[LINK] 500,000 Gmail accounts go offline

[Johann Kruse]

" 500,000 Gmail accounts go offline, some users lose all their data "

http://www.geek.com/articles/geek-pick/500000-gmail-accounts-go-offline-some-users-lose-all-their-data-20110228/


What do Linkers think about the ramifications of this to business
communications stored in a consumer cloud email environment?

Gmail is of course a free consumer product without SLAs, but many
individuals also use it for business.  My cousin is a "freelance"
actor and lost access to his email for several days, which cost him at
least one gig.

>From http://googleenterprise.blogspot.com/2010/03/disaster-recovery-by-google.html...
 " For Google Apps customers, our RPO design target is zero, and our
RTO design target is instant failover. "

Does Google Apps run on different infrastructure to Gmail?  Is this an
actual SLA for paying customers or only a "target"?  I guess what I
want to know is - would my cousin have had a better experience if he
was a paying customer?

What RTO/RPO should business customers expect from a cloud provider,
and what financial protections if any should there be for lost
business?

Cheers,

Johann


Disclaimer: I work for Microsoft and am not intending to bash Google
specifically as this could potentially happen to any consumer email
service including Hotmail - I'm just interested in the consumerisation
trend and the discussion on SLAs etc, and what paying customers should
expect from a service provider.