Oh sure...4 days in and Gmail goes down

I know email services go down. Whether you're running Exchange or a little Linux box, host your own mail, or use mail from your ISP or another service, it does, on occasion, crap out. We've been running Google Apps for Education since July with great luck for our year-round staff and had a really successful rollout for teachers last week (they had access this summer, but most didn't really dig into its capabilities until school started). We even rolled it out for our high school students yesterday and teachers were already sharing documents with students and engaging them in a variety of activities.

And what happens today?

I sell Apps to everyone, teachers have really bought in, and we make it through 4 days of school before a major outage. Seriously? Come on.

I know I'm whining here. Stuff happens, right? But this hurts my credibility and it hurts adoption. Couldn't we have at least made it through a week? I have teachers who are converting every single one of their powerpoints, syllabi, and course documents to Google Docs so that they can easily be shared with students. Other teachers have fully migrated their blogs, personal websites, and other course materials to Apps since it's so easy to make these resources widely available within the context of Apps.

And now it's down. I'm sure it will be up and running tomorrow and, unlike a mail server I host myself, getting Apps available again takes no work on my part. I just get to blog and complain about it. It's more just a matter of Murphy's Law. Tomorrow will be a damage control day, as I convince teachers that it's still OK to put their faith in Apps. Bummer.