One large,online share dealing company I worked with said ( 10 years ago) 1 minute down, costs $1million 1 day down - we are out of business.
This was due to fines etc from the stock exchanges, and the cost of having to buy shares at a potentially higher price. Once I went on site - and there was the newspaper headline... XXXXX down AGAIN - people unable to trade for 1 hour! Colin On Mon, 3 Mar 2025 at 14:01, Allan Staller < 00000632b4c7ca99-dmarc-requ...@listserv.ua.edu> wrote: > Classification: Confidential > > At a relatively small MF shop I used to work at, the cost of downtime was > pegged at 100K/Hour. > I was able to use this to justify development of a parallel sysplex. > > I was able to reduce a 12 hour event (quarterly) to zero, and this saved > 4.8 million annually, > Plus was able to make my job easier with monthly deployments, instead of > quarterly. > > Try that on open systems! > > > > > -----Original Message----- > From: IBM Mainframe Discussion List <IBM-MAIN@LISTSERV.UA.EDU> On Behalf > Of Phil Smith III > Sent: Sunday, March 2, 2025 9:43 AM > To: IBM-MAIN@LISTSERV.UA.EDU > Subject: Cost of an outage (was: The mainframe is alive) > > [CAUTION: This Email is from outside the Organization. Unless you trust > the sender, Don't click links or open attachments as it may be a Phishing > email, which can steal your Information and compromise your Computer.] > > Re outages: > > Microsoft had a major outage today that banks, Walmart, insurance > > companies, airlines, and other companies can't > > Well...*we* would say "can't". *They* would say "can't". But the reality > is that if those happen--and they do (cf. Delta's outage last July, for > one)--the world and the business don't stop. It makes us SMH and leaves > their management screaming at people, but they don't go out of business. Of > that list of industries, the airlines are the most critical in terms of > real-time lost-revenue: if I can't complete my purchase at walmart.com, I > might go to target.com, but also might just say "I'll try again later". > Same with bank, insurance, and most other companies. An airline trip has a > firm expiration date. > > But Delta is still in business, so what does "can't go down" even mean any > more? Definitely not what it used to. > > I'm convinced that some or all of this is because the industry has shifted > to this "move fast and break things" mantra that even bleeds into areas > where people say "No, we don't/can't/won't do that". E.g., the Delta outage > was apparently caused by a CrowdStrike problem. Back in the day, would > Delta have allowed a third-party tool to be used in such a critical way? > I'd say "Probably not", or if they did, they would have insisted on being > able to test any updates well enough to be sure that such an outage was > impossible. Nowadays that just isn't practical, so it isn't done, and we > see the result. I haz a sad. > > None of this is the mainframe's fault, of course, which is why I moved > this to a different topic. > > Back in 1989, SABRE had a 12-hour outage that made the front pages. That > was rare enough that I remember it almost four decades later. At the time, > the quote was that it cost SABRE $20,000 per minute, a huge deal, ~$15M > total. > > I had to Google the Delta outage, and not just because I'm old--it's just > not THAT remarkable any more. > > Delta is suing ClownStrike for $550M for the July follies, which is about > 1/120 of their annual revenue. This might actually be about right, since > the outage lasted five days for them and a third of that figure appears to > be actual costs, not just lost revenue. Hmm, doing the math--CPI is about > 2.6x 1989-2024, and the outage was 10x as long as SABRE's: 15*2.6*10=390; > Delta claims the lost revenue portion is $380M. Amazingly close! > > BTW, for those who might be wondering, I was told by someone at SABRE that > the 1989 outage was caused by a rogue TPF job that clipped thousands of > volumes (see http://catless.ncl.ac.uk/Risks/8.74.html for something that > hints at this), which predictably made MVS very unhappy. People were > basically running around with their hair on fire. The VM guy, Mike Roegner, > quietly went off and wrote a Rexx program to drive re-clipping the packs > and the rest of the outage was just the time it took to run that program > against all those volumes. I of course cannot verify this and Mike is long > retired; perhaps someone else here remembers? > > So...how much does "can't go down" even mean any more? Did anyone at Delta > lose their job over this? Or was the blame just pushed to > ClownStrike--convenient, if so. One wonders. > > Ok, this turned into a bit of a ramble, but it's a topic that I often > think about! > > ...phsiii > > ---------------------------------------------------------------------- > For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email > to lists...@listserv.ua.edu with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN > ::DISCLAIMER:: > ________________________________ > The contents of this e-mail and any attachment(s) are confidential and > intended for the named recipient(s) only. E-mail transmission is not > guaranteed to be secure or error-free as information could be intercepted, > corrupted, lost, destroyed, arrive late or incomplete, or may contain > viruses in transmission. The e mail and its contents (with or without > referred errors) shall therefore not attach any liability on the originator > or HCL or its affiliates. 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