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  • Prometric blames Virus for CAT 2009 Disaster!

    Kaustubh Katdare

    Kaustubh Katdare

    @thebigk
    Updated: Oct 25, 2024
    Views: 2.6K
    The CAT 2009 disaster continues and now, Prometric, the firm responsible for conducting the common admission test for over 250,000 students is blaming virus for the disaster.

    TOI reports that as many as 49 centers across 24 centers across India could not conduct the test because of the virus.

    ``Exhaustive plans were developed and put in place well in advance of the start of the testing window. Unfortunately, particular viruses and malware that attacked the test delivery system were not detected by the anti-virus software at the testing centres,''
    stated Ramesh Nava, vice president and general manager, Asia Pacific, Japan & Africa, Prometric.

    Bangalore was the city to suffer the most because of the disaster with about 12 labs not being able to conduct the CAT on the second day.

    So far, there is no official word from Prometric whether the exam will continue as per schedule.

    The affected aspirants had apparently been told about the closure of labs through emails and SMSes in the wee hours of Sunday. Besides declaring the cancellation of the test, the text message instructed students to not go to the centres. It read, ``Please do NOT go to the testing centre on November 29. We will contact you in 48 hours.''
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  • Anil Jain

    Member • Nov 29, 2009

    On few television NEWS channels, it is shown that prometric has claimed that exams will continue and will be finished by the pre-decided date (7-dec).

    They have requested all the students (CAT takers, who missed CAT in last two days) to keep an eye on prometric and IIM website for their new exam dates.

    -CB
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  • Saandeep Sreerambatla

    Member • Nov 29, 2009

    The students for whom the exam got cancelled get nervous for sure!!

    This is not a good job by both Prometric and IIM.

    But they too didnt predict this may be!!

    Anyway this should be a good learning for IIM's such that they take maximum care for next time !!
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  • Kaustubh Katdare

    Administrator • Nov 29, 2009

    The big question is, since the test is being conducted through local servers; how did the virus propagate to all the centers across India?

    It it just a lame excuse used by Prometric to cover the things? Huh?
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  • Anil Jain

    Member • Nov 29, 2009

    Prometric are the one who are conducting GRE / GMAT / Linux / HP certifications since long time. However, we shouldn't forget that number of people taking these exams are no where in comparision to number of people taking CAT. May be they haven't experienced so much load on their servers. They have given lame excuses that computer Virus is the reason of this faliure, though I am not sure is it really virus or server faliure beacsue of excessive load?

    -CB
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  • sarveshgupta

    Member • Nov 30, 2009

    yes cb you may be right

    How can they put the career of students at stake

    They should have taken care for this

    Students would have got nervous
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  • exclhyd

    Member • Nov 30, 2009

    IIM Paid 40M US$ to Prometric for the simple testing platform. Its an absolutely pathetic performance and the Company has failed IIM which trusted its capability, possibly because the quote was several times higher than those quoted by Indian Companies


    Its no use blaming virus in test centers for the abject failure and crash of remote test servers. In fact IIM could have followed the path of other Indian Universities (for Example Gujarat & Manipal) which have developed and deployed much larger testing systems, in house, at a fraction of the payment doled out to Prometric.

    IIM has been taken for a great ride by this company. Prometric has to be blamed for not being able to deliver a tested, reliable working product within time.

    Is this what we could expect from a company which has charged 40M$ for developing a testing platform??????
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  • exclhyd

    Member • Nov 30, 2009

    Incidentally, Prometric is absolutely aware of the candidate strength and the requirement of scalability for CAT. "Conducting GRE / GMAT / Linux / HP certifications smoothly since long time" is no reason to charge 40M$ and dole out absolute **** putting us into trouble.
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  • Kaustubh Katdare

    Administrator • Nov 30, 2009

    I too believe that the 'virus' thing is just to cover up the mess and put all the blame on the computer program (read virus).
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