[LINK] 500,000 Gmail accounts go offline

[Michael Skeggs mike@bystander.net]

On 2 March 2011 09:35,  <grove at zeta.org.au> wrote:
> On Wed, 2 Mar 2011, Johann Kruse wrote:
>
>> " 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?
>
> Only that <some uni> has already committed student email to outsourced
> Microsoft "Live at edu" and so will eventually reap what they have sown.
>
> I wait with bated breath the first casualties of the "Microsoft ate my thesis" scenario.
>

I work for a business that has 1000+ gmail enterprise accounts.
The up time and reliability is much better that the previous Exchange
server, but others making the same move would do well to consider the
extra load a cloud based solution will put on local proxies and
firewalls.
In the 1990s I worked for an ISP that moved from BSD based mail (as
was used by the customers) to a Microsoft based one (I don't think it
was called exchange then). Availability plummeted and then there was a
24 hour outage to deal with a virus. That was because the new IT
manager was more comfortable with Windows and didn't know about Unix,
even though we had half a dozen sysops sitting on the other side of
the room. That he didn't get fired is a testament to how good
Microsoft are at marketing to management.

Regards,
Michael Skeggs