atw: Re: Definition of business-critical and mission-critical?
- From: Erisa Linsky <slinka@xxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: austechwriter@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Mon, 13 Oct 2003 13:37:57 +1000
This is to do mainly with availability, accuracy and backup.
If you had an automatic pilot in an airoplane ...it's absolutely mission
critical...you cant afford to have any failure, because a catastrophe would
occur, so you spend oodles of extra money to have it perfect. (Hence our
favorite software company doesnt design airline guidance systems)
However, if it was a flying school with a simulation program, you could
afford a little failure occasionally, and it mightn't be worth spending the
enormous amount of extra money to avoid a small rate of systems failure. So
it's not really so mission critical. (Note there are degrees of
criticalness).
It is business critical, however, that the records in the flying school are
recoverable in the event of a systems crash, so you are still able to
invoice your clients correctly, and know what courses and assignments they
have completed. It is also business critical that the simulation programs
work most of the time, otherwise your students will leave and go elsewhere.
If you are a monopoly and also dont care if your clients hate you, the
degree of business criticality is less, since it wont affect your profits.
(Especially if you are a telco....you can generate revenue out of systems
crashes, because everyone then picks up the phone.) So there are mission
critical parts of the network, and mission critical features. The boss
decides what is mission or business critical (if, indeed, there is a boss).
The network and system for supermarket cash registers is mission critical
because, if it goes down, you have a problem doing any sales, and therefore
lose an enormous amount of cash and credibility.
However if the network for the accounts payable system breaks down
temporarily, you can do the processing when it comes back up later. It's
not mission critical.
It is business critical, however, that you recover the data, so you know
which cheques have already been issued before the system crashed.
Nevertheless, it is always necessary to explain what you mean, when you
categorise things, because the terms can be used another way.
ie business critical is simply a lower level of criticalness than mission
critical. So, by that definition, backup of records is mission critical,
but having the accounts system available is only business critical, because
you could live with 85% network availability. The cash register system is
mission critical and requires 100% availability.
Does this help?
----- Original Message -----
From: "Roger" <roger@xxxxxxxxxxx>
To: <austechwriter@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Saturday, October 11, 2003 6:19 PM
Subject: atw: Definition of business-critical and mission-critical?
Hi techwriters
Can anyone give me a definition of 'business-critical' and
'mission-critical', in the context of describing IT services in a contract?
And are they interchangeable terms? Or are mission-critical services a
sub-set of business-critical services?
Roger
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