Did Google's Gmail really goof-up?

It's too bad the National Transportation Safety Board can't investigate Google to find out just why Gmail crashed Tuesday as Google's explanations for its outages (via its dashboard) are short and kindergarten-like.

The NTSB would seek out the root cause of the outage, hold hearings and issue a report with recommendations for fixing the problem. But Google follows the standard operating practice of cloud and SaaS (Software-as-a-Service) providers, and that is to tell customers as little as possible about an outage. They treat their customers like dumb bunnies.

A Gmail outage isn't on the scale of a contaminated food supply incident, the discovery of lead paint on children's toys, or a plane crash—all events that trigger a federal investigation and detailed reports that flesh out causes and remedies.

But what happens if Google wins contracts to provide applications and mail services for Los Angeles and other government entities?

Cloud and SaaS providers increasingly want to manage critical services for government. And in time, outages that are now annoyances may have critical implications to them. Los Angeles' IT department is recommending the city move to Google Apps and says the company's services "often exceed the current city level."

That's a plus for Google but if something goes wrong with LA's IT systems, at least there is still a clear line of accountability to the managers responsible and an opportunity to probe.

But along with telling customers as little as possible, hosting, cloud and SaaS providers indemnify themselves as much as possible from any business losses resulting from an outage.

In theory, the accountability is provided by the market: a customer can move to new service provider. But a migration to the cloud may be a path of no return. LA, in its assessment of cloud services, said that if it ditches its current infrastructure, "it may be cost-prohibitive to return to the city-owned and operated structure."

Today, the harm is mostly economic. When eBay Inc.'s PayPal service crashed last month, it was just something customers had to deal with it.

PayPal blamed the failure on a "back-end router" and some redundancy issues, and left it at that. That meant the companies like Sailrite Enterprises Inc., a sailing supply company, which relied exclusively on PayPal, were unlikely to learn what happened and had to suffer the loss.

But if cloud and SaaS providers manage government services then it's unlikely that an informed public will settle for incomplete explanations about outages.

If the service is critical, they will want to know what went wrong. Was the equipment upgraded, patched? Was staffing at proper levels? When was the last time someone tested the emergency generators? And so on.

Answers to fair and legitimate questions will be sought and little "dashboards" aren't going to cut it.

Agencies

Leading service provider completes energy audits of data centres

As part of the Green IT project, Adventity BPO India Pvt Ltd, a leading provider of fully integrated strategic KPO and BPO services to a diverse global business community has completed energy audits of all its data centers and also made changes to reduce the carbon footprint. In a interview with Manu Sharma, Associate Editor at CIOL, Rajendra Sawant, CIO of Adventity talks about switching off any servers when it is not required and also on how hard it is to get the right IT manpower in an organization.

CIOL: What are the major challenges faced by you in your organization?
Rajendra Sawant: Some of the major challenges we face in our organization include:
* Getting the right manpower
* Unrealistic expectations from IT
* To convince top level management about importance of IT

CIOL: Does your organization link IT budget with the company's performance or growth? If yes please elaborate?
RS: No, our organization does not link IT budget with the company's performance or growth

CIOL: Can you cite any specific areas where IT has come up as an accomplishment in your stint? RS: One of our major accomplishments has been that we converted most of the IT Infrastructure projects from Capex into Opex. The other include major cost reduction on almost all aspects of IT Infrastructure and also creating a Wi-Fi and Mobile savvy IT climate.

CIOL: Going forward, what are the challenges that you foresee?
RS: Going forward the challenges we forsee include:
* Retaining good talent pool
* Protect IT investments
* To delivery more for less cost

CIOL: How far have you come as regards to adopting 'Green IT technologies'?
RS: We have done an energy audit of all our data centers and made changes to reduce carbon footprint. We also switch off any servers when it is not required.

CIOL: What has been the hike in the IT budget for the new fiscal year? What has been the growth rate over last year?
RS: IT budget has increased by almost 100 percent and same has happened over last year.

CIOL: Name the top 5 items that you expect to spent on this fiscal year?
RS: * Storage solution
* Server virtualization
* MPLS
* Voice solution upgrade

CIOL: Do you feel the amount allocated for IT is sufficient if yes why? If not why not? How much should you be spending?
RS: We have sufficient allocation for IT. Currently IT being integral part of our service offerings, IT budget allocation gets priority.

CIOL: How big is the IT staff in your organization?
RS: The current strength of IT in our organization is over 150 employees.