Morning Bob

Agreed generally about the differences regarding writing a program, then testing it.

As well as trying to forecast problems, quite a bit of my time was spent writing programs to provide data, etc, for testing the main program.

Some of those test programs could prove so useful, that I would end up producing a general user version, with its own trials before releasing to the end-user.

In reply to a post by RobertoS:

Whether it was a power failure, a piece of kit causing it, or we are being lied to and it was a software bug or some other cause is not really the point. There had to be redundant mirror hardware or similar at at least one other site, and regular systematic testing of hardware systems, sub-systems or comms failure.

This is the problem in a nutshell, and is the reason why no one from BA management will give an interview

The creation of mirror hardware etc will cost mega, against all the current financial decisions. It will also take time and the hiring of specialists many of whom have been dumped by BA over the years and may be most unlikely to join again

Anyone seen or heard from Willie Walsh lately?

"Deputy heads must roll!" as the saying goes

In reply to a post by 961a:

Perhaps their accounts dept system forgot to pay the leccy bill and...

It happens.

Quite a few years ago, a certain unnamed county ambulance service had transferred from being under the wing of the local area health authority to standing on its own.

One day, their radio systems went down across much of the county. A bit of poking around showed that their main repeater station at a large mast site wasn't working due to a power cut.

Their communications officer raced up their in their support Land Rover towing a generator to restore supplies and arrived to discover that the electricity board had disconnected the supply because the bill hadn't been paid. It seems that nobody had transferred the account.

Having said that, I don't really believe the power supply story in BA's case.

Oliver341
Whatever they saved on outsourcing IT to India they'll probably pay ten times over in compensation and loss of reputation.

Doubtful, probably insured for such events, so minimal loss.

As to running Windows ME, the company I work for still runs equipment on Windows 95, OS2 and even well before that. True, no updates, no internet. Heaven, very rarely goes wrong! One reason the equipment still exists. And when it does, usually hardware related. Runs 24 hours a day. Only problem is getting the said hardware repaired.

I can only speculate as most people are.

But I wouldnt be surprised if this could have been avoided but wasnt due to accounting.

In a business, generally IT security and IT redundancy are seen as wasted expenditure, because these decisions get made during periods of good times when there is no public breach and the redundancy isnt needed. After events such as this companies may then react and spend money but then revert the decision some time later thinking its an easy cutback to help profit.

I cannot name the company but I have personally done work for a company where they had a marketing budget of 200 million, but was refusing requests for 500 euros to add redundancy to the server setup. Its all about their priorities, in their eyes, marketing adds customers and as such adds value to the company whilst money on infrastructure does not (unless of course everything goes down then they change their view).

In reply to a post by 69bertie:

Doubtful, probably insured for such events, so minimal loss.

Airlines of "self insure" for a lot of their risks - they know that there will incidents but the cost could be high and as they know the frequency of them, can accept the risk. This did, at one time, and may still do, the insuring of an airframe.

BT did at one time, self insure parts of their vehicle fleet is another example

In reply to a post by 69bertie:

As to running Windows ME, the company I work for still runs equipment on Windows 95, OS2 and even well before that. True, no updates,

I will not say where, but there are still some instances of Win3.11 installed and operational on aircraft.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2017/05/30/exclu...

Thanks Tim . Interesting but!

I'm not sure it excuses it.

OK, I confess. In somewhat distant past, I have worked for BA as a contract programmer, on and off for several years.
BA's own managment was of poor quality and little understanding of IT, the whole place was run by few 'Old Techies' who have been there for yonks and knew the systems.
They would be retired now.
We had few contractors sourced from India (before Tata), they were very good at organising meetings and long discussions. As for dooing the work..., nah..

I have seen reports from 'Power Back Up' specialists and they don't recognise the BA reported scenario.
The truth will out, eventually....!

Given the importance of these systems to BA's operations, I would have thought that they should have been able to fall back to a duplicate system at another location. No suggestion in the DT article that this is possible.