Gmail Outage Outrage

Wow! There’s been plenty of coverage of the recent massive (yeah, right) 2 hour GMail outage. The end of cloud computing? Erm… I don’t think so.

A couple of observations that immediately sprang to my mind:

One. Do the Maths.

Go figure how much all this would cost you: email server, email software, o/s licenses, backup software, hosting, ongoing management and maintenance, staff costs, etc… Yes. This all adds up. Compare the costs against GMail…. Erm.. That’s a no-brainer.

Hey – ask yourself this as well. For those in corporate environments, how many times is your email service down? Probably more than GMail I would say.

Two. Is email *that* important?

Have you ever heard about GTD (I’m quite fond of it myself). In today’s world of a gazillion emails they’re now recommending that you check your email only at certain intervals. I know countless people that say they only check email three times a day!! So it’s obviously not that big a deal.

Wooo! Then there’s this amazing technological invention known as the telephone. Or this marvel called face-to-face. Yes – we can actually talk to people. That’s a good thing.

No email equals no interruptions. I remember my days as a CIO, when we had a four hour unplanned email server outage. Outrage! “Burn him!”, they cried. Four hours and a good lashing later, people came up to me and said that was the most productive four hours they’ve had for years!

Email ain’t everything. Get over it.

A two hour email outage is not the end of the world, nor for cloud computing.

(and if you even bothered to check IMAP was working fine – sigh!)