Of course, I already knew there was a problem since I received the infamous "500 - Server Error" message while trying to access Google Mail with my web browser. I've been using Gmail for years and currently have a Google Apps Premier Edition account, and this was the first time I've been affected by a Google email outage.
Fortunately, the outage only affected web access to Google Mail. After a few quick unsuccessful retries with Google web mail, I launched Mozilla Thunderbird (which I had previously set up to use IMAP to access my Google Apps account) and everything was running fine. Apparently, the outage did not affect IMAP access to Google Mail.
I rechecked Google's Apps Status Dashboard and saw a new message posted at 1:02 PM confirming that users can access their email via IMAP or POP, and that Google was continuing to investigate the web access issue. At 2:37 PM, Google posted a message announcing that the problem with web access was resolved.
On the surface, a two hour email outage might seem like a serious or even critical event. But since IMAP and POP access were not affected, people using Outlook or Thunderbird probably didn't even notice there was a problem.
So, is this a serious/critical event, or even an event at all?
If you or your company had the wisdom to provide both web access and IMAP or POP access to your Google Mail account, this outage might not have significantly affected you. However, if your only access to Google Mail is through the web, you were toast for a couple of hours.
The Bad News Bears
Today the news blogs are lambasting Google for this outage, recalling every email outage in Google's history. Although most of Google's email outages are less than an hour with some as short as a few minutes, news blogs continue to impugn Google's reputation and question if Google is suitable for business customers.It's absurd. Do the news pundits really think Google's email service performance is worse than any company's internally hosted email service?
Google states a 99.9% service level.1 This means that based on a 365-day year (8,760 hours/year) an "always on" email service should not be down more than 8.76 hours per year. I'm pretty sure Google can meet or exceed that service level.
The difference between the performance of Google Mail and businesses internally hosted email is that Google's performance is public. I don't know of any business that publicly posts its internal email service levels. Even if they did, how could you verify it?
Given Google's campaign to lure corporate customers to its Apps Premier Edition, the bombardment of Google's reputation for its very public service failures could be devastating for Google. This kind of reporting serves no other purpose than to further cloud Google's services with fear, uncertainty and doubt.
Ready or Not
The real concern for using Google services is whether they meet business needs. There are things that Google does very well such as search, email and calendaring. Other services like Google Sites and Google Docs might not be a good fit for enterprise customers, but can be valuable apps for small to mid-sized businesses.One problem enterprises might have with Google's services is its practice of making frequent incremental changes. While I believe a continual service improvement methodology is an excellent approach and aligns with most best practices, it might not sit well with corporate users who favor stability.
Gmail and its Calendar cousin have been great apps from the start, and certainly Google Search is recognized worldwide as the leading search engine. These apps introduced a new philosophy for providing services, and were simpler to use than their competitor's counterparts. But some of Google's other products seemed to lack the same brilliance and simplicity that dominates Google Search, Google Mail, Google Calendar and Google Maps.
Perhaps because Google purchased many of its apps like Sites (JotSpot), Docs Word Processor (Upstartle), Docs Spreadsheet (2Web Technologies), Docs Presentation (Tonic Systems and Zenter), Picassa (Picassa), YouTube (YouTube, LLC), Blogger (Pyra Labs), Voice (GrandCentral) and more, they initially lacked the Google touch. But Google seems to be diligently working to integrate these purchased products into the framework of the Google Apps architecture.
Is Google ready for enterprise customers? Maybe. A better question might be: Are enterprise customers ready for Google? One thing is certain, though, other cloud services vendors are paying attention to Google's traction in this arena. So ready or not, Google is coming!
1Update: The Google Premier Edition SLA is actually based on the number of minutes in a calendar month and is not aggregated for the year. For more details, read the Google Apps SLA.
By Harry Hiles, HBH Technology LLC — 2 Sep 2009
An Introductory Overview of ITIL V3
2 Comments (click to view or add comments):
While it makes sense to provide web access, pop and imap alternatives to your business users, it really isn't practical. While the IT savvy user will have no problem bouncing from one method to access mail to another, the average business users will have issues.
To Anonymous,
What issues have business users encountered using multiple methods for accessing email? Many average business users already access email using multiple methods such as Outlook on their PC, web access in a browser, or on their smartphone (Blackberry, Android, iPhone).
In the case described in the article, users would (or should) have both Outlook (using IMAP not POP) and web access methods set up for them in advance. So when web access failed, they could get their email through Outlook. And, those who were already using Outlook would have not seen any disruption.
If IT provides multiple email access methods for users and advises users to try another method if one fails, there should not be any real issues unless of course all methods are unavailable.
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