Monday, October 20, 2008

Latest Gmail Outage Raises Concerns for Small Business

Sometimes, your greatest assets can become costly liabilities. Google's remarkable success and rapid growth over the past few years may have set the bar too high for customer expectations of their applications, particularly Gmail.

A recent outage on the popular email server, which is in a SAAS format (Software as  a Service), caused thousands of headaches when users went an entire day without functional Gmail. Google's credibility took a hit from the damaging reports.
Messaging expert Michael Osterman told CIO.com that email outages aren't uncommon, regardless of the format, and Google simply receives more of the media's negative spotlight when it fails to deliver quailty service to its users.
 

The Google Mail outages are given more attention, and it will give SaaS a black eye. But if you look at Google's records, Gmail is still well over 99 percent available.

Google's unique predicament reminds me of a coach or an executive who surpasses expectations earlier than expected, and as a result, they receive unfair criticism when adversity arrives. A specific example who comes to mind is former New YorK City mayor, Rudy Giuliani. In his book, Leadership, he elaborated on the the daunting challenges for maintaining approval and appeasing 14 million people with different pleas.

To control the chaos during his eight years is mayor, he followed a simple but profound principle: "Under-promise and over-deliver", and he urged his supporting staff to do the same.The logic behind Rudy's mindset was: You can't be all things to all people, all of the time, so don't make any promises you can't keep.

In an ironic twist of fate, Rudy failed to adhere to his own principle during his run in the Republican Presidential Primary. He over-promised and didn't deliver Florida, a state where he devoted the majority of his energy and attention.
The bottom line: Once you've established star power, whether it's in business,politics,sports or entertainment, you'll be held to a higher, and sometimes unrealistic standard.

Posted By Matt O'Hern at 04:56 PM
Permanent Link: Latest Gmail Outage Raises Concerns for Small Business | Comments (1)

(1) Comments on Latest Gmail Outage Raises Concerns for Small Business

I am very much agree with this information that Google set the bar too high for customer expectations of their applications, particularly Gmail. Sometimes expectations can' be fulfilled, if it happen then its make wrong impact on image. Still Google is very big name on web, so nothing to worry about always stay fit to customers requirments.

Comments by Small Business Server Support : Wednesday, October 22, 2008 at 02:02 AM

Post a Comment