Direct Line Blog

Gmail outage raises questions about cloud computing

Yesterday Google had some issues and Gmail was down for a couple of hours. Once it was all sorted out, Google attributed the issue to overloaded servers on its blog. This is nothing new. Back in May, Gmail had a similar outage. This may be an issue with cloud computing, in which people are depending on a Web-hosted e-mail server rather than something with the e-mail in house. As more e-mail marketing services begin to offer their products and platforms "in the cloud," I can't help but wonder if this is a good idea. Imagine being ready to send a campaign that you have been building and then all of a sudden, you can't access the work. Now, of course, I know that Google is much more trafficked than an ESP and that maybe that has to do with the overload. After all, it seems like everyone has a Gmail account today. But still, it kind of makes me wonder if we should be moving to "in the cloud" solutions when even Google is getting it wrong.
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