What about continuity of service? Say, for instance, if there are only two people who deeply understand the Alphas, is there a rule banning them from ever getting on the same airplane? Not a problem, Bourgon says.
"All eight of the technicians are versed in both the systems on the software and on the hardware," he says. "That way I always have somebody in the building who knows what they are doing. We also contract support services, obviously, for our different servers. We have support for Compaq, for the Alpha clusters and for our regular servers."
McCarran also relies on good change management, through an internal application called ISOS (information systems operation schedule). Changes are posted two weeks prior to the implementation, which gives everyone a chance to comment, says Hughes. In addition, there's a "Tenant Bulletin," which goes out via e-mail and fax and warns airlines when there's a potential change in the works. For the airport operational systems, the change window is between 2 a.m. and 5 a.m. Internal (nonairline) systems have a more forgiving window, 5 p.m. to 6 a.m., plus weekends.
Perhaps the most revealing comments about how McCarran keeps its service levels high came from the top brass.
"This arena isn't for the faint of heart," says Ross Johnson, assistant director for finance. Doing IT right in an airport environment is tough and takes serious commitment of both resources and staff time. The difference between being able to simply buy a bunch of clusters and fault-tolerant hardware and being able to effectively operate those clusters and hardware is night and day.
While it's easy to believe that it's just about money--unlike most airports, McCarran collects $40 million per year in slot-machine revenue, and 8 percent of the $218 million operating budget goes to IT--the culture that management has built is a key factor. Money can buy hardware. Money can buy services. But we've been in more than one shop with surpluses of both that have been IT-process train wrecks.
