>>I hate to break your bubble but ATM networks are not all that redundant.<<
I heard that on the street so Real World not meeting doesn’t surprise me.
OTOH I have worked in some shops where they have full, 5 minute to switch over to offsite, redundancy — for freaking ERP systems that could be offline for hours with no interruptions to operations.
Amazing United didn’t have that level of investment.
I can’t comment on what United has as I have never worked on their account. I can say that even with the most redundant systems available, others (Banks) can still get cross ways. Had one customer troubleshoot an outage for 12 hours. The DR plan called for a 4 hr recovery.
Business continuity is more art than science. Lots of processes, escalations and approvals can get in the way of the technology. And anytime you have to deal with people, it can get complicated cause you are messing with money and someone’s “baby”. It is sometimes hard to hear from outsiders that your baby is ugly.