Google Apps Status Dashboard: enterprise-friendly

Following a major Gmail outage, Google released a new, publicly available status dashboard showing system health for the company's Apps products.

This release brings Google into the ranks of companies such as Salesforce.com and Amazon, which already have dashboards that accurately report system status to end-users.

The Google Enterprise Blog announced the news:

The Google Apps Status Dashboard represents an additional layer of transparency that we believe will be particularly useful for our business users, and it's also relevant to users of our consumer products. The Status Dashboard is the best place to check for information on service availability for Google Apps anywhere in the world.

Here's a screen capture of the dashboard:

And this screen shows the detail if you click one of the information icons in the dashboard:

THE PROJECT FAILURES ANALYSIS

SaaS providers that are serious about the enterprise recognize that availability and reliability are essential ingredients for success. Google first announced its dashboard plans last summer, around the time it forged an enterprise partnership with consulting firm, Cap Gemini.

It's interesting to note that Google's SLA terms of service offers Apps customers a commitment to 99.9% monthly uptime:

During the Term of the applicable Google Apps Agreement, the Google Apps Covered Services web interface will be operational and available to Customer at least 99.9% of the time in any calendar month (the "Google Apps SLA").

Only time will reveal whether Google fulfills the promise of transparency and responsiveness implied by the new dashboard. However, this offering is certainly an important step in making Google Apps enterprise-friendly.