Developing Design Guidelines for a Zero-Outage compliant IT Platform
The Platform workstream team met in Amsterdam on the 15th and 16th of February 2017. Hosted in Juniper Networks local office, representatives of Cisco, Brocade, IBM, Juniper, SAP, SUSE and T-Systems discussed the principles that should lead IT Platform Designers when defining a resilient, outage-free IT infrastructure.
In today’s world, both individuals and businesses are becoming increasingly dependent on IT services, and less prone to tolerate interruptions of any form of the services that IT platforms deliver to them. We are not talking anymore about well known businesses and industries who rely on mission critical IT services like transportation or banking. Who can be productive at work today if e-mail is not working? How many companies can resist on the market with no significant financial impact with their IT systems down for hours, let alone days? What about all the industries that are increasingly considering their IT infrastructure as mission critical, like hospitals or utilities companies?
“Customers of IT infrastructures depend on service providers for a reliable, performing and “always-on” service delivery” noted Stefano Aina, Lead of the Platform workstream for the Zero Outage Industry Standard.
The Zero Outage Industry Standard Association is focusing on defining the framework for such a resilient IT infrastructure, truly tackling one of the most relevant and challenging requirements that the IT industry needs to face nowadays. Within this initiative, the Platform workstream has been tasked with developing design principles and guidelines that can assist in the design of such an IT infrastructure.
The Platform workstream team has layed-out plans for its 2017 activities
In the Amsterdam meeting the team has layed-out the plans for its 2017 activities. “It was a very productive meeting. It is really a great experience to sit together with Industry leaders from a number of different companies, bringing together their expertise and working as a team to resolve such a compelling challenge”, said Mr. Aina.
The Platform workstream will harmonize its deliverables within the Architectural and Service model that the Editorial Board is developing as a Framework for the Standard. The presence in the same venue of the`Editorial Board meeting allowed for multiple fruitful discussions to happen and converge at a fast pace during the 2 days of the event, setting a clear path for the months of work ahead of us.
