A few weeks ago California was rocked by something so small in magnitude but sent a wake-up call that hopefully will be heard around the country. Three fiber optic cables were cut below a manhole cover alone a city street. Three cables that then disabled every cell phone, land line, internet connection for over 80,000 residents in the South Bay of silicon valley. Even more alarming was the fact that emergency public agencies including fire department, police department, even hospitals were completely cut-off from the outside world and even their sister agencies. These cities learned first-hand what life is without communication. Signs were placed on the streets informing residents that if they had a medical emergency to drive themselves to the hospital. Police officers were to be flagged down in the street and in some cases curfews were debated if communication could not be restored for general safety. Police departments could not even run finger prints or check data bases on suspects they did detain. All this from cutting 3 cables snaking underneath public streets. When company’s talk about building systems and not just about combining individual technologies, this is hopefully in the back of their mind. When building a system it is easier to look for single points of failure, to look for failovers not across each individual technology but for entire systems. This is why architects take so long with their designs, not because they are slow because hopefully they are being thorough. The consequences of not being so can be devastating.

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