Links List 8.15.08

Posted August 15th, 2008 by Joe Pendry

Netflix, the online DVD rental service company, experienced the “worst major outage in its history”. Due to the outage, the company could not ship their DVDs to 1/3 of their 8.4 million customers in the past few days. The issue was reported with the computer systems, citing that they would “leave the company unable to send out confirmation on the returned discs or send out new orders to subscribers.” Although operations have resumed, the company is continuing to work on fully restoring their facilities. For those who experienced a delay in receiving their discs, Netflix has applied a 5 percent discount to your monthly bill. Sounds like they are continuing to provide customers with rebates, but most would probably be more happy with less downtime.

Dana Gardner at ZDNet says that aligning IT goals with business goals increases agility and cuts costs. This sounds like a win-win situation for all. Developing processes (such as ITIL) and promoting clear communication of business goals is the key to success.

How do you know if cloud computing is right for your enterprise? Strategic Solutions Sales VP for AT&T Global Business Service, Joe Weinman lists five questions to help answer that question.

A recent report by Gartner found that SaaS is not ready for vendors to provide the integrated package of enterprise resource planning software large organizations demand. Gartner “urges CIOs and business-technology leaders not to be ‘deceived’ by impressive SaaS ERP growth data.” The report also stated that this growth will be “driven by the adoption of human capital management SaaS and financial SaaS point solutions.”

SAP, the business software solutions applications and services company, held a small and medium enterprise event for bloggers, analysts, and press. SAP’s SVP for SAP SME Solution Marketing presented the company’s SME portfolio strategy and stated their offerings to the SME market with their three products: Business One, Business byDesign and All-in-One.