Dependability in Real Life
Chaminade, Santa Cruz, California
May 6-8, 2001

Keynote Presentations:

Jim Gray, Microsoft, "Internet reliability" (PowerPoint Slide, 2.0M)

Lynn Wheeler, First Data Corporation, "Engineering real systems to be more reliable" (PowerPoint Slide, 333k)

Steve Gonzalez, NASA, "Mission Control Center: Ensuring dependability for Continuous Support" (PowerPoint Slide, 5.2M)

Rohan Champion, eTime Capital and (formerly) Federal Express, "Reliability at FedEx and eTime Capital" (PowerPoint Slide, 151k)

Wesley Sawyer, Hewlett-Packard, on the HP "Always On" infrastructure (PDF, 706k)

Bruce Maggs, Akamai, "Challenges in Building a Reliable System of Tens of Thousands of Servers" (PowerPoint Slide, 3.2M)

Review the full Workshop Schedule.

About the Workshop: Most observers agree that there is not much interaction between research in dependable computing and the actual technological systems in modern life for which dependability is important. This non-interaction goes in both directions: neither community is particularly aware of what the other is doing.

We are, by and large, researchers, and part of what researchers do is periodically gather to talk to one another, to share information, to teach and learn. For various reasons, it is unusual for practitioners of dependable computing to attend research gatherings. For our second Dependable Computing Workshop, we are going to try to learn more about the other side: the operational dependability sector.

We know that when we use credit cards, some computer very reliably debits our account. We know that when we use express shipping, the package very reliably gets there, and we can usually track its progress. We know that when we hand hundreds of dollars in cash to a bank teller, and he makes an entry in a computer, we can depend on the money reaching our account. Those dependable computing systems have become part of the landscape of modern life, but there is almost nothing written about them in our research literature.