Web Disaster Made Easy
,----[ Quote ]
| So I built a LAMP (Linux, Apache, and Perl/Python/PHP) sales portal
| that handled online ordering and a corporate Web site. It generated
| revenue from the outset.
|
| [...]
|
| Our parent company in Japan decided to consolidate its North American
| holdings. Within six months we had a new management team, and most of our
| IT department was outsourced. My little Web crew was pretty nervous,
| especially when we heard that a new corporate VP was flying in to help
| rescue our poor little LAMP system. We didn't know it needed rescuing.
|
| Apparently, someone in Japan wanted a new Web platform built on software
| I'll call "NetTurkey." When I pointed out to the new VP that this would
| introduce huge feature gaps compared with our current LAMP implementation,
| his solution was to dismantle my Web team and banish us to four different
| departments. I was kept on as the lone local expert, while a consultant
| team from "Acme Global Services" initiated what was supposed to be a
| three-month project to replace the LAMP platform.
|
| [...]
|
| Clueless project managers came and went; I lost count after eight. At the
| end of month seven, Acme relaunched the Web site. The NetTurkey software,
| though, was still missing about 40 percent of the functionality of the
| LAMP platform. Customers hated it.
|
| [...]
|
| One week before the North American businesses were to change hands, the
| site went live. It was a complete disaster with customers and sales staff
| alike. Within 48 hours, our soon-to-be-new CEO found his way back to the
| original Web team -- which, by this time, was mainly me -- asking whether
| we could roll back to the original LAMP platform.
|
| I think they ended up spending close to US$6 million on the "upgrade" --
| a complete write-off that was buried in the sale of the U.S. companies.
| Soon afterward, I moved on, but I still take a peculiar pride in the
| fact that nine years after its humble birth, that original LAMP site is
| still online, managing close to $200 million annually in e-commerce Find
| out what Google Checkout can do for your online business. sales, I'm told.
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http://www.linuxinsider.com/rsstory/52739.html
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