RBS 'Computer Glitch'

[Mich the Tester]

From my experience, the management that have started this lunacy are in general too self obsessed to give a tulip and have got rid of anyone that would tell tell them straight anyway.

ftfy

[Taita]

I have heard good things about First Direct, but that is mainly because they are so small it is easier to control things. The big banks are so big that they are like a sieve with massive holes in it when it comes to money and direction...

Actually FD are relatively new to banking --- around 25 years ----and they built their systems from scratch around then. They do seem to be on the ball these days. I like the UK call centre. Makes me laugh when I hear NatWest/RBS (like the other big high street banks) are still heavily reliant on systems built in the very early days of commercial computing (about 40 years ago) but I am not surprised. One in the eye for overseas outsourcing and about time.

I heard that last year NatWest/RBS was desperately trying to hire IT graduates in Hyderabad with 6-7 years of CA 7 experience. Do graduates study/know anything about mainframe systems these days?

[Platypus]

Makes me laugh when I hear NatWest/RBS (like the other big high street banks) are still heavily reliant on systems built in the very early days of commercial computing (about 40 years ago)

I think that's urban myth. Does anyone one if this is really true or false?

Although Wikipedia says:

The zSeries line succeeded the System/390 line (S/390 for short), maintaining full backward compatibility. In effect, zSeries machines are the direct, lineal descendants of System/360, announced in 1964, and the System/370 from 1970s. Applications written for these systems can still run, unmodified, with only few exceptions, on the newest System z over four decades later.

So maybe it's not a myth

[doodab]

I heard that last year NatWest/RBS was desperately trying to hire IT graduates in Hyderabad with 6-7 years of CA 7 experience. Do graduates study/know anything about mainframe systems these days?

Apparently not, at least not these ones.

[bless 'em all]

Good news!

The doors to the office fly open, almost broken off it's hinges by the force of the kick administered to it. The cold mist streams in from the mean streets of Edinburgh and through it the bobs begin to make out some indistinct shapes.

Closer they come, in 'The Right Stuff' formation, they clear the mist and remove their sun-glasses.

"Are these the guys who can be of saving us?" They all gasp as they huddle closer together in fear.

"Morning love, where's coffee machine?" Their leader has spoken. The contractors have arrived.

[TimberWolf]

Is it too much to hope that they have learnt a very painful lesson and are starting to turn things around?

I think it is too much to hope for because Dave was lobbied/blackmailed by tata, etc and has committed to sacrificing UK IT in exchange for business contracts with India that may never materialise.

[darmstadt]

I think that's urban myth. Does anyone one if this is really true or false?

Although Wikipedia says:

The zSeries line succeeded the System/390 line (S/390 for short), maintaining full backward compatibility. In effect, zSeries machines are the direct, lineal descendants of System/360, announced in 1964, and the System/370 from 1970s. Applications written for these systems can still run, unmodified, with only few exceptions, on the newest System z over four decades later.

So maybe it's not a myth

True. I can still compile programs from decades ago (WORM and SNAKE come to mind) and they still run and I can also run thousands of Linux images on just one of these boxes. In fact recent projects I've been involved with and are still do require the transfer of Windows, Linux and AIX applications over to Linux running on z.

Although I think you'll find the latest zEnterprise (z196, z114 and zBX) are very far removed from the old 360 (and 370 that I first worked on) systems that mangement thisnk they re.

[Sysman]

Why would this be interesting to a reader/viewer on the other side of the world?

"UK bank suffers temporary computer glitch"

Not a very sexy headline.

Because it's not temporary.

And it isn't a glich either.

[Sysman]

Reading between the lines it seems that someone has not followed procedures for the overnight batch run. CA7, which I've used for many years on and off (was previously UCC-7), is a batch scheduling systems which means that when a job finishes, and finishes with a return code that is acceptable, then the next batch job is started (this is just a simple scenario.) What seems to have happened is they have made some changes to their scheduling system and the rules put in place have been either overridden manually or the 'fix' made a change to the rules in place. This means that it was either not tested properly (all systems of this type have a test system place for this eventuality and if not then the company is incompetent) or someone manually overrode the procedures. Now if this area has been outsourced then that is a crime as the area that normally operates this product has to have a very close relationship with _all_ departments involved in IT and is normally found sitting next to the computer systems in question (put it this way, every company I have worked at in the last 30 years does it that way and this has never happened.) So basically they ****ed up but they could have called me in for a decent rate....

I've used CA job schedulers as well. What I have gleaned from various reports is that there was an update to CA7 itself which failed, and either that or the process of rolling the update back managed to screw up their job queue.

I can't help wondering if it screwed the jobs database rather than just jobs currently queued.. The job relationships and dependencies can get quite complex.

Whatever the nitty gritty, they obviously didn't have the correct roll-back procedures in place. No doubt some of the people who were recently let go could have done it in their sleep.

[Sysman]

It's hard to get away from batch processing when that's all your IT has ever done. Even if they completely replaced their entire IT it would still have overnight batches scheduled by control-m or something.

And they^d still be using batch systems to talk to other banks who are still using batch themselves.

Not to mention month end payment runs for companies, payroll etc.