GMail outage pours rain on Cloud Computing parade

Not one week after a seeming Cloud Computing PR blitz, comes the hard evidence of the problem - GMail going down, depriving millions of the digerati. Sez GigoOm:

Given that our company relies on Google’s Gmail and GTalk service, our operations came to a standstill this afternoon. We aren’t a large company but the losses are very real, especially in productivity. I wonder how the big customers of Google — folks like Sanmina-SC — are dealing with this e-blackout.

Well, step one is to build in redundancy, guys - actually, its quite illustrative that even a supposedly Tech aware outfit like GigaOm seemingly hasn't (or is this kool-aid drinking to excess?). The GMail example is the perfect storm in a way as it demonstrates:

(i) what happens when a major cloud system fails - unless you were downloading your emails you have no history. Twitter falling over is one thing (and look at the hoo ha that causes), but Gmail is on another scale.

(ii) its a free service, so there is no recourse and no compensation and no SLA - despite copious apologies, its still a different game theory vs paid-for services

Apparently howls of outrage have been heard all over Twitter even. We awaits with interest to see how the Cloudpimps will spin this one.....

We hate to say We Told You So ....... but we did - so, here it is again - free advice, may save a lot of hassle in future:

(i) Ensure you have copies on your own systems of any cloud data
(ii) Ensure you have redundancy in all critical systems
(iii) Pay for any critical path systems - its usually a false economy to go free.

Not rocket science....