Google two weeks ago announced that it has changed its SLA (Service Level Agreement) for paid versions of its Google Apps suite of products, removing provisions for planned downtime.  The goal, says Google Enterprise product management director Matt Glotzbach, is to deliver service that’s as reliable as telephone dial tone.

Understandably some observers see this as a war of “nines,” since the move pits the strengths of its cloud-based architecture against conventional on-premise deployments.  Detractors might also argue that Google hasn’t always been completely honest where its definition of uptime is concerned, since outages lasting below 10 minutes were simply ignored in the past.  Of course, the recent changes in Google’ SLA now counts intermittent downtime towards the total used to determine the credit customers are entitled to.

Regardless, email administrators are probably left a little worried, understandable since Google’s self-sufficient Gmail email service is part of Google Apps, and which relegates the administrator to simple tasks such as creating user accounts and assigning passwords.  While I’ve previously written about Some Reasons for an On-Premise Deployment of Exchange Server, I wanted to specifically write about why Microsoft Exchange is unlikely to go away anytime soon.

Superior usability

Gmail and Google Calendar have been greatly enhanced over the years.  In fact, Google Calendar now comes with the ability to share “Free/Easy” information, and can handle multiple calendars.  Overall usability still trails that of the desktop based Microsoft Outlook 2010 however, which sports a host of additional capabilities including the ability to access multiple email accounts, send meeting requests, and the laxity to import (or export) PST folders.  And while Google has added offline capability to aspects of its Google Apps, it pales in comparison to the completely seamless offline ability in Microsoft Outlook.

Uncertain legal jurisdiction

The legal jurisdiction for businesses operating across different countries will find that the legal situation is relatively ambiguous where a hosted service like Gmail is concerned.  In fact, Google’s Eric Schmidt, who recently stepped aside as CEO (but will remain as executive chairman), has said that the company and the search engine information that it indexes is subject to the United States Patriot Act and “it is possible that all that information could be made available to the authorities.”

As you can imagine, the conditions under which Google will reveal one’s email data is unclear, as is whether the company will inform the legitimate account holder prior to enabling access to third parties.  In comparison, an on-premise deployment eliminates the opportunity for surreptitious email snooping.

Unequal comparison of downtime

To support its assertion of Gmail’s superior uptime, Google supplied research figures from The Radicati Group that shows the company’s Gmail having zero planned downtime and a very low number of unplanned downtime in 2010.  An entry on the Official Google Enterprise blog hence noted that “Gmail is 32 times more reliable than the average email system, and 46 times more available than Microsoft Exchange.”

Such an assertion is not accurate however.  Because businesses will only schedule downtime late in the night or early in the morning, it hence follows that planned downtime do not affect user productivity and is not a very useful gauge in that regard.  In addition, the figures only measure Gmail’s uptime without considering the ability of users to connect to the service, while downtime in the context of Microsoft Exchange typically includes all factors.  And of course, the fact that Gmail doesn’t offer equivalent features makes it an unequal comparison in the first place.

Unequal reliability

In order to appeal to businesses more, Google have added support for Exchange-like sync with Outlook, as well as mobile devices via Exchange ActiveSync and support for BlackBerry smartphones.  While the various components mentioned above are touted as offering comparable functionality, actual user experience actually varies.

For one, it must be noted that Google has not actually implemented many of the control capabilities inherent to Exchange ActiveSync, which leaves businesses with restricted options in the management and securing of mobile devices.  In addition, the use of plug-ins in order to sync with Outlook results in gaps in terms of stability and deployment – users are burdened with configuration overhead that Exchange does not require.  In fact, a search of various online forums reveals bugs and synchronization problems that have resulted in unhappy users.

The substantial advantages highlighted above means that Microsoft Exchange and email administrators will not be going away soon.  However, the terms of the new SLA from Google does mean that CIOs and IT managers will invariably come under increased pressure to increase their uptime.  On that front, I shall be exploring technologies and deployments geared towards helping businesses attain a high level of uptime next week.

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