Rackspace’s outage explanation is an amazingly (bad) example of jargon-laden, un-customer-oriented IT communication. There’s no discussion of real root cause (um, the breaker tripped, but WHY?) or action plan, just a bunch of technobabble that lets no one understand what really happened, why it happened, and what will ensure that it won’t happen again. It’s kind of like the old joke punchline, “Everything you have told me is technically correct, but it’s no use to anyone.” This inspires negative confidence among one’s customers, needless to say.

I’ve written in my blog about the need (and the ways) to “air the dirty laundry.” See http://www.peterkretzman.com/2008/01/15/why-the-cio-should-air-his-dirty-laundry/