -0700</pubDate>
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    <item>
        <title><![CDATA[Truth]]></title>
        <link><![CDATA[http://www.techrepublic.com/forum/discussions/102-335364-3351124]]></link>
        <description><![CDATA[I worked in another situation that was quite disastrous. The media never had a grasp on the situation, and never will. How can someone outside of such a complicated situation even begin to speculate or know when they are close to the truth? The best answer outside of those in the situation is, unfortunately, any resulting court cases. Good luck understanding that process!]]></description>
        <guid><![CDATA[http://www.techrepublic.com/forum/discussions/102-335364-3351124]]></guid>
        <dc:creator><![CDATA[smankinson]]></dc:creator>
        <pubDate>Tue, 31 Aug 2010 05:11:29 -0700</pubDate>
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        <title><![CDATA[RE: Virginia's IT outage doesn't pass management sniff test]]></title>
        <link><![CDATA[http://www.techrepublic.com/forum/discussions/102-335364-3351092]]></link>
        <description><![CDATA[&quot;According to the manufacturer of the storage system (EMC), the events that led to the outage appear to be unprecedented. The manufacturer reports that the system and its underlying technology have an exemplary history of reliability, industry-leading data availability of more than 99.999% and no similar failure in one billion hours of run time.The official explanation for the outage leaves a bit to be desired and frankly doesn?t pass the sniff test. The outage was blamed on the failure of two circuit boards installed and maintained by EMC&quot;These statements given by the vendor are questionable:1.A statistics proving that DMX-3 has industry-leading data availability does not exist and most probably not true because Hitachi commits to 100% availability with their comparable product.2.How the 99.999% availability is calculated?3.The probability that two cards (in a system with 99.999% availability ) failing at once is close to 0. Some other questions:1.When is the last time that Northrop Grumman tested DR failover for VITA2.Was the DR infrastructure audited by DR external specialist?3.If the platform was System z then Hyperswap function could prevent this outage, if it is other platform,  Hitachi Storage Cluster of USP-V could do the same.Josh Krischer, Analyst and consultant specialized in DR and Business Continuity with many years of hardware engineering experience (repairing mainframe to chip level, e.g.).www.joshkrischer.com]]></description>
        <guid><![CDATA[http://www.techrepublic.com/forum/discussions/102-335364-3351092]]></guid>
        <dc:creator><![CDATA[josh.krischer@...]]></dc:creator>
        <pubDate>Tue, 31 Aug 2010 01:06:34 -0700</pubDate>
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        <title><![CDATA[They had DR plans because systems ARE back up]]></title>
        <link><![CDATA[http://www.techrepublic.com/forum/discussions/102-335364-3351037]]></link>
        <description><![CDATA[(snip)According to the Washington Post, service was restored for 16 agencies, but 10 require ?a lengthy restoration of data.? Where was the disaster planning?(/snip)How do you know that this isn't the agreed upon time frame in DR plan? You can't recover everything at once. Maybe these apps are designated &quot;low priority&quot; for recovery? Dept Motor Vehicles is obviously not an priority system to recover (heavy sarcasm).I do agree that a single point of failure for 26 state agencies represents very poor DR planning. Isn't centralized IT great.]]></description>
        <guid><![CDATA[http://www.techrepublic.com/forum/discussions/102-335364-3351037]]></guid>
        <dc:creator><![CDATA[Ron_007]]></dc:creator>
        <pubDate>Mon, 30 Aug 2010 20:53:30 -0700</pubDate>
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        <title><![CDATA[RE: Virginia's IT outage doesn't pass management sniff test]]></title>
        <link><![CDATA[http://www.techrepublic.com/forum/discussions/102-335364-3350880]]></link>
        <description><![CDATA[This does not add up. How can you have such monumental single point of failure? My home network / data systems have better redundancy than this. Seems like poor managagement ong NG's side and on the states side.No disaster recovery planning or testing?]]></description>
        <guid><![CDATA[http://www.techrepublic.com/forum/discussions/102-335364-3350880]]></guid>
        <dc:creator><![CDATA[ksec2960]]></dc:creator>
        <pubDate>Mon, 30 Aug 2010 14:15:45 -0700</pubDate>
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    <item>
        <title><![CDATA[Why is that not a surprise? (nm)]]></title>
        <link><![CDATA[http://www.techrepublic.com/forum/discussions/102-335364-3350830]]></link>
        <description><![CDATA[lol]]></description>
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        <dc:creator><![CDATA[MyopicOne]]></dc:creator>
        <pubDate>Mon, 30 Aug 2010 13:37:34 -0700</pubDate>
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    <item>
        <title><![CDATA[Talented IT staff let go]]></title>
        <link><![CDATA[http://www.techrepublic.com/forum/discussions/102-335364-3350821]]></link>
        <description><![CDATA[One reason for the poor service is that the former state employees who went to work for NG were let go after ~18 months.NG had a bad track record for such IT takeovers before being awarded the initial contract.  After the failures mentioned in this article, they got a raise.  Someone needs to audit the Virginia politicians as well as NG.As far as I'm concerned, NG could just as easily be an acronym for &quot;No Good&quot;, or &quot;Nothing Gained&quot;.]]></description>
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        <dc:creator><![CDATA[aikimark@...]]></dc:creator>
        <pubDate>Mon, 30 Aug 2010 13:28:06 -0700</pubDate>
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