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Companies can plan for London network
disaster
The test performed in the City of London to assess the
vulnerability of communications links (Computer Weekly, 30
November) highlights the importance of ensuring network resilience
and availability in the event of a disaster. This has an effect on
the rest of the UK as London serves the heart of the UK
infrastructure. Should London be wiped out, the UK would lose 90%
of its infrastructure.
The comment made by Neil Robinson that "risks are outside
companies' control" is misleading as there are numerous ways for
companies to back-up critical communications channels to safeguard
against unplanned downtime.
Suppliers do run networks through the same infrastructure, which
makes it all the more important for companies to buy diversified
services from different providers.
Use more than one ISP for bandwidth. Many companies may think they
are using more than one provider, but ultimately they rely on the
same one because telcos buy bandwidth from the same small number of
carriers.
Although companies should expect their communications providers to
be more rigorous in their approach to customer and network service,
there is also an onus on organisations to assume some
responsibility for network resilience and availability issues.
Keith Tilley, UK managing director, SunGard Availability
Services
MPLS is not a one-stop network
solution
Yankee Group's prediction that the use of multi-protocol label
switching (MPLS) is set to double in four years (Computer Weekly, 7
December) indicates that network performance is a priority for many
businesses. It is positive to see firms adopting these measures to
bolster the performance of their business-critical
applications.
This is, of course, good news for carriers selling MPLS, as they
will ultimately increase their profits by charging the customer
more for using MPLS with a classic "bait and switch" selling
technique. Although every carrier offers different tariffs, it is
not uncommon to find that the initial MPLS class of service offers
savings of 10% to 15%, but that adding further classes later in the
contract can increase costs by 25%.
In addition, MPLS in isolation does not address the entire
application performance challenge. MPLS does nothing to fix the
problem of too many applications contending for limited bandwidth
between the business and the carrier network.
Only by having a holistic view of the network and monitoring
applications will products such as MPLS be able to fully deliver
the benefits intended at the price expected.
Roger Hockaday, director, Packeteer
Kiss and give clients software that
works
In response to the article "Avoid adding risk and complexity to
projects to achieve goals rapidly" (Computer Weekly, 7 December), I
fully endorse the views expressed by John Wailing with regard to
keeping software projects simple. The example of one of our project
rescue cases is enlightening.
In this particular case we re-implemented the software required for
a project that was going seriously wrong with the usual symptoms of
being late and not working. The time taken to re-implement was some
15 times less than it had taken to get the original software to the
stage where it was cancelled. The reasons for this success map
neatly onto the reasons cited in the article.
- Keep things simple. This is the Kiss adage from real
engineering saying "keep it simple, stupid". Our team only provided
what was really needed, it did not waste time or brain power
creating functionality that was unlikely to be used.
- Do not reinvent; try to reuse. Although this was a
re-implementation, the reusable components we had meant that a
large portion of the software was already in place before we
started.
- Do not spend too long on requirements. Knocking up a quick
prototype to show immediate progress was a boost for the client's
flagging morale.
- Finally, surprise people. The thing that most surprises people
is when software actually works.
Dave Knight, managing director, Igence
Why don't websites have contact numbers?
Has Computer Weekly or its readers noticed how rarely one can find
a useful contact telephone number on websites?
Many websites have no contact phone numbers anywhere, or only
provide unhelpful numbers for automated response services which
leave you stranded if your query does not fit into the algorithm to
which they work.
Is there some plot afoot to bring about the demise of the
telephone? I think we should be told.
Tony Cater