
IBM Runs World’s Worst Spam-Hosting ISP? - snowy
http://krebsonsecurity.com/2015/10/ibm-runs-worlds-worst-spam-hosting-isp/
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chris_wot
I'm afraid that IBM seems to be having lots of problems with data centres and
infrastructure. I'm hearing from a number of sources, largely independent of
each other, that in Australia their PaaS solution is merely an IaaS solution,
they have dreadful manual monitoring and manual processes (I was told in one
data centre that IBM was literally copying in host files for hostname
resolution).

I'm also hearing stories of medium to large tier companies actively looking at
their SAP contracts as there have been outages caused by infrastructure issues
(ridiculous things that shouldn't have happened), and along with a massive
drain of expertise in IBM's ranks they have severely damaged their value
proposition.

Obviously my claim is anecdotal, but it's honestly not looking good for IBM
lately.

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SyneRyder
Your comment reminds me of a news report here in Australia - 3 banks suffered
a multiple-day outage when their IBM mainframes hosting transactional data
were corrupted so badly, the banks weren't sure they could even recover the
transactions:

[http://www.smh.com.au/it-pro/business-it/the-real-reason-
st-...](http://www.smh.com.au/it-pro/business-it/the-real-reason-st-george-
bank-of-melbourne-and-banksa-are-suffering-a-long-internet-banking-
outage-20151005-gk1g62)

The relevant paragraphs are these:

"But when the system came back up early Sunday morning, a major data
corruption was found by IT experts in the IBM mainframe Information Management
System (IMS) database hosting the data, so all systems were shut back down
about midday Sunday AEDT, a source close to the bank told Fairfax Media.

"IBM IMS and CSC Hogan experts are trying to figure out how to restore the
databases without losing any transactions that were done on Sunday morning,"
the source said on Monday afternoon, referring to IT outsourcers IBM and CSC
being called in to assist, and Hogan, an integrated suite of core banking
applications."

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throwaway7767
Spamhaus and some other antispam lists can be extremely aggressive with their
filtering, sometimes blocking whole networks because of a couple reported
incidents of spam. They are also, in my experience, completely unresponsive
when contacted for information on why the blocks are in place. So it's not
like they're making it easy for abuse departments to comply.

In some cases (don't remember if this was spamhaus though) the list owners
will suggest that if you pay them a consulting fee, they might assist you
(where assist means forwarding the message that got flagged so you actually
know what spam they're talking about). The lists that do this are running an
extortion racket, but unfortunately the people using them don't really see
that side so they think they're just following best practices by using them.

I hate spam. But having had to deal with the people running these blocking
lists, I hate them too.

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blumkvist
I thought softlayer was high tier, managed service.

~~~
kjs3
So did IBM when they bought them. The reality hasn't matched that impression.

