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  • IBM power failure stops Air New Zealand check-in

    Air New Zealand's booking and check-in system and Bank of New Zealand's online banking services were brought to their knees on Wednesday night by a further power failure at an IBM data centre.
    Air New Zealand was forced to switch to manually checking in passengers on several international flights when its computer system failed at about 9.30pm on Wednesday.
    At the same time the airline's online booking system was also unavailable for about an hour.
    Bank of New Zealand said its online banking service was down for about two hours, and the bank's other systems were affected by the outage to varying degrees for about four hours.
    BNZ Spokeswoman Erica Lloyd said customers were still able to do their banking through call centres.
    IBM spokeswoman Kate Woodruffe said its Newton datacentre, in Auckland suffered a brief power outage shortly after 9pm during routine maintenance.
    The centre's uninterrupted power supply (UPS) "took several seconds to activate". It took some time to bring the servers back online.
    A UPS is designed to smooth out brown-outs and spikes in the electricity supply and provide battery back-up in case of a power cut.
    Systems had been fully restored and IBM was "undertaking a thorough investigation into the root cause of the outage", Ms Woodruffe said.
    It is the second time that the data centre's back up power system has failed to work correctly.
    Air New Zealand's computer systems were crippled on the last day of last year's October school holidays, stranding more than 10,000 passengers around the country and delaying dozens of flights, after a power generator at the data centre failed due to a faulty oil pressure sensor.
    Air New Zealand chief executive Rob Fyfe at the time labelled the global computer giant's slow response to the crisis "amateur".
    BNZ's online services were also affected then.
    Air New Zealand announced in August that it was moving its primary data centre requirements to spread the risk of future failures.
    IBM is a secondary provider.

  • Air New Zealand extends contract with IBM

    IBM and Air New Zealand have signed a deal to extend its longstanding relationship for five more years. IBM will continue to provide business and technology services to support the airline’s expanding global business despite the bad turn the relationship between the two companies took last year when a mainframe crash crippled services and disrupted thousands of passengers.
    In October last year, Air New Zealand chief executive Rob Fyfe lashed out at IBM in an internal email. Air New Zealand CIO Julia Raue later said the disruption was casued by "unclean" shutdown of systems for UPS maintenance. When the systems were re-started data corruption and reboot issues were experienced across various platforms.

  • Air NZ mainframe flies over to Gen-i

    IBM has lost its contract to host Air New Zealand's mainframe, which will now be moved to a facility owned by Gen-i.
    The airline is understood to have decided to make the change after IBM delayed the opening of a new state-of-the-art datacentre in Auckland.
    Air New Zealand chief information officer Julia Raue says it does not signal a significant change in the relationship between the airline and IBM.
    It has wanted to move the mainframe to a more robust facility since a power failure at the IBM-run Newton datacentre resulted in a disastrous systems crash in October.
    The outage caused the cancellation of dozens of flights and earned a public tongue-lashing for IBM from the airline.
    Air New Zealand chief executive Rob Fyfe said in an internal email leaked in the aftermath of the outage that he struggled to recall a time when a supplier had been so unwilling to accept responsibility and apologise to its client "and its client's customers".
    A source said the relationship between the companies had since improved. It has not been revealed whether IBM paid the airline compensation.
    IBM will continue to support the mainframe at the Gen-i facility and manage the Newton datacentre, which will continue to house other Air New Zealand systems until at least 2012. It is understood that the financial impact on IBM of losing the mainframe hosting contract will therefore be small.
    The failure at the Newton datacentre was blamed on a faulty oil pressure sensor.
    It is understood IBM was relying on a single generator to power the airline's mainframe during scheduled maintenance on an uninterruptible power supply (UPS) attached to the datacentre's main power supply.
    Experts said it appeared the centre — originally built by Air New Zealand — was not best equipped to host mission-critical applications.
    Commenting at the time, Ron Hughes, the president of California Data Centre Design Group, a United States consulting firm that specialises in datacentre power systems, said IBM appeared to have followed "standard operating procedure", but questioned the reliance on a single back-up generator.
    IBM announced in December that it would construct a modern datacentre in Auckland, forecasting it would spent $80 million building it, fitting it out and operating it over 10 years.
    IBM hoped then that the centre would be ready by the end of the year, but it is not now expected to open until some time in 2011.
    Another source said approval for the datacentre investment was repeatedly delayed as managers in Australia and the United States dithered over whether to approve the business case.
    IBM technology services manager Greg Farmer says it looks forward to offering Air New Zealand space at its new datacentre, when it opens.

  • IBM datacentre design queried

    The IBM datacentre responsible for Air New Zealand's computer failure is not best equipped to host mission-critical applications and may need to be replaced or retrofitted with extra generators to bring it up to best practice, sources say.

  • Air NZ CIO sheds light on Sunday's outage

    While Air New Zealand has a secondary datacentre in Auckland, it wasn't chosen as the most appropriate fallback on Sunday afternoon, when the outage that affected check-in, booking and call centre functions, Air NZ CIO Julia Raue says.

  • IBM issues statement re Air NZ outage

    IBM has responded to a request by Computerworld for comment on Sunday’s outage at Air New Zealand, which affected check-in, booking and call centre systems and prompted criticism from Air New Zealand CEO Rob Fyfe and short haul airlines group general manager Bruce Parton.

  • Air NZ CEO chides IBM over yesterday's outage

    Air New Zealand chief executive Rob Fyfe has lashed out at IBM in an internal email about yesterday’s mainframe crash that crippled services and disrupted thousands of passengers.
    “In my 30-year working career, I am struggling to recall a time where I have seen a supplier so slow to react to a catastrophic system failure such as this and so unwilling to accept responsibility and apologise to its client and its client’s customers,” he says.
    “We were left high and dry and this is simply unacceptable. My expectations of IBM were far higher than the amateur results that were delivered yesterday, and I have been left with no option but to ask the IT team to review the full range of options available to us to ensure we have an IT supplier whom we have confidence in and one who understands and is fully committed to our business and the needs of our customers".
    Air New Zealand was to meet IBM today over the crash, which took down airport check-in systems, as well as online bookings and call centre systems about 9.30am yesterday, affecting more than 10,000 passengers and throwing airports into chaos.

  • Air New Zealand, Tex Edwards collect major TUANZ awards

    The Telecommunications Users Association of New Zealand has delivered its annual awards, with Air New Zealand the big winner and 2 Degrees' founder Tex Edwards collecting the chairman's award.
    If there was a theme of the awards, held in partnership with IDC and major sponsor Voco, this year it was that while broadband and telecommunications infrastructure are vital, it's the applications that use such infrastructure that deliver real economic benefits.

  • CIO of the year, ICT recruiter named

    Julia Raue says ICT is recognised across the entire Air New Zealand as critical to the business, and this plays a crucial role in their successful projects in the online space and customer self service that are earning accolades across the globe.
    “IT-enabled business transformation has ensured Air New Zealand remains competitive, that is something we are incredibly proud of ” says Raue, who received the award at this year’s CIO Summit organised by CIO, IDC and BrightStar.

  • Air NZ unveils paperless check-in through RFID

    From November 3, Auckland airport’s domestic terminal will be “the coolest airport in the world”, according to Air New Zealand general manager of domestic flights Stephen Jones.

  • Air New Zealand to demonstrate electronic boarding passes

    Air New Zealand is holding a briefing next week at which it plans to demonstrate new domestic check-in and boarding technologies, including RFID and mobile phone-based boarding passes, to be introduced at all of the company's domestic terminals.

  • Awards' finalists air innovative use of IT

    Most IT bosses know all about budgets, but what about their customers’ budgets? Looking to the customer’s needs from a budget point of view is the philosophy behind How Far Can I Go? — the Air New Zealand website function that is a finalist in the 2008 Computerworld Excellence Awards category for Innovative use of IT.

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