Posted by Mark Brousseau
Enterprise social networking and collaboration tools that perform adequately at a departmental level can demonstrate surprising shortcomings when implemented enterprise wide, according to vendor evaluation research from independent analyst firm Real Story Group (formerly CMS Watch).
Organizations are increasingly attempting to extend pilot collaboration and social software efforts across the enterprise, but IT leaders typically run into unexpected scalability problems. “Functional shortcomings or missing administrative services that don’t crop up in a departmental pilot can provide significant challenges when a customer tries to scale a system enterprise wide,” explains Real Story Group Principal, Tony Byrne.
Real Story Group customer research uncovered significant common shortcomings, including:
... A lack of lifecycle management services, including archiving
... An absence of clustering and multi-instance management services
... Clumsy or non-existent configuration management services and testing environments
... An inability to integrate with enterprise role and group management (entitlements) systems
... User interfaces that are not internationalized or localized
“Not every vendor suffers from all of these weaknesses,” notes Real Story Group Analyst Adriaan Bloem, “but even the most platform-like offerings from the likes of Microsoft and IBM can come up short in one or more areas – much to the surprise of the customer assuming that a tool was explicitly designed for large-scale deployment.”
“Customers should remember that many of these products matured in departmental environments,” counsels Byrne, “so in addition to investing in essential governance, adoption, and education programs, organizations that must support enterprise-wide collaboration and networking should carefully simulate large-scale conditions before committing to any single vendor.”
What do you think?
Showing posts with label IBM. Show all posts
Showing posts with label IBM. Show all posts
Tuesday, November 9, 2010
Saturday, November 8, 2008
Texas-Sized Data Center Problem
Posted by Mark Brousseau
IBM Corp. has been given a month to fix service problems with a mammoth Texas state data center project or possibly have its $863 million contract terminated, according to an article in Friday's Austin American-Statesman.
The state notified IBM this week that the company has "breached its contractual duties and obligations to the State of Texas" and outlines specific issues with IBM's work.
"The current, unremediated situation is untenable for the State of Texas, as critical state data continues to be at risk," according to the notice written by Brian Rawson, executive director of the Department of Information Resources.
The Statesman says the most persistent problem involves the company's failure to back up data stored on agencies' servers as it consolidates 27 state agencies' data centers into two facilities in Austin and San Angelo. The objective is to streamline and modernize the agencies' technology operations while saving money.
But the company has been repeatedly warned by the state that it had fallen short on requirements in the contract and has been penalized $5.2 million, including almost $902,000 for the data backup problems. The company so far has been paid $175 million under the contract.
The notice, released Thursday, is the first required step to terminate the contract.
It is a serious move by the state, following Gov. Rick Perry's directive two weeks ago to stop work on the contract while a plan to fix the problems was developed. That plan is expected to be completed by Nov. 17.
"The governor expects the issue will be resolved to the full satisfaction of the state," said Allison Castle, the governor's spokeswoman, so that termination of the contract will not be necessary.
IBM spokesman Jeff Tieszen said the company has been working to address the data backup and recovery issues, and would respond accordingly to the state's letter.
"The state's data center infrastructure is more stable and secure now and we plan to work with (the Department of Information Resources) to continue to improve the system to better serve the state's citizens," Tieszen said in a statement.
Rawson wrote in a letter to Perry that he expects "IBM to have restored the confidence of the state leadership and the agencies upon implementation" of the governor's plan.
But Rawson said that the state must be prepared if the results are not satisfactory and said a contingency plan is being developed to ensure data center services without IBM.
IBM assumed responsibility for servers and mainframes at 1,300 locations across the state in April 2007 as it moves the work to the centralized facilities.
It must provide security, backup and disaster recovery at all of those locations. That is where many of the problems have developed.
This summer, the attorney general's office lost a significant amount of data in a server crash at its Medicaid fraud division in Tyler. IBM had failed to back up the data, as required by the contract.
Eight months of data files from the office's fraud investigations were initially lost because the office had stopped using its previous file backup software in November. Ninety percent of the data has since been recovered, but it is unclear whether all of that data is usable.
IBM Corp. has been given a month to fix service problems with a mammoth Texas state data center project or possibly have its $863 million contract terminated, according to an article in Friday's Austin American-Statesman.
The state notified IBM this week that the company has "breached its contractual duties and obligations to the State of Texas" and outlines specific issues with IBM's work.
"The current, unremediated situation is untenable for the State of Texas, as critical state data continues to be at risk," according to the notice written by Brian Rawson, executive director of the Department of Information Resources.
The Statesman says the most persistent problem involves the company's failure to back up data stored on agencies' servers as it consolidates 27 state agencies' data centers into two facilities in Austin and San Angelo. The objective is to streamline and modernize the agencies' technology operations while saving money.
But the company has been repeatedly warned by the state that it had fallen short on requirements in the contract and has been penalized $5.2 million, including almost $902,000 for the data backup problems. The company so far has been paid $175 million under the contract.
The notice, released Thursday, is the first required step to terminate the contract.
It is a serious move by the state, following Gov. Rick Perry's directive two weeks ago to stop work on the contract while a plan to fix the problems was developed. That plan is expected to be completed by Nov. 17.
"The governor expects the issue will be resolved to the full satisfaction of the state," said Allison Castle, the governor's spokeswoman, so that termination of the contract will not be necessary.
IBM spokesman Jeff Tieszen said the company has been working to address the data backup and recovery issues, and would respond accordingly to the state's letter.
"The state's data center infrastructure is more stable and secure now and we plan to work with (the Department of Information Resources) to continue to improve the system to better serve the state's citizens," Tieszen said in a statement.
Rawson wrote in a letter to Perry that he expects "IBM to have restored the confidence of the state leadership and the agencies upon implementation" of the governor's plan.
But Rawson said that the state must be prepared if the results are not satisfactory and said a contingency plan is being developed to ensure data center services without IBM.
IBM assumed responsibility for servers and mainframes at 1,300 locations across the state in April 2007 as it moves the work to the centralized facilities.
It must provide security, backup and disaster recovery at all of those locations. That is where many of the problems have developed.
This summer, the attorney general's office lost a significant amount of data in a server crash at its Medicaid fraud division in Tyler. IBM had failed to back up the data, as required by the contract.
Eight months of data files from the office's fraud investigations were initially lost because the office had stopped using its previous file backup software in November. Ninety percent of the data has since been recovered, but it is unclear whether all of that data is usable.
Saturday, October 25, 2008
The Evolution of Swipe
Posted by Mark Brousseau
A great slideshow from Fortune magazine on the evolution of credit cards.
http://money.cnn.com/galleries/2008/fortune/0810/gallery.mastercard.fortune/index.html
A great slideshow from Fortune magazine on the evolution of credit cards.
http://money.cnn.com/galleries/2008/fortune/0810/gallery.mastercard.fortune/index.html
Thursday, October 23, 2008
Data Loss Jeopardizes Prosecutions
Posted by Mark Brousseau
An interesting article from today's Dallas Morning News:
Computer crash hinders Texas Attorney General's Medicaid fraud case
Thursday, October 23, 2008
By EMILY RAMSHAW and ROBERT T. GARRETT
The Dallas Morning News
AUSTIN – A massive computer crash that destroyed hundreds of the state attorney general's confidential documents may prevent scores of Medicaid fraud prosecutions and has revealed serious problems with a newly expanded state outsourcing of computer services.
As much as 50 percent of the Tyler Medicaid fraud division's files were destroyed in July when a server being repaired by a state vendor wouldn't restart. The scope of the damage is in dispute.
In an apparent oversight, the documents lost were not backed up – meaning that evidence crucial to convicting dishonest health-care providers who ripped off the state's health insurance program for the poor may never be recovered. E-mails and other records obtained by The Dallas Morning News indicate some Tyler investigators lost up to 90 percent of their open case files.
"In spite of earlier assurances, the destruction of critical data has, in fact, occurred," First Assistant Attorney General Kent Sullivan wrote Monday in an e-mail to Brian Rawson, chief of the Department of Information Resources. Attorney General Greg Abbott's office "cannot afford to risk a reoccurrence of this event."
Lost: 8 months of work
In all, 81 criminal cases and eight months of work in the attorney general's 13-person Tyler Medicaid fraud office were completely lost, according to an attorney general's report on the security breach – records that are being painstakingly recovered by the vendor.
IBM, which leads a vendor group selected by the information resources department in the $863 million, seven-year outsourcing deal, said it still is investigating the matter.
"We do take this incident seriously, and we're taking appropriate steps to ensure that it doesn't occur again," company spokesman Jeff Tieszen said.
Mr. Tieszen said IBM-hired data recovery specialists have reassembled 24 of 27 lost gigabytes of information – 88 percent of the lost data.
State officials said that they couldn't confirm that figure and that their latest estimates remain at 50 percent.
The Medicaid fraud data loss is the worst problem to surface in the first 18 months of the state's deal with the IBM-led group – and further blemishes a privatization push throughout state government that grew rapidly after Republicans gained control of the Legislature six years ago.
In April 2007, Mr. Abbott's office was forced to switch to the outsourced system. It gave "Team for Texas," the vendor group, lead responsibility for the attorney general's information technology system, including its servers and backup tapes.
The change was supposed to provide better service and save money. But early this year, the attorney general's office and the IBM-led group had a series of communications breakdowns over whether data was actually being backed up.
In a May e-mail, Sean Peterson, Mr. Abbott's director of network operations, appeared to have a premonition, raising doubts about whether remote office servers were being properly maintained. He also asked for a list of all the backups that had failed in the last three weeks.
"I am concerned that these are not being backed up properly," he wrote.
Lag in reporting
On July 21, the Tyler server wouldn't restart. Alarms weren't raised immediately; memos in the attorney general's office say the vendor didn't notify Mr. Abbott's office of the problem until 10 p.m. on July 22.
But as initial efforts to retrieve the records failed – and attorney general's office employees realized that IBM had "not routinely backed up the server as required by contract" – memos show that both the state and the contractor realized the gravity of the situation.
By late July, IBM had to call in a special forensics team from California to try to recover documents. And the data losses were so severe that employees in Mr. Abbott's office questioned in e-mails to each other whether they should resign for failing to properly oversee IBM, according to records obtained by The News.
Shortly after the Tyler office's data loss, documents indicate the attorney general's office determined that servers for three other field offices were not being backed up, either.
In Monday's e-mail, Mr. Sullivan wrote that he needed a guarantee "that no state agency will again be faced with the situation of having data destroyed and functionally irretrievable."
There have been other highly publicized problems with big outsourcing pushes by the Health and Human Services Commission – one that created privately run call centers and maintained software to support eligibility screening for public assistance, and another that privatized payroll and hiring at 12 social services agencies.
In 2005, the Legislature and Gov. Rick Perry, building on an earlier outsourcing of state computer services and data backups, approved a measure forcing at least 15 state agencies to join a dozen that already were using an earlier vendor, Northrop Grumman Corp.
A new, expanded outsourcing deal with Team for Texas – the current provider – was struck in November 2006 and took effect in April 2007.
The deal, expected to save the state $153 million by 2013, has attracted little public attention because even though more than 500 state employees lost their jobs, about 40 percent found other state positions and the rest were guaranteed spots with IBM or its subcontractors Unisys, Xerox and Pitney Bowes.
In July, though, state Auditor John Keel criticized the information department for not riding herd on major state agencies. Though agencies were supposed to hand over to IBM their most knowledgeable and experienced computer technicians, many kept those workers by using them to fill other vacancies, Mr. Keel's audit said.
An interesting article from today's Dallas Morning News:
Computer crash hinders Texas Attorney General's Medicaid fraud case
Thursday, October 23, 2008
By EMILY RAMSHAW and ROBERT T. GARRETT
The Dallas Morning News
AUSTIN – A massive computer crash that destroyed hundreds of the state attorney general's confidential documents may prevent scores of Medicaid fraud prosecutions and has revealed serious problems with a newly expanded state outsourcing of computer services.
As much as 50 percent of the Tyler Medicaid fraud division's files were destroyed in July when a server being repaired by a state vendor wouldn't restart. The scope of the damage is in dispute.
In an apparent oversight, the documents lost were not backed up – meaning that evidence crucial to convicting dishonest health-care providers who ripped off the state's health insurance program for the poor may never be recovered. E-mails and other records obtained by The Dallas Morning News indicate some Tyler investigators lost up to 90 percent of their open case files.
"In spite of earlier assurances, the destruction of critical data has, in fact, occurred," First Assistant Attorney General Kent Sullivan wrote Monday in an e-mail to Brian Rawson, chief of the Department of Information Resources. Attorney General Greg Abbott's office "cannot afford to risk a reoccurrence of this event."
Lost: 8 months of work
In all, 81 criminal cases and eight months of work in the attorney general's 13-person Tyler Medicaid fraud office were completely lost, according to an attorney general's report on the security breach – records that are being painstakingly recovered by the vendor.
IBM, which leads a vendor group selected by the information resources department in the $863 million, seven-year outsourcing deal, said it still is investigating the matter.
"We do take this incident seriously, and we're taking appropriate steps to ensure that it doesn't occur again," company spokesman Jeff Tieszen said.
Mr. Tieszen said IBM-hired data recovery specialists have reassembled 24 of 27 lost gigabytes of information – 88 percent of the lost data.
State officials said that they couldn't confirm that figure and that their latest estimates remain at 50 percent.
The Medicaid fraud data loss is the worst problem to surface in the first 18 months of the state's deal with the IBM-led group – and further blemishes a privatization push throughout state government that grew rapidly after Republicans gained control of the Legislature six years ago.
In April 2007, Mr. Abbott's office was forced to switch to the outsourced system. It gave "Team for Texas," the vendor group, lead responsibility for the attorney general's information technology system, including its servers and backup tapes.
The change was supposed to provide better service and save money. But early this year, the attorney general's office and the IBM-led group had a series of communications breakdowns over whether data was actually being backed up.
In a May e-mail, Sean Peterson, Mr. Abbott's director of network operations, appeared to have a premonition, raising doubts about whether remote office servers were being properly maintained. He also asked for a list of all the backups that had failed in the last three weeks.
"I am concerned that these are not being backed up properly," he wrote.
Lag in reporting
On July 21, the Tyler server wouldn't restart. Alarms weren't raised immediately; memos in the attorney general's office say the vendor didn't notify Mr. Abbott's office of the problem until 10 p.m. on July 22.
But as initial efforts to retrieve the records failed – and attorney general's office employees realized that IBM had "not routinely backed up the server as required by contract" – memos show that both the state and the contractor realized the gravity of the situation.
By late July, IBM had to call in a special forensics team from California to try to recover documents. And the data losses were so severe that employees in Mr. Abbott's office questioned in e-mails to each other whether they should resign for failing to properly oversee IBM, according to records obtained by The News.
Shortly after the Tyler office's data loss, documents indicate the attorney general's office determined that servers for three other field offices were not being backed up, either.
In Monday's e-mail, Mr. Sullivan wrote that he needed a guarantee "that no state agency will again be faced with the situation of having data destroyed and functionally irretrievable."
There have been other highly publicized problems with big outsourcing pushes by the Health and Human Services Commission – one that created privately run call centers and maintained software to support eligibility screening for public assistance, and another that privatized payroll and hiring at 12 social services agencies.
In 2005, the Legislature and Gov. Rick Perry, building on an earlier outsourcing of state computer services and data backups, approved a measure forcing at least 15 state agencies to join a dozen that already were using an earlier vendor, Northrop Grumman Corp.
A new, expanded outsourcing deal with Team for Texas – the current provider – was struck in November 2006 and took effect in April 2007.
The deal, expected to save the state $153 million by 2013, has attracted little public attention because even though more than 500 state employees lost their jobs, about 40 percent found other state positions and the rest were guaranteed spots with IBM or its subcontractors Unisys, Xerox and Pitney Bowes.
In July, though, state Auditor John Keel criticized the information department for not riding herd on major state agencies. Though agencies were supposed to hand over to IBM their most knowledgeable and experienced computer technicians, many kept those workers by using them to fill other vacancies, Mr. Keel's audit said.
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