High Availability - A Road With Many Forks In recent months, the term "high availability" has become an increasingly integral part of IT-related conversations. Along with its cousins "business critical" and "mission critical," high availability has become the topic of the day in consultant reports, at industry conventions and with customer inquiries. This movement to the forefront of our customers' consciousness is a result of many factors, including: The growth of the Internet and its around-the-clock use by consumers and businesses The decreasing cost of hardware, which makes equipment redundancy more feasible The increasing number of global corporations with 24-hour operations The increasing involvement of IT systems in all phases of business operations, especially in relations with customers This month we focus on our customers' requirements for enhanced availability of their IT environments, along with IBM Global Services' response to their needs. When we think of high availability, we generally think of businesses that can suffer tangible and substantial losses as a result of any outage of critical systems and applications. These firms have no choice but to make the investment required to assure that such critical environments are available as much as 100% of the time 365 days each year. (continuation of article) In Touch is published by IBM Global Services, Product Support Services U.S. (PSS U.S.). Additional editorial material supplied by Gartner Group, Inc. © 1998. Editorial supplied by IBM Global Services PSS U.S. is independent of GartnerGroup analysis and in no way should this information be construed as a GartnerGroup endorsement of IBM Global Services' products and services. Entire contents © 1998 by Gartner Group, Inc. All rights reserved. Reproduction of this publication in any form without prior written permission is forbidden. The information contained herein has been obtained from sources believed to be reliable. GartnerGroup disclaims all warranties as to the accuracy, completeness or adequacy of such information. GartnerGroup shall have no liability for errors, omissions or inadequacies in the information contained herein or for interpretations thereof. The reader assumes sole responsibility for the selection of these materials to achieve its intended results. The opinions expressed herein are subject to change without notice. Posted on 12/30/98