No One Ever got Fired for Buying Linux

For a while there, Microsoft made a lot of hay about the London Stock Exchange using Windows in their trading system.

As it turns out, too much hay. The LSE is now going to abandon their Windows trading system. As the author points out, IT failures aren’t all that rare, what is rare is learning about them. Usually the principals bury the body and move on to “Phase II”. In this case the principal was fired, and her replacement is hanging out the dirty laundry.

Another thing that is rare is for a dominant vendor to shoulder any blame for these kinds of failures. The usual principle is that, if everyone is doing it, it can’t possibly be stupid.

Did you buy an expensive web mapping server and then have to put it on a nightly re-boot cycle to avoid service degradation? Don’t worry, everyone is doing it, it doesn’t reflect badly on you.

Is all your e-mail locked in binary file archives, where a small corruption can render the entire archive irretrievable? Don’t worry, everyone is doing it, it doesn’t reflect badly on you.

It’s not an IT thing, really, it’s called “culture”, our common shared beliefs and idiosyncrasies.

Did you start your day by repeatedly accelerating and decelerating a 4000lb metal box holding only yourself and a cup of coffee over a hot tar field, place your box in another hot tar field, and then hike over the tar field to a large glass box enter, and place yourself inside a further fabric covered box? Don’t worry, everyone is doing it, it doesn’t reflect badly on you.