Redundancy is Welcome, Indeed

As a writer, my wife grits her teeth when she sees or hears redundancies. Example: 8:00 p.m. in the evening. But in IT, redundancy is welcome, indeed. Redundancy is instant backup. Without it, a trading company can lose millions of dollars in just seconds or viewers will miss that exciting maneuver in a football game on TV.

I designed, installed and implemented Avon's website (not the graphics) for e-commerce. Later, at Gartner, I designed the redundancy network infrastructure for e-commerce websites so that the sites can function in the event that one site is down. Almost everyone who does online banking has experienced the frustration of trying to check balances, pay bills or schedule transfers at 8:30 p.m., only to get a message that the site is down. At 3:00 a.m., it's understandable, even though many on the West Coast may still be up. Chances are, that bank has a redundancy program that is simply inadequate. The customer won't lose money because the site is down, but the bank may lose customers if it develops a reputation for failure when the end-user needs it at a reasonable time.

Here's the bottom line: get your redundancy infrastructure so that's it's available when customers need it, whether it's 9:00 a.m. in the morning or 9:00 p.m. in the evening.