Links List 5.30.08

Posted May 30th, 2008 by Joe Pendry

Managed Objects mentions the “butterfly effect” when considering the impact of change management. The butterfly that caused the outage can often be traced back to change, whether that change was planned (as in software upgrade) or unplanned (as in a fault failure).

Speaking of failure, Michael Krisgman shows us some sobering statistics that examine why 25% of web projects fail. Of three elements mentioned that cause web project failures, changing requirements accounted for 55%.

The IT Skeptic discusses how to get IT operations teams and application management teams working together with regards to ITIL procedures and policies. He notes that more often than not, it’s a people issue, not a process one.

Stephanie asks how much downtime you should tolerate from a hosting company. She states that a good hosting company will also have a way for you to check on what’s happening during a server outage without contacting support. Communication is important when your site goes down.

A funny story about downtime and an Xbox from WindowsITPro. I don’t want to spoil the ending, but suffice it to say that a missing Xbox caused a lot of problems for students at a public university.

Virtualization licensing and pricing complexity remain an issue for companies that are seeking to implement a virtualized environment. Tarry Singh provides some insight that brings it all back to one issue: money.