Two lengthy computer outages that frustrated users of a broad range of Intuit applications, including one that shut down operations of thousands of small businesses, stemmed from Intuit's approach to its protecting its systems, CEO Brad Smith said today in a financial earnings Webcast. "It's was pure execution. It's something we need to fix," he commented.

On July 20 and most of July 21, a commercial power outage knocked out QuickBase, the company's online development platform and the Accountant's Copy File Transfer Service in the QuickBooks Accountant's Edition. The more serious problem came on the morning of June 15 and lasted more than 24 hours, knocking out credit card processing, tax deposits, payroll processing and order entry, and also taking down many Intuit Web sites. That was blamed on a problem that occurred during routine maintenance which knocked out primary and secondary power back up ststems. When the power was turned back on, it disrupted hardware operations.

Smith said that the company has adequately protected systems for online banking tax preparation. But "we haven't battle-hardened some of our processes in other areas," he said.