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Estimated reading time: 2 minutes, 2 seconds

Smith: Intuit Outages a "Comedy of Errors"

Brad SmithThe computer system outages that hit Intuit during the summer stemmed for a series of human errors. CEO Brad Smith told attendees Wednesday at the annual Intuit Investors Day. "If I walked you through all the things that happened, it would be a very disappointing comedy of errors," Smith said. Intuit, he continued, had the right systems and procedures; they just weren't followed.

The most serious outage started on June 15, lasted more than 24 hours and knocked out most Intuit online applications including credit card and payroll processing and the ability to make tax deposits. It put many small businesses out of operation for the interim. On July 20 and most of July 21, a commercial power outage knocked out QuickBase, Intuit's online development platform, and the Accountant's Copy File Transfer System.

Smith outlined the problems behind the June outage, which had earlier been described as occurring during routine maintenance. Smith related that the person performing that task "hard booted down the system and then quickly realized then quickly realized they had done the wrong thing and didn't follow procedures and power it back up." Next, the backup system didn't work because the battery failover system had been switched to manual, instead of automated" performance. No one had noticed the incorrect setting. Smith didn't add more details, but noted that, "the list went on and on and on."

After company leaders performed "an inventory of where we sit" for all the online offerings and concluded the first priority for the systems was high availability. The system was also studied by consultants who had worked at eBay. Smith noted Intuit had made the investor in its data centers and "we just "have to tighten up the execution."

Bob Scott
Bob Scott has provided information to the tax and accounting community since 1991, first as technology editor of Accounting Today, and from 1997 through 2009 as editor of its sister publication, Accounting Technology. He is known throughout the industry for his depth of knowledge and for his high journalistic standards.  Scott has made frequent appearances as a speaker, moderator and panelist and events serving tax and accounting professionals. He  has a strong background in computer journalism as an editor with two former trade publications, Computer+Software News and MIS Week and spent several years with weekly and daily newspapers in Morris County New Jersey prior to that.  A graduate of Indiana University with a degree in journalism, Bob is a native of Madison, Ind
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