When Downtime Doesn't Matter

SOA, by its very nature, results in many more moving parts in any IT system.  As a result, many organizations obsess over ensuring that SOA infrastructure doesn't impact their business' availability - and rightly so.

So, it's interesting to look at Apple's website (the Apple Store section in particular) and see their approach to downtime.  When they introduce new products, they take the entire site down - often for more than a few hours. In fact, they took their site down this morning to launch the new 16GB iPhone and 32GB iPod Touch.

What I first found so surprising is that Apple Store downtime has a cult following - people look for it and, in fact, jump for joy when the store goes down.  There's always a celebration among Apple users when the Apple Store goes down.

Sound a little different than your executives' and customers' response to downtime with your applications?  Why is it that Apple gets lauded for downtime but, in your organization, people's jobs are at risk?

The answer: It's all about setting expectations.

Apple users have a clear expectation of what happens when the apple store goes down.  Not only that, they see a clear benefit to it - there's something in it for them.  In their case, having to wait the 1.5 heart wrenching hours is hard, but it means there will be new products for them to buy when it's over.

So, as you roll out more and more SOA based applications, you need to carefully consider how you properly set and meet expectations - and how to make those expectations meaningful and valuable to your end users.