Thursday 27 December 2012

Netflix blames Amazon for Christmas outage

More than 27 million Netflix members in the Americas may have been unable to access shows or films online due to a problem at Amazon Web Services, which rents out computing power in data centres in the Internet "cloud."

The Netflix outage began mid-day in California on Monday and lasted late into the night, according to the company. No problems were reported with viewing offerings at Amazon's rival online film service.

"We are happy that people opening gifts of Netflix or Netflix capable devices on Christmas morning could watch TV shows or movies and Apologize for any inconvenience caused Christmas Eve," the company said in a statement.

"We are investigating the cause and will do what we can to prevent reoccurrence."

In a message fired off at Twitter, Netflix referred to the outage as "terrible timing." Netflix noted that users in Europe were not affected.

Amazon told AFP that the Netflix outage was due to "issues with the Elastic Load Balancing service" that affected some AWS customers in the United States.

AWS began recovering late on Christmas Eve and was back in proper working order on Christmas day, according to the Seattle, Washington-based online retail and services titan.

"Our Netflix subscription is back," Twitter user Rebekah Rosser said on Christmas Day. "That was a close call; I almost had to get a life."

The outage exposed a risk inherent in the trend toward depending on "cloud" servers for services ranging from Web-based email to digital news publications and business tasks long the purview of on-site IT departments.

It also came with reports that Google's suite of online services, including document and spreadsheet applications, is eating into the dominance of Microsoft programs in the business world.

The California-based Internet giant has been enticing consumers with Chromebook laptop computers that serve as little more than gateways to Internet-based software applications and content.

News organisations have also been shifting online in moves seen as essential to survival.

Almost 80 years after first going to print, the final Newsweek magazine hit newsstands Monday featuring an ironic hashtag as a symbol of its Twitter-era transition to an all-digital format.

The second-largest news weekly magazine in the United States has been grappling with a steep drop in print advertising revenue, steadily declining circulation and the migration of readers to free news online.

For its final cover, dated December 31, editor Tina Brown used an aerial archive shot of the magazine's New York headquarters as the backdrop for her message, #LASTPRINTISSUE - the word print emblazoned in red ink.

Early this month, the failure of Rupert Murdoch's pioneering iPad newspaper The Daily underscored the problems of the news industry as it seeks a paid model for the digital age, analysts said.

The News Corp chief called The Daily - exclusively designed for touchscreen tablets - "a bold experiment," but acknowledged that it was unable to find enough paying readers to sustain it.

The paper was initially designed to work on Apple's iPad tablet, and only later made available for some Android devices and smartphones.

"There is no safe bet in this shifting world of media," said Forrester Research analyst Frank Gillett.

"The question is can you find a model that works for your company."

Wednesday 26 December 2012

Finding new ways to recruit temporary staff could save councils money

Times are tough for public servants. The difficult economic situation, increasing public scrutiny and the more diverse and complex needs of the communities they serve mean that councils need more help than ever before to do their jobs efficiently and cost-effectively.

One way to make life easier is to re-think how local authorities find and manage temporary staff. For example, none of the 11,000 recruitment agencies in the UK has ever meet all the needs of a single council.

Local authorities are complex organisations – they can be geographically diverse, employ thousands of people, are required to deliver services that represent value for money and support the wider community, including local businesses. These complex needs are often met by a complex supply chain.

Rationalising this supply chain to a small list of suppliers, however, is rarely effective. It often shuts out small and medium-sized businesses (SMEs) that do not have the scale to compete with large national recruiters. Some authorities adopt what as known as the "master vendor" approach, working with one single recruitment company. Inevitably, that one supplier will not have the expertise to meet demand across the skills spectrum of the public sector.

Given the savings that authorities are expected to make on their workforce costs, this is one area for improvement. If councils can control spending on temporary staff and reduce the risk involved in this work, it will help them to meet efficiency targets. One way to do this is to introduce a "vendor neutral model", which is business speak for using technology that will help select the right partner for each individual recruitment need.

They will effectively handle the supply of temporary labour, but more crucially, manage the entire process. More than 90 authorities are already doing this, with the following benefits:

• Visibility: the IT infrastructure that HR and procurement are offered through these partners mean that they have total visibility and control over all activities and expenses. Through having a full oversight of the movement and cost of temporary labour, other sources of labour such as redeployment pools, internal agencies and welfare to work agencies can be incorporated.

• Risk is reduced: councils face considerable risk in the use of temporary labour in the delivery of direct services such as social care and street services. The technology provided in "vendor neutral arrangements" means that the pre-checks on workers are robust. The arrival of Agency Worker Regulations last year put more pressure on councils, and the control offered through these platforms substantially reduces the risk of legal action against organisations.

• Cost is controlled: this model streamlines processes from requisition to payment, reducing costs and creating a competitive market place for suppliers.

As local authorities need to support local communities, this approach plays a key role by making good use of local businesses.

Our recent survey of HR professionals working in local government found that 55% rank using local SMEs as important and 35% consider it very important.

By using this model, the best-priced and highest-quality agencies are used and the focus is on procuring from local organisations. Opportunity is not awarded on size or reputation. Instead good performers are rewarded with opportunities for repeat business and the potential to grow their market share – the lifeline of small, local agencies.

The needs of councils are complex and challenging. However, changing the way you find and manage temporary staff can make a real difference in the changing world of public service.