Merrill Lynch lost two data centres during the 11 September
terrorist attacks in New York. The site is now functioning as a
back-up to the primary data centre, which has been moved to Staten
Island, on a separate power grid.
Marvin Balliet, first vice-president and chief financial officer of
Merrill Lynch's Technology Group, talks about rebuilding after the
horror of 11 September and the types of new IT projects upper
management is willing to fund.
What physical equipment did you lose on 11 September?
We lost our entire production and development data centre capacity
for our corporate functions and for our capital market functions.
It was probably one of the largest distributed data centres in the
US. What happened is the power kicked back on [after the collapse
of the World Trade Centre's twin towers], but the air conditioning
didn't. We lost heat here, and we lost contamination [control] in
the south tower.
It really gets back to what is re-certifiable. With the heating
problem, most vendors would not continue to support the capacity in
those servers, and without the vendors' support, you cannot run
mission-critical trading or retail systems.
What were some of the other issues that came out of 11
September?
We did not have the infrastructure to support our network
operations in Jersey City. Those buildings [had] capacity to house
400 people, and the next thing you know is 1,200 people are in that
building. We needed to then go to wireless solutions. The fact that
this little card you put in your portable [computer] that allows
you to operate as if you're hooked up to a LAN became as important
as the machine itself. Now we are working with the permanent
replacement of that capacity.
I think there's a greater focus on redundancy and things you took
for granted before. Whoever envisioned that the greatest delay in
getting buildings back into use was the lack of network capability?
In all of our plans no one focused on e-mail as being
mission-critical. Yet, that was the first thing our traders were
screaming about, even before they were up and trading. They need
e-mail.
What kinds of projects sell to top management these
days?
Anything tied to security becomes the easiest -
probably only - sell. We're not necessarily going to do [a return
on investment analysis] and evaluation on our return if it falls
under a couple of categories: business recovery [regarding trading
desks] and [continuance and recovery] capabilities.
Access, security and cyber-terrorism: those three categories have
become, in my opinion, the easiest sells.
What's the trick to getting the chief executive's stamp of
approval on projects?
To get a chief executive to approve
a technology initiative is an interesting phenomenon today. The
business people are trying to sell it to executive management. The
technology people are there to answer questions. Technology
basically does not lead or drive any technology request or
initiative.