Let's Not Trash Cloud Computing Over Gmail Outage

[Ron Miller]

The great Gmail outage, which as far as I can tell lasted a couple of hours over night in the US has prompted some nasty articles such as this one from TechCrunch where they derisively refer to Gmail as Gfail. Let's grow up, people. Software fails all the time and online services like Gmail and other cloud vendors are not going be immune to outages from time to time.

Thunderbird Lost My Mail

How many of us can say that we have never had a problem with our desktop email client? Issues happen all the time. I used to use Thunderbird as my email client, but I gave up after persistent problems including losing my email. I use Mac Mail now and I had an issue last year where I opened my email client and my mail was gone. I called Apple Care and the tech helped me restore my mail, but the point is that stuff happens with software all the time, and just because it's a cloud application, doesn't mean it's never going to go down.

Cloud Services Still Convenient

I suppose if a service started to have consistent problems, you would have something to complain about. If Gmail were to start going down for a couple of hours every week, for instance, we might grow tired of it, no matter how convenient it is, but so far at least, I haven't seen that happening. The fact is that Google has offline and IMap features that let you get your mail in different ways. If you're not happy with Gmail, you can download your mail and move it to your desktop email client or another cloud email choice.

The Sky's Not Falling

So while it may fun to make fun of Google--what they heck, they're a major corporation that just screwed up big time--let's not use this an excuse to trash cloud computing in general. This type of thing is going to happen and we might as well get used to it. Let's not act like we've never seen a software screw-up before because I'm quite sure that every one of us have.

[khess]

For some reason, I didn't experience an outage. Maybe it's because we have a major Google data center 40 miles from here.

[Techwriter10]

I didn't either, but I'm not sure it affected everyone, that the whole system went down or just part of it, and it also could be that happened while you were sleeping.

[Andy Zhao]

HI,

How big China SaaS market is? Capture a Seat with PC Stars partnership!

It's Andy Zhao at PC Stars, which is a China leading provider of distribution and Hosting services for SaaS and on-premises ISVs.

Having been in this field for years, we believe and witness that there are huge needs for software in China. Unfortunately, piracy has always been an obstacle for on-premises vendors. Since SaaS delivery is getting more and more popular, it’s not a problem anymore. We are convinced that it’s the right time to enter China market for SaaS vendors.

If China is on your recent roadmap, we invite you to join us, exploring Chinese marketing together.

As the sole operation provider for ZOHO ( www.baihui.com), we’re providing a comprehensive hosting and distribution service for ZOHO. We are also helping other SaaS or on-premises ISVs getting success in China market, such as Siondo, Kaspersky, Intel Software, TechSmith, QSR and so on. With the experience accumulated in years, we feature a Demonstration Farm Model of Software Publishing through our service suites as followings:
1.）Localization.
We have a team dedicated to localization, covering apps, websites, documentation etc.
2.）Marketing campaigns
Including but not limited in:Buyers Targeting and Buyers Survey; Sales Lead Generation & Potential Acquisition Solution; Prospect Maturation Solution
3.）Local Deployment & Hosting
For SaaS Vendors only.

It would be great to have the opportunity to discuss the huge opportunities in China Market.
If you have any question, please do not hesitated to contact me.

Many thanks,
Andy Zhao
PC Stars
E-mail: [e-mail]
Phone: [phone] x. 8241
Website: http://www.softwarelist.cn/english/index.htm