Posted 10/21/08 at 03:08:05 PM by Pulkit Chandna

Last week’s Gmail outage, which lasted for about 28 hours, has once again highlighted a major shortcoming of cloud computing and web-based services. The incidence exemplifies cloud computing skeptics’ greatest concern that unheralded disruptions in cloud computing services might cost businesses’ and individuals dearly.

Some Gmail users – including paying Google Apps subscribers - couldn’t access their accounts between 16 and 17 October. Incensed users expressed their indignation across the internet, while Mark, a Google Apps adviser, provided regular updates on the status of the issue, as long as it lasted.

“We know how important Gmail is to our users, so we take issues like this very seriously, and we apologize for the inconvenience,” Mark wrote in a Google Groups post.

Earlier this year, Amazon’s Simple Storage Service remained unavailable for 8 hours. That particular episode had also spawned similar questions regarding cloud computing. Companies will have to come out with ways to keep outages to a negligible count.

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Software, Internet, Gmail, Google, cloud computing, web, google apps, web-based, docs, outage

Posted 10/19/08 at 08:59:08 PM by Justin Kerr

A Google Apps malfunction was reported on Thursday leaving education edition users without access to various services, including Gmail. It turns out the loss of access was tied to an unannounced change in the layouts of start pages which redirected to a non functional iGoogle address. Google spokesmen Andrew Kovacs stated that "this was an isolated bug".  "I don't want to minimize this, but was this an issue where people could not access their data? No."  Google hasn’t publically stated how many of the over one million businesses and 10 million users were impacted by the bug, but apparently it was only reported by a handful of users.  Kovacs went on to state that "Basically, the broader perspective with an approach to communication is to be transparent. With these hosted applications we are held to a higher standard since we are so transparent with our communication." This made me wonder. With all the negative back lash companies like Google, Microsoft, and Amazon receive when cloud services crash, is all the bad press really fair? Do we really have the right to expect 100% uptime?

Hit the jump and let us know what you think.

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Google, hardware, cloud computing, grid computing, google apps, server crash

Posted 10/16/08 at 06:24:30 PM by Pulkit Chandna

Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer touched upon virtually all the major issues concerning MS – from Windows 7 to Yahoo - at the Gartner Symposium ITxpo in Orlando. Unsurprisingly, he was confronted by many questions regarding Vista and Windows 7.He ardently defended Windows Vista. “The adoption rate of Vista is two times faster than XP at two years in,” Ballmer said in Vista’s defense.

However, he tacitly gave the thumbs up to enterprises that have abandoned all plans of upgrading to Vista and are already waiting for Windows 7.  Regarding the possibility of a deal with Yahoo, he said that a deal would make sense for the shareholders of both the companies. The price of Yahoo’s shares shot up by 17% after Ballmer’s comment.

Ballmer believes that Google Apps has “very primitive” capabilities. He further derided Google Apps by not even acknowledging it as serious competition.

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vista, windows, Yahoo, deal, steve ballmer, stockholders, gartner, enterprises, google apps, gartner ITxpo, share

Posted 09/06/08 at 03:56:09 PM by Justin Kerr

ZDNet’s Mary Jo Foley has apparently learned that Microsoft’s online alternative to Google Docs will emerge from beta before the end of this year. Office Live Workspace is a service that is geared to work as either a standalone product, or in tandem with Office 2003-2007. It has been suggested that the current public beta is fairly close to the final version, and the primary issue outstanding is language support. Microsoft wishes to expand the 11 languages it currently supports to 37 before it officially lifts the beta tag later this year. Spokesmen Kirk Gregersen from Microsoft has also reportedly commented on the surprising trends they have identified during the public beta. It was originally assumed that casual users such as students would use Live Workspace as a means to author and remotely access documents. Instead, the service is being used mostly as a single access point for collaborative efforts involving multiple users. Insiders have suggested that this only further demonstrates why desktop versions of Microsoft Office won’t be leaving us anytime soon.

For those who haven’t been following the development of Office Live Workspace, hit the jump to learn more about the services currently being offered.

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windows, news, Google, Microsoft Office, Hotmail, Windows Live, Spaces, Office Live Workspace, google apps

Posted 09/04/08 at 09:34:22 PM by Pulkit Chandna

Google Apps might be a dwarf compared to its rival Microsoft Office but it is making steady progress. It has finally made a stride of some significance by making it to 1 million enterprise users. The company claims to be successfully wooing 3,000 businesses to Google Apps everyday. However, it is certain that a significant chunk of its users are using the free version; the Premium version carries an annual subscription fee of $50.

Google Apps’ contribution to Google’s annual income was a paltry $4 million in 2007, and not a whole lot should change in the foreseeable future. Not that Google would be banking on a miraculous turnaround, as its product currently doesn’t even deserve to feature in the same sentence as Microsoft Office – at least going by the economics of magnitude. Google seems to be aiming for a ponderous victory over Microsoft.

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Software, Microsoft Office, business, enterprises, google apps, 1 million users

Posted 09/02/08 at 07:43:55 PM by Pulkit Chandna

Google has launched a video sharing service for business users as part of its Google Apps bouquet. You might think that this would certainly have an edge over Youtube. But the only major difference between this video sharing service and Youtube is exclusivity: only those with necessary permission will be able to view the videos unlike Youtube. There is a cap on the size of videos with paid users only allowed up to 300MB per video and 3GB in all.

Do not mistake this for a video conferencing service, for this is certainly not intended to be one. The video sharing service is now part of the Google Apps package for which users have to pay $50 a year. A free version of Google Apps sans APIs and customer supports is also available.

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Software, google apps, google video sharing for business, corporates