Software fault causes red faces at Citrix - AFR - 9 Jan 2011

Software provider Citrix suffered an embarrassing global service outage after a date-related bug rendered one of its products and the computers that used it useless on January 1.

Where desktop computers crunch numbers internally, this software moves processes to servers on the network, which results in cheaper terminals and easier management.

But a glitch caused computers using Citrix's VDI-in-a-Box, - formally known as Kaviza, - to display an error message.

"Error 0 received while obtaining a license for a Citric xenapp client connection," the fault said. "The license request has been rejected".

Citrix vice-president Nabeel Youakim said the problem was now fixed and that the error only affected a small number of Australian customers.

"We'll be publishing an automatic update soon." he said." Unfortunately a lot of customers in the US had the problem but the smarter ones just put the date back to 2011 and kept on working until we got the solution to them."

"The holiday period delayed the response but within 24 hours we had a solution."

IBRS advisor, Kevin McIsaac said the incident provided an important warning to business and government technology executivesthat new software solutions were always at risk of failing.

"Catastrophic failure, where you lose all desktops, is one of those cons that nobody ever talks about." he said.

"As they get more centralised there is a greater potential for single points of failure."

"People need to be on their guard and be very clear about the potential for major disasters."

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