November 27, 2009 | Mark Paradies

IT Folks Need Root Cause Analysis Too – Especially in London!

All high-performance systems need root cause analysis. They can use it reactively when things go wrong and proactively to keep things from going wrong.

Long ago, we had our first “network reliability” people start using TapRooT® to improve network reliability. Our first customer was a company that supplied high-reliability computer systems for financial transactions. The next one ran a high-reliability telecommunications network that included 911 call systems.

It seems people may need some advanced root cause analysis training in London.

Why?

They had to shut down trading on the London Stock Exchange because of a “technical glitch.”

Here is what a story from The Star had to say:

“LONDON: The London Stock Exchange PLC halted trading for three-and-a-half hours on Thursday after a technical glitch prevented some customers from connecting to its systems.

The LSE, Europe’s oldest independent exchange, said taking trade offline was the only way to ensure a fair and orderly market after customers reported the connectivity problems in early trading.

The exchange is still looking into the root cause of the embarrassing outage – the second significant technical problem in just over a year – and said it was too early to judge the extent of the effect on trade or lost business.

And this isn’t the first time this has happened. The story also says:

“Just over a year ago, the LSE experienced its worst outage in almost a decade when a software glitch was blamed for a 7-hour shutdown that angered customers on one of the busiest days of the year on world equity markets.

On that day in September 2008, the shutdown left many clients unable to cash in on a worldwide stock market boom that followed the U.S. government bailout of mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.”

Think that’s a big problem? You betcha!

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