EduardoS (no@spam.com) on 2/10/09 wrote:
---------------------------
>Dean Kent (dkent@realworldtech.com) on 2/9/09 wrote:
>---------------------------
>>Where is 'here'?
>
>A stock exchange, not a big one tought.
>
>> and can you define 'big bucks'?
>
>US$3 billions per day
>
>>Mission critical basically means any application that, if it stops running for
>>any significant period of time, kills the business.
>
>What's a "significant period of time"? Is it so short that a x86 cluster wouldn't be enough?

It could be. Mission critical apps don't necessarily run only on those that are defined as high RAS. But there are situations where even a very short outage could damage the company severely.

>
>BTW, if that's the definition of "mission-critical", what's the name of applications
>where a single fail would result in a really big loss?
>

I named one in another post - payroll. If it is late, it can cost a *lot* of money to the payroll company. And, it makes the payees lose confidence, and possibly lost business for the payroll company. Everyone wants their money now.

And it isn't even necessarily a total failure. Erroneous transactions can cause huge problems. I would think that this is also true of a stock exchange. In some situations, *any* error is a major problem, and a potential black eye. Multiple errors could be a death knell for the business.

I can tell you that as a mainframe developer, virtually all of our largest customers are banks and financial institutions. Very large retail outlets use mainframes as well for their own mission critical apps (target, home depot, etc.) I interviewed at home depot awhile back. At a former employer, I saw Intel as one of our mainframe customers.

In any case, if you have not been on the business end of things the term mission critical is probably confusing. At a software development company, our IT manager thought the tape backup system was 'mission critical'. However, it was really the packaging and shipping of products and fixes that was the true mission critical application.

Regards,
Dean