A server bug kept some Google Apps users from accessing their Google-hosted Web mail on Tuesday. The problem has since been fixed, but for a small segment of users the outage lasted for close to 22 hours.
...Staunch critics of Google's online office offerings may find this as another reason to be wary of relying too heavily on cloud-based business tools. While they can be cheaper and easier to roll-out than traditional IT solutions, an increasingly valid fear is uncontrollable downtime.
Since I still see cloud based enterprise e-mail as in it's infancy, an anonymous commenter summed up my feelings fairly well:
Lotus Domino and Microsoft Exchange are both reliable, robust email servers that can be clustered (although in slightly different ways), and configured to provide reliable availability. Domino is probably a bit more secure and scalable, while Exchange is probably a bit easier to find resources to support. Gmail (and "the cloud" in general) are just not that mature yet, and the viability and reliability of Gmail as an Enterprise solution is as yet untested. Unfortunately, the outages recently have emphasized that Gmail isn't quite ready to pass that test, even if it might be in the future.
Link: CNet News: Latest Google Apps outage brings down Gmail (for some)
Technorati tag: gmail Lotus Domino Microsoft Exchange
Comment posted by Charles Robinson03/13/2009 04:46:38 PM
Homepage: http://www.cubert.net
The more I try to use GMail for business the more limited it becomes. The outage didn't really affect me, but the lack of features and functionality sure is. Right now my problem is that GMail doesn't have folders of any type -- including those that look like folders such as Drafts and Sent. If you connect via IMAP it pushes them across and it works on your client. But if you find the IMAP too slow (as I do) and opt for POP access, all your mail gets downloaded to your Inbox. If you send an e-mail from your POP client, it shows up on GMail in yoru Inbox, too. That's useful.
Comment posted by 03/13/2009 07:27:07 PM
@Charles, "If you send an e-mail from your POP client, it shows up on GMail in yoru Inbox, too. That's useful."
I thought I was going crazy when I saw that behaviour. It's rather annoying to say the least. I shouldn't have to create a filter in Thunderbird to send my responses to a folder as I hate having them show in the Inbox.
Comment posted by Peter Herrmann03/13/2009 09:35:13 PM
Homepage: http://twitter.com/pete
If you want to use folders with the web based Gmail UI, I would use Folders4Gmail http://userscripts.org/scripts/show/8810. It displays your IMAP folders and Gmail labels as a folder tree. There are a bunch of other addons that do similar.
BTW, the web UI is faster than any mail client I've ever used (local/web/terminal) and it's one less installed app to have to worry about.
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