The Need to be Transparent

I recently came across a rather curious but common case. This is an
organization with a fairly robust Internet presence that runs multiple domains.
The websites are run by the one of the business divisions and the e-mail service
by internal IT, both out of different cities. Both divisions have, over time,
diverged in their hosting decisions with the result that the Web server is
hosted with one service provider and the mail server with another.

And for some strange reason, there is no backup MX server. Things were going
fine till the mail service provider was changed. Obviously, there was this large
and awkward dance involving three service providers and two departments, spread
across geographies and time zones to get this done. And obviously, the worst had
to happen. One of the four jumped the gun, leading to considerable mail outage.

The story does not end here. The mail server now requires some work requiring
a change in MX records-incoming mail needs to be pointed to a new spam-filtering
service. And that is where it all breaks down. Not wanting to face user ire over
lost mail, that move is just not happening. My guess is that it is a simple case
of being once bitten twice shy.

Krishna Kumar Group Editor

Now, I am sure that this is a common enough story that has parallels in many
organizations. The point is that as the IT infrastructure grows, often,
different parts grow in different directions with different owners and are held
together with nothing more than patchwork or code glue. There is a case for all
IT infrastructure to be run by one department, but there are organizations that
may choose not to do so. While infrastructure consolidation, internally and with
service providers, has its merits, business imperatives may sometimes dictate
otherwise. My argument is not with how you choose to run your IT infrastructure,
but with the lack of communication that leads to the breakdown that happened in
the example above.

Every once in a while, it would make sense for all stakeholders to sit
together and discuss what each one is planning to do in the immediate future and
work out what the others need to do to keep the tango going. Like you have a
network map (or do you have one?), it would make eminent sense to create a big
picture block diagram of the various major elements and service providers and
how they interlock into a whole. Can you tag each of these blocks with the name
and contact of the owner of that block and make the diagram public? That one
small act can save a lot of heartburn and loss of face. Clear communication and
a clear sense of the big picture can avoid the need for the patchwork.

A transparent IT infrastructure-one whose makeup is known to all stake
holders in a language they understand is perhaps the best bet you have against
system failure due to wrong decision making.