Google and Microsoft have recently been poking holes in each others’ uptime SLAs (Service Level Agreement.) The squabble has been summed up here by Paul Thurrot from Windows IT Pro.
In short Google claimed its Google Apps service had achieved 99.984% uptime in 2010, and citing an independent report went on to say this was 46 times more available than Microsoft’s Exchange Server. Microsoft retaliated by saying BPOS achieved 99.9% (or better) uptime in 2010 and this was in line with their SLA. Microsoft quite rightly protested at Google’s definitions of uptime and what should or should not be included.
Uptime is one of those things included in your service providers SLA that you never really give much attention to, unless it’s alarmingly low, 90% for example. Most Cloud, SaaS or hosted providers will give uptime SLA figures of between 99.9% (three nines) and 99.999% (five nines). Mimecast proudly offers a 100% uptime SLA. The difference between each of the ‘nines’ is largely unimportant unless you happen to be suffering an outage, or continual outages at the hands of your service provider.
Most reputable SaaS or cloud vendors will have absolute confidence in their infrastructure in order to offer you a high SLA. Mimecast’s 100% uptime SLA is the result of large amounts of R&D time and effort going into the building of a highly scalable and resilient infrastructure, one we can use to backup our SLA and give it the teeth it needs. Further enhancements in the SLA are provided by making sure service credits or compensation is available if something does go awry.
The proof is really in the long term customers though. Mimecast continually acquires customers from other less ‘available’ vendors because they can’t seem to keep their service up and running. Continual high profile outages on their part, whilst unfortunate, undermine their SLA somewhat.
Google and Microsoft have recently been poking holes in each others’ uptime SLAs (Service Level Agreement.) The squabble has been summed up here by Paul Thurrot from Windows IT Pro.
In short Google claimed its Google Apps service had achieved 99.984% uptime in 2010, and citing an independent report went on to say this was 46 times more available than Microsoft’s Exchange Server. Microsoft retaliated by saying BPOS achieved 99.9% (or better) uptime in 2010 and this was in line with their SLA. Microsoft quite rightly protested at Google’s definitions of uptime and what should or should not be included.
Uptime is one of those things included in your service providers SLA that you never really give much attention to, unless it’s alarmingly low, 90% for example. Most Cloud, SaaS or hosted providers will give uptime SLA figures of between 99.9% (three nines) and 99.999% (five nines). Mimecast proudly offers a 100% uptime SLA. The difference between each of the ‘nines’ is largely unimportant unless you happen to be suffering an outage, or continual outages at the hands of your service provider.
Most reputable SaaS or cloud vendors will have absolute confidence in their
Google and Microsoft have recently been poking holes in each others’ uptime SLAs (Service Level Agreement.) The squabble has been summed up here by Paul Thurrot from Windows IT Pro.
In short Google claimed its Google Apps service had achieved 99.984% uptime in 2010, and citing an independent report went on to say this was 46 times more available than Microsoft’s Exchange Server. Microsoft retaliated by saying BPOS achieved 99.9% (or better) uptime in 2010 and this was in line with their SLA. Microsoft quite rightly protested at Google’s definitions of uptime and what should or should not be included.
Uptime is one of those things included in your service providers SLA that you never really give much attention to, unless it’s alarmingly low, 90% for example. Most Cloud, SaaS or hosted providers will give uptime SLA figures of between 99.9% (three nines) and 99.999% (five nines). Mimecast proudly offers a 100% uptime SLA. The difference between each of the ‘nines’ is largely unimportant unless you happen to be suffering an outage, or continual outages at the hands of your service provider.
Most reputable SaaS or cloud vendors will have absolute confidence in their infrastructure in order to offer you a high SLA. Mimecast’s 100% uptime SLA is the result of large amounts of R&D time and effort going into the building of a highly scalable and resilient infrastructure, one we can use to backup our SLA and give it the teeth it needs. Further enhancements in the SLA are provided by making sure service credits or compensation is available if something does go awry.
The proof is really in the long term customers though. Mimecast continually acquires customers from other less ‘available’ vendors because they can’t seem to keep their service up and running. Continual high profile outages on their part, whilst unfortunate, undermine their SLA somewhat.
infrastructure in order to offer you a high SLA. Mimecast’s 100% uptime SLA is the result of large amounts of R&D time and effort going into the building of a highly scalable and resilient infrastructure, one we can use to backup our SLA and give it the teeth it needs. Further enhancements in the SLA are provided by making sure service credits or compensation is available if something does go awry.
The proof is really in the long term customers though. Mimecast continually acquires customers from other less ‘available’ vendors because they can’t seem to keep their service up and running. Continual high profile outages on their part, whilst unfortunate, undermine their SLA somewhat.
