Business Week online has a slide show featuring the most critical computer systems in the world. The focus is the systems that we rely on for day-to-day life – as individuals and businesses.
…the buzz of daily life is ever more punctuated by contact with
computers that we rarely see, but whose constant and reliable operation
is a virtual necessity for millions who may not even think about them.That
in mind, we set out to try to determine which computers are the most
important to daily life-those systems that keep the power flowing,
airplanes flying, the Internet buzzing, and so on. We focused on
everyday existence-leaving aside, for instance, the many large
supercomputers involved in such tasks as simulated testing of nuclear
weapons.Critical computers identified by BusinessWeek include:
- Power Grid
- National Weather System
- Root DNS
- First Data
- Ground Control / FAA
- GPS
- MSN / Hotmail
Read the article and view the slide show here.
If the Dow Jones industrial average can sink 178 points in 1 minute due to a malfunction, what would happen if one of these computers had a glitch? Our interconnected, technology driven modern world can be surprisingly fragile.
The world may not depend on your business' computers, but your livelihood does. Do you have a reliable back up of your critical data? Are your primary business systems redundant? Do you have thresholds in place to monitor performance and anticipate problems before they happen?
As a true believer in computers and software to streamline business processes and enhance decision making, I am also well aware that systems do malfunction. Things inevitably go wrong. It's the contingency planning that makes all the difference.
Image courtesy of Getty Images, via BusinessWeek
