Who’s to Blame
When IT Breaks?
Assessing fault in data center incidents
could pit internal IT operations staffers
against contractors and vendors.
By Patrick Thibodeau
THERE’S ALWAYS a reason why things break in data centers, and the powers that be can usually find someone to blame — whether that someone is an IT operations sta; member, an OEM, a systems integrator or a third-party service provider.
Often, the o;ender leaves clear fingerprints, such as a
mislabeled component or a process that wasn’t updated. Some
incidents are clearly due to the oversights of multiple parties.
Uptime Institute, a professional group
whose membership includes data center
managers from many industries, has collected and studied incident data for almost
20 years and concludes that the majority of
problems are caused by outside parties like
contractors or vendors, with a smaller but
still sizeable percentage being the fault of
internal I T sta;ers.
Since 1994, Uptime has collected data
on some 5,000 abnormal incidents, which
it defines as events in which a piece of
equipment or infrastructure component
did not perform as expected. The incident
reports are submitted voluntarily by
Uptime members.
The vendor gets
caught up in a
sensitive spot. It doesn’t want
to put the client — a facilities
manager — in a di;cult position.
AHMAD MOSHIRI, DIRECTOR OF POWER
TECHNICAL SUPPORT, EMERSON NETWORK
POWER’S LIEBERT SERVICES UNIT
