That brought him back to the live patch, if he didn’t wait for a maintenance window. During a live-patch, the server stayed up, the code change would be made silently, and the entire operation should only take a few seconds. It was usually done for minor changes that wouldn’t affect the way applications run. For example, if they just want to change the logo or styling of a page, then they could do a live-patch. A live-patch that was more complicated than just changing images or styling could be risky, and was usually reserved for the most critical updates. More than one outage was due to a live-patch code change gone wrong. Changing the ELOPe code, which was now tightly integrated into the mail servers, one of the companies primary products, was definitely not a small change. A botched live-patch would attract even more attention, and an investigation into the code being deployed.
David considered whether he should attempt the live-patch on his own, or watch for the next maintenance window. Mike not only had far more experience with live-patches than David, he also had the legitimate authorization to perform a live-patch. He thought that the safer, lower risk option would be to just wait. He took a cautious sip of his coffee, and carefully leaned back in his chair. After all, whatever it was that ELOPe was doing didn’t seem to be causing any problems.
John Anderson was working his way through the queue of procurement requests when he came upon yet another request from Gary Mitchell’s department. He was happy to see that Gary Mitchell was now using the online procurement app for submitting procurement requests rather than sending him emails, but now he was shocked to see the volume of requests coming from Gary’s communication products group. There had been three reallocation requests that took servers out of the normal pipeline of delivery and directed them to the ELOPe program, whatever that was. There were several additional requests from Gary’s group to purchase the latest, highest performance servers Avogadro could procure, in unusually large quantities. John thought Gary’s division must be expecting massive increases in load.
This last request was a bid for software contractors to work over the holiday break. It was hard for John to understand — wasn’t he surrounded by thousands of software developers? And it was damn short notice for a bid of this complexity. John wouldn’t even have time to submit it to multiple contractors the way he normally would. John made a quick decision: he’d just send it out to Nonstop InfoSystems, since they were one of the better subcontractors they used.
From: John Anderson (Procurement)
To: Beth Richards (Nonstop InfoSystems)
Subject: Software contractors needed over holiday
Body:
Hi Beth
We have a a critical project that needs additional engineering resources over the holiday shutdown here. As you know, we take a two week vacation break. We need to hire engineers to fix some server performance issues. We’re looking for the following skill sets:
- server administration (6 headcount)
- database administration and performance tuning (6 headcount)
- software performance tuning (12 headcount)
- general software engineering (12 headcount)
We need experts in high performance, high scalability systems, who can put in 12 hour days over the holiday. Cost is not a factor, as we have leftover budget dollars. We need six people onsite, and the remainder can work remotely. Can you please put together a bid, and email it back to me?
On acceptance of the bid, I will email you with the details of the work to be done.
If Gary’s recent department purchases were a bit unusual, they were nothing compared to the iRobot procurement requests from the Offshore Data Center department that had come in that morning. The requests were labelled at the highest level of company confidentiality, but he was still so puzzled that he called Bill Larry, an old college buddy, to get the inside scoop. When Bill learned that he was reviewing the procurement request, he confirmed that Avogadro was indeed going to be arming the ODCs! Imagine, automated robotic defenses on an Avogadro data center. Even after the phone call, he could hardly believe that they were buying armed robots. He shook his head in disbelief.
Shortly after he finished the call with Bill, he stopped working through the queue of requests in alarm at the specter of an empty coffee cup. Had he already had his allotted four cups? Could he have another? He had just decided against one when Maggie Reynolds knocked on the open door of his office. “You busy?”
Maggie Reynolds was technically in the Finance department, not Procurement, but they worked together so often that John felt closer to Maggie than most of the people on his own team. She had just started at Avogadro six months earlier. John thought she was fun, and wished he could think of an excuse to ask her out, but the timing never seemed right. “Sure, come in.”
“I’m concerned about the way some of this last batch of purchases are being funded out of Gary Mitchell’s group,” she said, getting right to the point as she sat down.
John watched the way her earrings dangled as she spoke. Her hair looked different. Had she gotten a haircut? Would it be inappropriate to comment on her hair?
“Gary submitted a purchase order over his budget limit, and I kicked it back to him saying he couldn’t do that. Then he sent me this email. He divided up the purchase order among a bunch of individual project budgets. Shouldn’t it all have to come from one budget? It seems suspicious.” She wedged a tablet in front of his face to show him the email.
From: Bryce Cooper (Gary Mitchell’s Executive Assistant)
To: Maggie Reynolds (Procurement Finance)
Subject: re: updated billing code for reallocation exception
Body:
Maggie,
Gary has asked me to split this across the following billing codes:
9004-2345-01: $999,999.99
9002-3200-16: $999,999.99
9009-5387-60: $999,999.99
9009-6102-11: $999,999.99
9015-2387-19: $999,999.99
9036-1181-43: $109,022.23
John waved his hand dismissively at the tablet. “Normally, I’d agree with you. I’m up to my armpits in requests from Gary’s department. But you’ve got to consider the effect of the end of the fiscal year. Departments often have leftover money, and anything they don’t spend before the end of the year just evaporates. So at the end of the year, they start ordering servers they might need for the next year, new monitors for the employees, sudden urgent contracts with vendors, anything really, just to make use of the money before it disappears. And if they need to make big purchases, like Gary buying these servers, then he’d have to pool leftover money from many different budgets. We’re just two weeks away from the end of the year, and most everyone will be gone during the Christmas holiday. So you’re going to see a lot of purchases in these last few days.”
“That rewards gross financial mismanagement!” Maggie exclaimed in frustration.
She arched her neck as she said this, looking a little like Chewbacca from Star Wars. John wasn’t sure what it said about him, but he found it both endearing and sexy.
“If the money rolled over from one year to the next, it would reward saving money,” Maggie went on, growing more strident. “This just causes irresponsible spending.”
“I know, I know,” he said hurriedly, trying to placate her. “It’s contrary to every shred of common sense, but it’s just business as usual. Everyone plays the budget game to some degree.” He had to change the subject somehow before she grew any more angry. He looked down at his coffee cup, thumped his fingers on the table and gulped. “Do you want to get a cup of coffee sometime?”