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British Airways: All flights cancelled amid IT crash

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Re: British Airways: All flights cancelled amid IT crash

#151

Post by _0w8t »

robjan wrote: post #34
markonen wrote: post #10

The main KPI for BA's IT function is the percentage of jobs they have moved "nearshore" (to Krakow). Not that I think this is the Krakow workers' fault, mind you; rather this (and the string of similar IT incidents recently at BA) seems to fit the pattern of upper management focusing on driving down costs to the exclusion of everything else.

The system that's down was built, and is currently supported by, Tata Consultancy Services with support from BA IT staff. Once the system was built, BA made the majority of the IT department redundant.

The biggest Norwegian bank also uses Tata. A friend of mine that worked on a project there talked few times with their programmers. The company treated them really badly including things like trying not to pay for accommodation while they were in Norway for few months. They also told that they actively searched for a new job.

Re: British Airways: All flights cancelled amid IT crash

#152

Post by devonkim »

crowbahr wrote: post #73
ern wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Quantas, the airline of Australia, outsources its IT operations to IBM. They did not choose the cheapest alternative, but a reliable one. I believe IBM was responsible for the Australian census debacle in 2016. Hardly a ringing endorsement of their reliability, and not the only high-profile instance of them messing things up. "No one ever got fired for choosing IBM" though.

IBM makes mistakes but IBM is massive. You expect some things to happen just by the sheer surface area they have. I'd trust IBM over random outsourced coding houses when it comes to IT Security.

People in this thread talk about IBM like they're the only well known vendor that does this - far from it. All of IBM's enterprise competitors doing professional and managed services such as HP do this as an industry practice. This has everything to do with their customers treating IT as cost centers. I very much believe in hate the game, not the player.

Re: British Airways: All flights cancelled amid IT crash

#153

Post by [deleted] »

crowbahr wrote: post #73
ern wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Quantas, the airline of Australia, outsources its IT operations to IBM. They did not choose the cheapest alternative, but a reliable one. I believe IBM was responsible for the Australian census debacle in 2016. Hardly a ringing endorsement of their reliability, and not the only high-profile instance of them messing things up. "No one ever got fired for choosing IBM" though.

IBM makes mistakes but IBM is massive. You expect some things to happen just by the sheer surface area they have. I'd trust IBM over random outsourced coding houses when it comes to IT Security.

[deleted]

Re: British Airways: All flights cancelled amid IT crash

#154

Post by fauigerzigerk »

raesene9 wrote: post #148
fauigerzigerk wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I doubt that anyone wants to compete solely on price. It's a margins game.

have you been involved in many IT outsourcing agreements? Cost is always a major factor in procurement, and in IT where there can be a strong market for lemons, it's often the key factor. A company that's more expensive and can't clearly demonstrate in a bid scenario the positive impact of that increase in costs, will lose bids, a lot.

Of course cost is a major factor. I never disputed that. I'm saying that competing on price alone is undesirable for IT outsourcing companies.

Re: British Airways: All flights cancelled amid IT crash

#155

Post by justinclift »

alanbyrne wrote: post #115
davidf18 wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While I can't speak to the exact circumstances, IBM when it takes over operations often hires the IT staff of the firm it is taking over operations from and runs systems on multiple-year contracts. At any rate, I believe few would contest that IBM in general is a more reliable vendor than Tata, other Indian suppliers or say, offices in Poland. EDIT: Details on IBM and Australian census. http://www.abc.net.au/news/201…

> IBM when it takes over operations often hires the IT staff of the firm it is taking over operations from and runs systems on multiple-year contracts. I've seen this happen many times and it's always been successful. They can replicate the business processes they've honed over time whilst keeping that important business knowledge. It's also often better for the staff as they can hand off that knowledge and move inte…

Interesting. In IT circles IBM is generally regarded as "worst of class", due to continual waves of firing competent employees, outsourcing, and many other dodgy practises. A recent example (there are many, many more):

https://www.theregister.co.uk/2017/05/26/ibm_asks_contractor...

Re: British Airways: All flights cancelled amid IT crash

#156

Post by matteo789 »

gaius wrote: post #142
funkyy wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you should not put IT specialists from India and Poland in the one bag. Polish engineers are sometimes a bit late when it comes to the new technologies, but are very good compared to ones from, for example, Ireland.

Polish engineers are sometimes a bit late when it comes to the new technologies, but are very good compared to ones from, for example, Ireland. It doesn't matter. They are no smarter than BA's original British engineers, but with decades less experience on those systems. Even if they were smarter - and in general the talent prefers to work for real companies, not bodyshops, so that's unlikely - they can't compensate…

Polish engineers, similarly to Polish fighter jet pilots in WWII, who saved your lazy british asses BTW, do have high-reliability IT systems experience, due to major investment banks and GDSs operating in the Cracow area. Next time you write something, do some research dude. It shows how ignorant you brits are, especially taking into account the recent Brexit vote !

Re: British Airways: All flights cancelled amid IT crash

#157

Post by billforsternz »

prodmerc wrote: post #91
chinhodado wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why just two? The average salary in a western country is many times that in a third world country, and ten times is not that unusual.

Unless you're an idiot and outsourcing critical operations to India or China, it's more like ~4 for 1. Third world countries are developing, you should keep up with that.

I think the narrative here is that yes, the pointy heads are idiots.

Re: British Airways: All flights cancelled amid IT crash

#158

Post by 2manyredirects »

One of the unions has been quick to attribute the issue to the outsourcing to India of some of the IT responsibility, which the right wing press here has been all too eager to publish, but BA have rebuffed this and said at this stage they believe the root cause was a power supply issue - sure, that could be attributed somewhere along the lines to an 'alpha male business asshole' (as I read in one of the comments here), but it's probably best to wait and see what the post-mortem really is rather than seek to blame someone, somewhere, be it a businessman, an Indian dev team or anything else.

I am reminded of a post a while back regarding AWS' issues affecting multiple data centres (I forget the specifics), and how their post mortem didn't appropriate blame on anyone (which it really easily could have), but rather their own checks and balances, which allowed the issue to arise in the first place. I do hope that when the dust settles we see a measured response rather than a witch hunt.

Re: British Airways: All flights cancelled amid IT crash

#159

Post by funkyy »

gaius wrote: post #142
funkyy wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you should not put IT specialists from India and Poland in the one bag. Polish engineers are sometimes a bit late when it comes to the new technologies, but are very good compared to ones from, for example, Ireland.

Polish engineers are sometimes a bit late when it comes to the new technologies, but are very good compared to ones from, for example, Ireland. It doesn't matter. They are no smarter than BA's original British engineers, but with decades less experience on those systems. Even if they were smarter - and in general the talent prefers to work for real companies, not bodyshops, so that's unlikely - they can't compensate…

Decades? We are talking here about 2-3 years lag due to conservatist approach. You seem to know nothing about what you write.

Re: British Airways: All flights cancelled amid IT crash

#160

Post by matteo789 »

mirekrusin wrote: post #56
markonen wrote: post #10

The main KPI for BA's IT function is the percentage of jobs they have moved "nearshore" (to Krakow). Not that I think this is the Krakow workers' fault, mind you; rather this (and the string of similar IT incidents recently at BA) seems to fit the pattern of upper management focusing on driving down costs to the exclusion of everything else.

Not Krakow, Poland but India, via Tata about a year ago they made a big move.

So the Indians screwed it up, but the Polish are taking the blame? How wonderful of you brits !!!
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