Apology to Dimension Data and NTT Ltd.
iSAT press release: 3rd November 2021
As is well known in the IT industry, iSAT has been in litigation against Dimension Data and NTT Ltd.
The document that started this saga was an email received from Internet Solutions (since completely absorbed by Dimension Data) where it was disclosed that the cloud software, OpenStack, being used for their Cloud Platform, had not been updated in many years. In fact, it had been in EOL (end of life) stage for more than four years. iSAT was making use and relying on this Cloud Platform, described by Internet Solutions as being best of breed, when in February 2019 the aforementioned Cloud Platform failed catastrophically.
It was my strong belief that It was not acceptable that an organisation that provides services to the public, other business, or state institutions, did not correctly and constantly maintain the infrastructure that the services run on. That applies both to hardware and software.
Through my attorneys, we voiced the opinion that this was negligent behaviour, and that Dimension Data/NTT Ltd should be held accountable.
The advocate for Dimension Data/NTT Ltd said in court on the 18th of March 2021 that Internet Solutions “may” have maintained OpenStack themselves. I have no idea who gave him that idea, 10 000 developers maintain OpenStack. There is no possibility that Internet Solutions employed 10 000 developers to maintain its own version of OpenStack when tested and free updates were always readily available from the OpenStack Foundation.
The holding company for Dimension Data and NTT Ltd, Nippon Telegraph and Telephone must have been aware of this dispute. NTT employs about 350 000 people worldwide and is 33% owned by the Japanese government.
Dimension Data and NTT Ltd have consistently denied any acceptance of negligence and accountability.
- On 11th October 2021 I contacted a group of leading South African IT executives and asked them the question:What is your opinion about Internet Solutions/Dimension Data/NTT Ltd.’s failure to maintain software systems? Is that acceptable behaviour or negligence? Can you make that opinion public please ASAP?The large IT companies contacted were:
Datacentrix (Datacentrix – Datacentrix – a leading hybrid IT system integrator and managed services provider)
Westech (IT Company in Sandton, Johannesburg, South Africa: WESTECH )
Business Connexion (BCX | Home)
Altron (Altron. There when it matters.)There was not a single reply to my emails.
On the same day, I also emailed some of the leading IT online news companies and asked them the same question.
The news companies contacted were:
MyBroadband (Technology, telecoms, and broadband news « MyBroadband)
TechCentral (TechCentral | Technology News Leader in South Africa – TechCentral)
ITWeb (ITWeb | Business Technology News)
BusinessTech (BusinessTech)There was not a single reply to those emails either.
Finally, I mailed the same question through to Business Maverick and Daily Maverick.
There was also no response.
Clearly, if this was an important issue, then these respected companies would have responded. This has led me to the conclusion that I was clearly wrong about the maintenance of Internet-connected software being necessary and expected.
I had falsely thought that unmaintained software would lead to increased risks of security breaches by cyber criminals, such as this case: Bad news for South Africas crippled courts.
I had also mistakenly believed that maintenance of software was necessary for hardware compatibility and stability reasons.
And finally, I had thought that updating software was necessary to fix bugs found and fixed in previous versions of that software.
I sincerely apologise for expressing and making public these incorrect opinions.
- In previous news releases, I had always promoted the concept that maintaining and keeping software up to date was essential.Based on point 1 above, updating and maintaining of software on personal computers and servers connected to the Internet is of course completely unnecessary, and in fact a waste of time.Even if the operating system has reached EOL (end of life), it is still fine to use the computer and have it connected to the Internet, for example Microsoft Windows XP is still perfectly safe to use at home and in offices while connected to the Internet.
The same applies to Microsoft Windows server operating systems (and Linux servers). There is no need to update and maintain the software.
And EOL (end of life) server operating systems like Microsoft Windows Server 2008 are still perfectly fine to use and provide services to clients. This is just like Dimension Data was doing on its Cloud platform service OpenStack.
The Web site text at isat vs is and dd and ntt ltd. will shortly be replaced with the text from this press release.
I would like to close this press release, by once again apologising for expressing my incorrect opinions on the maintenance of software connected to the Internet, and I wish Dimension Data/NTT Ltd/Nippon Telegraph and Telephone all the very best for the future.
Rory Pearton
CEO iSAT.