Yesterday I was invited to talk to the “AK Server und Betriebskonzepte” (Work Council Server and Operatingconcepts) from BITKOM on 99.999% availability and how to achieve it.

As this is a cross-industry council, presenters from all other major IT vendors were also present.

We all agreed on a couple of major points:

• 99.999% availability is achievable
• 99.999% availability is NOT a technical problem
• 99.999% availability REQUIRES cooperation/including of people/processes

And, most importantly:

• Do not talk about 99.999% availability, talk about SLAs, etc.
• Do not talk about technology, do talk about business impacts, procedural requirements, etc.
• Do NEVER believe, technology alone (regardless of the technology!) delivers 99.999% availability.

As this was common sense among the participants, the team still considers it a requirement to educate deciders, non-IT-management, consultants on these simple facts. That’s why I added this entry to my blog… ;-)