In breaking news, and let’s not hope a “break-out” a contractor cut a Fiber Optic line or lines which services the North Carolina Court System. Apparently this severed all communications into the various central court database putting a halt to numerous cases, payroll hearings, bail and so forth throughout North Carolina on Tuesday. ATT&T has reported service was restored in around 6 hours.

I find it absurd that any site with critical communication needs does not have an IT staff that has adequate backup solutions in place. Were this a business the IT Department should be fired as a whole unless they can show they tried to provide the proper services and were overridden by management. In the case of the Government where apparently budgets don’t matter there is no excuse in not having backups in place.

The simple fact is that in this day and age having backup, so called "dark fiber" or even wireless options, should be a given in any business or Government location. What if this had happened during a national crises would the entire court system just take the day off because they don’t have a backup plan?

This was an IT failure, not a construction crew’s failure to determine the location of cables before digging.

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This entry was posted on Tuesday, April 14th, 2009 at 3:55 pm and is filed under Commentary, Technology, Triad News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.