----- Original Message -----
From: "Valdis Kletnieks" <Valdis.Kletnieks@vt.edu>
Why the hostility, Valdis?
As I said several times - it's not hard to be 98% or 99% sure you can make all your commitments. However, since predicting the future is an inexact science, it's really hard to provide a *100% guarantee* that you'll have enough contended capacity to make all the performance targets even if every single occasional customer shows up at once. As Jay pointed out in his follow-up note, his backup strategy is "scramble around and hope another provider can come through in time", which is OK if you *know* that's your strategy and are OK on it. However, blindly going along with "my usual provider guaranteed 100% availability" is a bad idea.
I don't think Kelly is on his first rodeo, and I know I'm not. "scramble around" is a bit pejorative as descriptions for my booking strategy go, but everyone has a cranky day every so often, not least me. :-) And note that I *also* pointed out that carrier statmuxing on the transport is a valid strategy for capacity elasticity, in that particular environment.
Remember, we're coming out of a solar minimum. ;)
Are we in fact coming out of it yet? I heard it was getting deeper, and that we were looking at a Dalton, if not another Maunder. Cheers, -- jra