A Tale of Two ITs

The presidential election wasn't decided by the relative strengths and weaknesses of the two campaigns' get-out-the-vote (GOTV) operations, but it's useful to take a look behind the scenes.

First, here's a look at the Obama campaign's sophisticated IT approach, based partly on its experience in 2008. Cloud computing! Decoupled apps and databases! Whee!

Next, here's the Romney campaign's approach, starring a single web server running through a Comcast Internet account and 11 - count 'em - database servers. Did I mention that they didn't really beta-test the whole thing, and didn't train end users? What do you suppose happened?

Oh, but it didn't fail at all, says the guy responsible. Sure...

Quasi-appropriately this is the first post published (by me, at least) using the Blogger app for the iPhone.