posted on December 1, 2005 07:17:05 AM new
Found this on the ebay store board:
eBay's Decision Is 'Frightening' for Developers, Andale Says
By Ina Steiner
AuctionBytes.com
November 30, 2005
eBay told Andale users it would discontinue access to Checkout Redirect through the Andale platform beginning on February 1, 2006 http://auctionbytes.com/cab/abn/y05/m11/i29/s01 in a move that puzzles and angers both Andale and some of its customers.
Andale CEO Linda Hayes said she feels terrible about the problems that disrupted her customers' eBay businesses in early November and blames the problem on a third-party software vendor. When asked how much revenue eBay might have lost due to the problem, Hayes said she had no idea and no way of knowing. There were two days when Andale sellers were unable to use the listing tool to list items on eBay.
Hayes said the database that had been corrupted and was the cause of the problem has been rebuilt and is running better than it's ever been, so she was "surprised and highly disappointed" over eBay's decision regarding the checkout redirect feature. When asked why eBay made the decision, Hayes was baffled. "It seems punitive to me," Hayes said, "but I'm on the other side of the fence."
Hayes said she was told about the decision not long before an email was sent out to her customers, and she tried to convince eBay that the decision was not in the best of interest of eBay or Andale. "This is a scary thing for all third-party vendors, it's frightening for all developers," she said. "None of us are immune from technical problems."
Hayes said not all Andale customers use the company's checkout feature. Of those who use it, well over 50 percent don't use the checkout redirect feature. Without checkout redirect enabled, buyers simply have to make one extra click to process their eBay transactions, she said.
When asked about how she felt about eBay's suggestion to Andale customers that they use eBay's solutions directory to find another vendor if they wanted the checkout redirect feature, Hayes said, "Our customers have been as incensed about that as we were. I'm surprised they would do that."
Several CEOs of competing firms reached out to Hayes with offers of support when the technical problems occurred earlier this month, she said.
"We are financially strong and technically strong," Hayes said. "We are cash-flow positive, and we have some of the most innovative products. We have a great relationship with eBay's strategic partnership department and with eBay's developer program,...we view eBay as a partner."
Andale has been criticized for not having a backup of its database. Hayes said the company did have a backup, but the corruption in the storage system caused by the vendor caused it to corrupt both the database and the database backup.
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posted on December 1, 2005 08:21:12 AM new
Oh geez, where do I start?
"Early November?" Checkout Redirect has NEVER worked for one seller I buy from regularly. Andale's system tells his customers it can't complete the transaction and they have to contact the seller. I have no idea why he stays with Andale. His feedback has been dinged by this problem repeatedly.
"Andale CEO Linda Hayes said she feels terrible about the problems that disrupted her customers' eBay businesses in early November and blames the problem on a third-party software vendor."
Oh, way to take responsibility for problems! A sure sign of poor leadership is to point a finger at a company YOU hired.
But this is the part that really enrages me:
"It's frightening for all developers," she said. "None of us are immune from technical problems."
HELLLLLO! Where did you get your MBA, the Pity Poor Me School? You're supposed to PLAN and IMPLEMENT measures to ANTICIPATE technical problems and RECOVER from them when they occur.
Great Goat Almighty!
"The company did have a backup, but the corruption in the storage system caused by the vendor caused it to corrupt both the database and the database backup."
Oh, this is just lame, and I'm not going to go into detail why because probably only 1 person in 50 reading this will understand the technical explanation. Suffice it to say that today's filers ("storage system" ) are so sophisticated that you can literally pull a disk out of a shelf WHILE THE COMPUTER IS RUNNING, the filer recognizes the disk has failed and instantly starts rebuilding the missing disk -- including data! -- onto one of several spares it has. Even so, filers still need to be backed up DAILY because if something goes wrong with the operating system software, you are hosed.
In every operation I have ever worked where huge amounts of data were being stored, backups were of prime importance and treated as such.
Feh.
fLufF
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[ edited by fluffythewondercat on Dec 1, 2005 08:22 AM ]
posted on December 1, 2005 09:07:09 AM new
Fluffy, you may be right about a recovery system in place, but I dont really think any of these programs are infallible.
Ebay's been down and caused problems for buyers/sellers and so has Paypal at times. As far as I can see, all of these auction management software companies have had their systems (or parts of their systems) nonfunctional at times.
posted on December 1, 2005 09:13:39 AM new
No, they are not infallible. Which is precisely why you have to have experienced and expert staff on hand to deal with these matters.
Andale was moved from Mountain View, CA to Bangalore, India in 2003.
Andale's current situation is what happens to companies that cheap out. Oh excuse me, "outsource".
Trust me, I made a comfortable six-figure income working at places like Tandem Computers, Cisco Systems and Sun Microsystems maintaining systems just like the ones Andale uses.
If anyone wants to know what's wrong with Andale, they just have to listen to Ms. Hayes. Competent people don't choose to work for weak-willed finger-pointers like her. She "feels terrible" about what happened? That doesn't cut ice with serious people and apparently eBay was unimpressed as well.
fLufF
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[ edited by fluffythewondercat on Dec 1, 2005 09:16 AM ]
posted on December 1, 2005 09:28:54 AM new
I'm with ya Fluff. Systems will fail, but you can build in redundancy with failover capabilities. It just costs more, that's all.
I'm familiar with the systems that have been in use at Nasdaq for some time. They have the ability to completely failover from their NYC location in a matter of a few minutes (if I remember correctly it was 5-7 minutes) to their remote location in Virginia. I can't say that they ever had to use that capability, but it was there and it cost $$$$ to maintain the capability.
They do that because downtime can be measured in $$ and it's just like an insurance policy - you don't need it until you NEED it.
Unfortunately, these folks could be compared to the uninsured drivers on our highways - except (in the case of eBay) we're in their bus and God Help Us if there's an accident!
Wayne
Never explain -- Your friends do not need it and your enemies will not believe you anyway.
~ Elbert Hubbard
posted on December 1, 2005 09:46:46 AM newvendio has outsourced development to Romania or something, too?
No, it just seems that way.
All kidding aside, I don't know. There were development folks in San Bruno when I was there, I guess it was nearly two years ago now. Some of the same people are still there. I see them post elsewhere on this site.
Here's more from AuctionBytes:
eBay said it is taking action "because Andale has not been able to reliably meet required standards of availability."
An email apparently sent by Andale to customers on Monday said in part,
"Andale has been a good partner of eBay's for over six years. In fact, we were the first auction management company to offer a seamless buyer checkout. Many other third party providers and eBay, itself, have duplicated our pioneering checkout innovations, as well as our other product innovations. Therefore, we were disappointed that eBay chose this route.
We believe that such actions can have far reaching consequences for all eBay third party vendors and partners and will ultimately harm the ability of third parties to innovate and provide services to eBay sellers. We ask that you support us by contacting eBay to let them know how much you value our Checkout system and the innovations that Andale has provided over the past six years. You can send your emails to [email protected] to let them know your concerns about them taking this kind of action against one of their third party vendors and partners."
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Andale is trying to spin this as the David 3rd party providers versus the Goliath eBay, when in fact, the only entity affected by this decision is Andale itself.
That very obfuscation is revealing, don't you think?
Look. In my opinion eBay is (for once) doing exactly the right thing. Any 3rd party partner whose lack of performance degrades the eBay site should be dropped. I am positive that the API agreement Andale signed is very specific about Andale maintaining site reliability.
posted on December 1, 2005 09:49:36 AM new
Fluffy,
I agree with most of what you say, as I typically do. And finding a defense of Andale is not something I expected to be doing today, as my brief dealings with them made me think that they were incompetent crooked short-fingered vulgarians.
However, the CEO states that the problem is with a SOFTWARE vendor. If the database vendor, for example, released code that corrupts the data, the corruption will exist in every copy of the data, no matter what kind of RAID you're using.
Now, mind you, I spent 30 years in IT, and most of it dealing with high-impact, high-volume systems with any number of different DBMS and OS vendors, and I can honestly say that we NEVER lost a transaction (not even on 9/11, when the data was mirrored in NJ and TN). And why was that? Because we used the high-priced spread, the well-trained and EXPENSIVE Database Administrators who knew internals and data structures usually better than the vendors.
Andale deserves the yoghurt they're deeply in, but I did want to mention the software/hardware distinction (that I'm sure you understand but possibly overlooked).
posted on December 1, 2005 09:57:24 AM newHowever, the CEO states that the problem is with a SOFTWARE vendor
That's what she said. I took it with a heap of of sodium chloride. I do not know that this woman knows the difference between a DBMS and an operating system. She does not speak like someone who is hands-on management. In fact, anything but.
It is entirely possible to have a software problem caused by your hardware vendor. (Some would argue it is inevitable and only a matter of time.) We frequently had this when maintaining NetApp filers.
posted on December 1, 2005 10:48:30 AM new
Having never used Anadale, I could care less, but it sounds to me that the system was weak if both the regular & backup systems were corrupted. I am not a computer guru, in fact far from it, but this really puzzels me.
posted on December 1, 2005 11:10:31 AM new
During the last years that I was in IT, I was pressured into outsourcing to a number of places: India, Russia, Israel, and Ireland (there might be others, but those are the ones I remember). I would gladly use most of them again, with the notable exception of India: big hat, no cattle -- they can crank out a zillion lines of code to manage a million screens, but there's no art or craft, and the 3 well thought out screens you really needed never show up. The Russians, OTOH, can write some code!!!
posted on December 1, 2005 11:33:43 AM new
Over on the Powerseller board, they have a similar thread where someone suggests that a database error had nothing to do with the problem. They say Andale was HACKED, and eBay wants to limit their exposure to damage.
A database corruption would not take two days to fix. Unless they are dumber than dirt.
Think of the mess **eBay** would have to deal with if all the user names and passwords stored by Andale (or Vendio, or Fill-in-the-blank service) were used maliciously. The corrections in billing would be a nightmare.
Makes sense to me.
Remember, Andale has a long history of saying what needs to be said rather than telling truth.
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Quidquid Latine dictum sit altum sonatur.
[ edited by replaymedia on Dec 1, 2005 11:34 AM ]
