GregBowman Posted April 29, 2018 Share Posted April 29, 2018 2 hours ago, stormymonday_2011 said: It is the old adage. Your IT Project can be On Time, Cheap, Reliable. Choose two out of three. TSB were clearly more worried about cost and the implementation date than whether it worked properly. That might be fine with a new system with marginal impact on the business. It is an absolutely bonkers strategy with a data and systems migration of this type. No project of this sort should have been implemented without fully tested DR. As for the software I think too much is made about old programming languages etc ( particularly when a lot of new programming languages are actually written in old programming languages under the bonnet). It should be remembers that computerised bank systems have been around for decades and certainly longer than modern internet banking. They used to be so reliable and boring no one noticed them. Now banking IT disasters are regular front page news. So what gives ? How could banks provide generally reliable systems in the era of reel to reel tapes, punch cards but not in the 21at century ? Answers on a post card to the CEO TSB. Exactly we can't go the moon and we can fly to New York in three hours. But your new iPhone can recognise your mug...Weirdly capitalism out of control again, when you thin slice everything, act in the short term and asset strip you get the evolution of things you deserve. And who is responsible ? you and me because lets face it when did the consumer worry about much else rather than price ? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Houdini Posted April 29, 2018 Share Posted April 29, 2018 1 hour ago, Funn3r said: Up to a point lord copper. If you have a redundant system it is likely sitting there waiting to switched to if the real one goes titsup. In really large systems the genuine test (as opposed to redundant) hardware always tends to be a scaled-down model just because of sheer cost. +1 - the only time you need a complete replica of the production system is for performance and load testing - you really don't want it for other testing - its both ott and doesn't help. In this case however suitable test systems should have been available for testing purposes as they shouldn't have been in production until Monday. The actually issues with performance testing is not usually the hardware its the scripting of sensible tests - unless you identify and capture a suitable complete test scenario (1 overnight batch run, 12 hours of requests as made by users) you will never be able to perform accurate performance testing so the point of truth will be on the day of go live. To be honest I doubt that's the issue here. Its more one of greed, gross stupidity and the fact they are using Tibco.. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
spyguy Posted April 29, 2018 Author Share Posted April 29, 2018 1 hour ago, Funn3r said: Up to a point lord copper. If you have a redundant system it is likely sitting there waiting to switched to if the real one goes titsup. In really large systems the genuine test (as opposed to redundant) hardware always tends to be a scaled-down model just because of sheer cost. I was making the point about backup strategy in general though. For example I have a laptop that is a bit non-standard as I imported it from China. Making an image backup is easy, doing a test restore is not. Hmm .... the best way to test the fall back is to switch over to it a few times. Or .... split traffic across a number of nodes, consolidated the data on a seperate box. Bank systems really are not that complex as transaction systems go. In the TSB case, they've 5m customer. Until the system wentwrong, I doubt theyd have to deal with more than 100k interactive transactions a day. There'll be fixed transactions too, but they can be run over night. The fun starts when you are dealing with large volume international real-time trading systems. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
longgone Posted April 29, 2018 Share Posted April 29, 2018 did anyone check the cleaners never unplugged something to do some hoovering just a thought. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Funn3r Posted April 29, 2018 Share Posted April 29, 2018 3 minutes ago, spyguy said: In the TSB case, they've 5m customer. Until the system wentwrong, I doubt theyd have to deal with more than 100k interactive transactions a day. There'll be fixed transactions too, but they can be run over night. Maybe used to be so but now don't forget the huge volume of transactions from people paying by card everywhere. Contactless has reduced that a lot (no authorisations) but still easily bust your 100K I should think. My guess is that some TSB things migrated perfectly and other things didn't but the optics are that everything is all over the floor. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
spyguy Posted April 29, 2018 Author Share Posted April 29, 2018 Card trnsanction come in on another system. And are much simpler - security/card check, followed by balance check, followed by debit. There main problem appears to be the website access to accounts. Here, you're opening a session and maintaining it for a several minutes. Whats the most youve ever used a debit card - 5-10 times a day? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
poppie Posted April 29, 2018 Share Posted April 29, 2018 'Fix Forward' seems to be a new paradigm in systems and software engineering. They didn't teach that when I was a student. Is this just empty management techno-babble? As for restore platforms, there are plenty businesses hiring on-demand as and when required. This pre-dates 'so-called Cloud. You never hear of the thousands of successful business IT infrastructures - just the failures. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
pmgdawau Posted April 29, 2018 Share Posted April 29, 2018 it's all part of getting the public prepared for the day when they blame the russians for hacking the banking system and nicking everybody's money Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dorkins Posted April 29, 2018 Share Posted April 29, 2018 19 hours ago, Mikhail Liebenstein said: The entire C-Level Management team at TSB should be fired, it was 100% predictable based on their financially engineered decision! +1 Either the C-level Management were told the system wasn't really ready and pushed for the switchover to happen anyway to meet some artificial (bonus related?) deadline or they weren't told because their subordinates were afraid to speak up with bad news. Either way it should be P45 time for some senior leaders. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
spyguy Posted April 29, 2018 Author Share Posted April 29, 2018 4 hours ago, pmgdawau said: it's all part of getting the public prepared for the day when they blame the russians for hacking the banking system and nicking everybody's money If tge russian robbed all our money it would not be worth anything.... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
regprentice Posted May 1, 2018 Share Posted May 1, 2018 I managed to avoid the worst of this - only losing access to my account for 48 hours - thought the worst was over but no TSB have managed to lose an automated transfer between accounts of £1.5k today. I used to have 2 Lloyds tsb accounts, when they 'demerged' the idiots moved one account to Lloyds and one to TSB. It hasnt been much of a problem so far because of faster payment making transfers between the two virtually instantaneous but now all my bills come from the account at Lloyds with no money in, money that should have transferred from TSB yesterday. But instead is floating around in the ether somewhere. Wonderful. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
maverick73 Posted May 1, 2018 Share Posted May 1, 2018 I’m surprised a run on the bank hasnt occured... ? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Funn3r Posted May 1, 2018 Share Posted May 1, 2018 1 hour ago, maverick73 said: I’m surprised a run on the bank hasnt occured... ? A run on the bank is happening? Fkin hell imma tell all my friends so they can get out in time Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Confusion of VIs Posted May 1, 2018 Share Posted May 1, 2018 (edited) On 27/04/2018 at 06:41, Bug16 said: Speaking from experience youd be amazed at how many ancient COBOL based systems are still in use with very large companies. The ancient COBOL (other ancient languages are available) usually works reliably. Unlike the modern paint by numbers spaghetti used to front end/hide them. Edited May 1, 2018 by Confusion of VIs Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
chronyx Posted May 1, 2018 Share Posted May 1, 2018 1 hour ago, maverick73 said: I’m surprised a run on the bank hasnt occured... ? 19 minutes ago, Funn3r said: A run on the bank is happening? Fkin hell imma tell all my friends so they can get out in time Oh god please let this go viral Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
maverick73 Posted May 2, 2018 Share Posted May 2, 2018 7 hours ago, chronyx said: Oh god please let this go viral I’ve never heard of a virtual run on the bank. It would be a death by computer. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
LetsBuild Posted May 2, 2018 Share Posted May 2, 2018 I love a good bank bash but to be fair I experienced no downtime except for the announced switchover. I only have a sleeper account as somewhere to stash £1500 @ 3% and I successfully transferred this months £3.41 to my Lloyds account this morning with no issues/delays. So it’s not a total mess, would trust them with any more than that mind! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rantnrave Posted May 2, 2018 Share Posted May 2, 2018 1 hour ago, LetsBuild said: I love a good bank bash but to be fair I experienced no downtime except for the announced switchover. I only have a sleeper account as somewhere to stash £1500 @ 3% and I successfully transferred this months £3.41 to my Lloyds account this morning with no issues/delays. So it’s not a total mess, would trust them with any more than that mind! In the same situation. Appreciating the rise from 3% to 5% though! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
leonardratso Posted May 2, 2018 Share Posted May 2, 2018 you got it twice? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ccc Posted May 2, 2018 Share Posted May 2, 2018 So did they just not have a back out plan - which would be incredible but who knows. Or they had one that wasn't actually tested and so didn't work when required. Any info on this yet ? Or did those in charge just say there was a back out plan but didn't really have one at all. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
crashmonitor Posted May 15, 2018 Share Posted May 15, 2018 (edited) On 26/04/2018 at 16:43, crashmonitor said: TSB was desperate to break its ties and costs with Lloyds, so desperate in fact it wasn't really ready and behaved like a precocious kid that thought it was. Absolute shocking incompetence. For God's sake call back the cavalry at least for a bit. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=079qcLQkq1M Exactly as I surmised. Lloyds offered a full cavalry rescue within hours of the the Spanish Sabadell system falling apart. But like a petulant kid, TSB rejected help from its parent. But it really was not up to the job.Has come to light in the Parliamentary enquiry. Edited May 15, 2018 by crashmonitor Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
spyguy Posted May 24, 2018 Author Share Posted May 24, 2018 Still not 100% 'Bits' not working. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
thewig Posted May 24, 2018 Share Posted May 24, 2018 Have these guys not tried rebooting? Switch it off and on again. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
chronyx Posted May 24, 2018 Share Posted May 24, 2018 9 hours ago, spyguy said: 'Bits' not working. That's I.T. for you Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
spyguy Posted May 24, 2018 Author Share Posted May 24, 2018 7 minutes ago, chronyx said: That's I.T. for you Ha! Still it rolls on. http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-5768707/TSB-cancelled-direct-debits-customers-told-firms-dead.html If the BoE had any balls theyd pull the plug as a lesson. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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