Re: Google Gaffe: Gmail Outage Shows Pitfalls of Online Services

[David Farber <dave () farber net>]

Begin forwarded message:

From: "John Shoch" <shoch () alloyventures com>
Date: February 27, 2009 5:25:29 PM EST
To: <dave () farber net>, "ip" <ip () v2 listbox com>
Cc: "John Shoch" <shoch () alloyventures com>
Subject: RE: [IP] Re:     Google Gaffe: Gmail Outage Shows Pitfalls of  
Online Services

Dave,

So, the email below casually suggests that Google has a 99.9% SLA for  
paying customers.....

And there is a report that Google extended a 15-day service credit to  
Premier users because of the recent outage of GMail;  good for Google.
http://news.cnet.com/8301-17939_109-10172023-2.html

But, I'm a curious guy, and I wondered how this SLA was designed to  
work.

a.  The link below points to the Google Apps Premier Edition Agreement.
This 16 page document does not actually include an SLA;  it does state  
that "Google warrants that it will provide the Services in accordance  
with the applicable SLA."
In the Definitions, "SLA" then points to another document at:
http://www.google.com/apps/intl/en/terms/sla.html

b.  This is the "Google Apps Service Level Agreement," where we learn  
some interesting things:

b1:  The Monthly Uptime Percentage is defined in terms of the outages  
suffered from all Downtime Periods.
b2.  A "Downtime Period" is "a period of ten consecutive minutes of  
Downtime.  Intermittent Downtime for a period of less then 10 minutes  
will not be counted towards any Downtime Period.  [So if the system is  
down for 5 minutes and then up for five minutes, all day, none of it  
counts as down.]
b3.  Furthermore, Downtime is defined as when "there is more then a 5  
percent user error rate.  Downtime is measured based on server side  
error rate."
b4.  Oh, by the way, what do you get if you can demonstrate that the  
SLA was breached?  Extra free days of Service Credit.
b5.  Finally, "Customer Must Request Service Credit. In order to  
receive any of the Service Credits described above, Customer must  
notify Google within thirty days from the time Customer becomes  
eligible to receive a Service Credit. Failure to comply with this  
requirement will forfeit Customer's right to receive a Service Credit."

So now I am really curious:  does any customer of the Premier Edition  
actually have a tool that would tell him if the "server side error  
rate" is over 5% for 10 consecutive minutes?  How many Premier Edition  
customers would have the tools to actually make a claim for the recent  
outage?  Was it worth paying for the SLA?

I'm not suggesting that any of this is "wrong," but it is interesting  
to see the details of how a "99.9% SLA" actually works.....
Now, please don't mis-understand:  I suspect that Google and GMail  
have some of the best availability numbers in the industry.  And the  
SLA may be a good proxy or advertisement for the hard work which got  
them the good availability.

And let's give Google credit for pro-actively extending a service  
credit to their users -- I commend them for that.

But the lesson for me:  paying for an SLA doesn't automatically mean  
that you actually get better service......and you may have to do some  
work to get the benefit of it.

John Shoch
Alloy Ventures


-----Original Message-----
Begin forwarded message:

From: Mark Harrison <mh () pixar com>
Date: February 27, 2009 3:43:04 PM EST
To: dave () farber net
Cc: ip <ip () v2 listbox com>, krhoffmanii () gmail com
Subject: Re: [IP] Re:   Google Gaffe: Gmail Outage Shows Pitfalls of
Online Services

......

If you are a paying customer you get a 99.9% SLA and 24/7 access to
customer support.

http://www.google.com/apps/intl/en/business/details.html




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