McDonald's IT Systems Outage Shuts Some Restaurants Globally (bleepingcomputer.com) 32
An anonymous reader quotes a report from BleepingComputer: McDonald's restaurants are suffering global IT outages that prevent employees from taking orders and accepting payments, causing some stores to close for the day. The outages started overnight and are impacting restaurants globally, including those in the USA, Japan, Australia, Canada, the Netherlands, Italy, New Zealand, and the UK. "We are aware of a technology outage, which impacted our restaurants; the issue is now being resolved," McDonald's said in a statement to BleepingComputer. "We thank customers for their patience and apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused. Notably, the issue is not related to a cybersecurity event." In an updated statement, McDonald's says that the outage was caused by a third-party provider during a configuration change. "Many markets are back online, and the rest are in the process of coming back online. This issue was not directly caused by a cybersecurity event; rather, it was caused by a third-party provider during a configuration change."
Oh good (Score:2)
Finally IT is a force of good for global health.
Re: (Score:2)
Except for the IT folks themselves sitting and working the problem, probably getting free pizza and caffeine.
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Fast food was never the problem and still isn't.
You can eat at McD every single day and be actually quite healthy, it's everything else that you do, which for a lot of people means doing absolutely nothing, is what is the problem.
And FYI; McD in the EU and McD in the US are two completely different beasts. Over here we have _very_ strict regulations as to what you can stuff in your burger, their nutritional values and how they are created. That's why most of the food tastes completely different in EU and on
Bummer (Score:5, Funny)
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That's a bummer. I heard they finally got the shake machine working.
Here in the UK, the ice cream machines are usually working because UK McD's aren't subject to an abusive maintenance contract (read: they can actually get someone to fix them when broken).
I actually went for a McBreakfast on that morning. Had to pay cash (does this need a "lol") but I always carry £20 or so in my wallet for small purchases so wasn't an issue, a few people were heading off to the ATM at the garage. I was more concerned that I had a bit of a complex order but they handled it.
This
WTF?! What Kind of infrastructure are they running (Score:2)
A single Mainframe in antartica (to save cooling costs) with Dedicated E1 Twisted pair lines going in and out?
McD's is a descentralized organization worldwide, may as well descentralize according to semi-independent territories, with deferred batch processing of statitstics every now and then, up and up until you reach the "central" thinguie... Go figure.
Calling it right now (Score:2)
With zero information to back it up, somehow I still know it's HCL. Friends don't let friends outsource IT to the most clueless $50 billion company in all of India. Trust me, I worked for them.
Re: Calling it right now (Score:1)
Is that as bad as Fujitsu (icl?) and the horizon scandal?
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https://www.bleepingcomputer.c... [bleepingcomputer.com]
Thank you H1B!
Damn, I could have done a better job but the job description required Tegulu.
Who's going to be involved (Score:2)
The Feds, for starters. The Trip Advisor, Michelin, Restaurant Guru, but we haven't heard from our brothers in the Middle East, they seem to have more pressing issues at the moment. Plus a former president that enjoyed a quick snack during his morning runs (RIP Phil Hartman)
The Ice Cream Machines !!! (Score:3)
They brought all the ice cream machines back online at the same time and it shorted out their mainframe .. ( if anyone is still running a mainframe it's McD's) ..
Going to guess... (Score:3)
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So, they contracted with someone who didn't know how to plan ahead with a back-out plan.
But did they need it? No serious question here. We all talk about IT equipment and infrastructure as if it is highly critical requiring perfect uptime. But we are talking about an outage that has affected stores for a couple of hours once in a decade. We're talking about an industry stuffed by the lowest common denominator, and managed by thousands of unique franchisees for whom it would be borderline impossible to develop a cohesive business continuity plan.
The reality is, it probably cost McDonalds less t
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Cheap and a willing scapegoat?
Hired!
Imagine if managers ever had to take responsibility.
Re: Going to guess... (Score:2)
Reboot the mainframe (Score:4, Funny)
Which will reset all the counters. Now the signs read "Over one thousand served".
All fine in China (Score:2)
On the mainland anyway... I hear HK was hit.
Having said that, the ordering system used in mainland China is fairly dysfunctional on the best of days. Well, you can order OK, and you get your stuff, but the screen that says if your order is queued or ready to pickup has (to my memory) never worked. The orders spend a licosecond on the queuing side and then go straight to the ready side.
If that is used for some kind of performance metric, then they are all doing very well (to quote Mr Grace).
How?! (Score:4, Insightful)
Seriously, why are their systems globally tied so closely together that stores across multiple countries become unable to do business whatsoever? What possible use could there be for stores in New York to know in real-time how many cheeseburgers stores in Amsterdam are selling?
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Centralised inventory management is a big thing for mega franchisers. It may not be a case of Amsterdam vs New Amsterdam (I mean New York), but it is a case of managing the entire north-east coast at once, or north west Europe. Also ... control. McDonalds exerts an insane amount of control over franchisees and that includes always online monitoring of registers rather than end of shift bookkeeping. McDonalds also has a global loyalty program tied to sales with a points system redeemable anywhere.
These are n
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"It may not be a case of Amsterdam vs New Amsterdam (I mean New York)"
Why they changed it I can't say.
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Given the actual outages primarily affect kiosk and mobile ordering, it's likely the outage affects how the mobile app and kiosks work.
These systems likely connect to a central system that pull up the rewards available to the user - a
They couldn't even take cash (Score:3)
Stories from customers in Australia that cash wasn't a substitute, because it was the cash registers that weren't responding.
Now, pricing in Australia puts the total amount up front. Your burger is $4.50, the fries are $2.50, and the coke is $2. Your bill is $9. There's no "plus tax" bullshit to take the bill to $9.87.
So even if I had exactly $9 in notes and coin, I couldn't buy some food.
We had a major outage from one of the big providers in Australia recently (Optus). It was big - phone, internet and especially EFTPOS was down. And still the cashless proponents push their bullshit.
If I was the manager of an affected Maccas, I'd be telling people "Hey, our payment systems are down, but we'd still like you to enjoy our food, so you can pay us what you've got in cash, or nothing, it's up to you. We can't make make change so please don't hand us a $50 bill, but if you've got five or ten dollars in your wallet, that'd be great"
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It's completely unreal. They are so stunned. A manager in the very least could grab a cellphone or laptop, start a spreadsheet, grab an empty/spare cash tray and begin taking cash only orders at rounded prices. Exact amounts first, then change as the till builds. People already there will love you and those who can't wait will leave that you wouldn't have served anyway.
But then why would an employee care for limited reward? And ohs! the liability and we'll just have to enter it all in later.
The businesses t
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...by making do on tried and longhand methods can recover quickly....
A long time ago, a company I wrote software for did all their record keeping with pen and paper. The owner contracted me to write software to manage part of their operation. The employees all but rebelled, since they liked their pen-and-paper system. Over the years, they grew to like my software, and complimented me on it regularly. This was, and still is, a small 24-hour operation with continuous data entry requirements.
Fast forward a few years, and the entire business lost power. Most of the employees fr
Re: (Score:2)
Stories from customers in Australia that cash wasn't a substitute, because it was the cash registers that weren't responding.
Now, pricing in Australia puts the total amount up front. Your burger is $4.50, the fries are $2.50, and the coke is $2. Your bill is $9. There's no "plus tax" bullshit to take the bill to $9.87.
So even if I had exactly $9 in notes and coin, I couldn't buy some food.
We had a major outage from one of the big providers in Australia recently (Optus). It was big - phone, internet and especially EFTPOS was down. And still the cashless proponents push their bullshit.
If I was the manager of an affected Maccas, I'd be telling people "Hey, our payment systems are down, but we'd still like you to enjoy our food, so you can pay us what you've got in cash, or nothing, it's up to you. We can't make make change so please don't hand us a $50 bill, but if you've got five or ten dollars in your wallet, that'd be great"
In the UK they were accepting cash, I suspect this would have been a "manager on the ground" decision.
I suspect in Australia they might not have been able to open the tills to get the change out, which would be a bit of an issue. Combine that with the usual lack of imagination or ambition that accompanies someone who works at a fast food joint and the Australian penchant for "she'll be rite, mate".
Workaround ... (Score:2)
Oh...They Were (Score:1)
Now that they charge $8 for a fucking hamburger I haven't gone in that place.
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Their finance guy described 'little price sensitivity' on an analysts' call not too long ago.
Not you or me, but most.