When it comes to cloud services, reliability is paramount.
Enterprise customers who use Microsoft's Business Productivity Online Suite put their trust in Microsoft's servers instead of their own. So when Microsoft's BPOS service went down -- three times in the past two weeks -- many customers lost access to their Exchange e-mail and other collaboration services.
Our local cable company has a policy that if your service is down for one hour or more you may request a "refund" for one day's service. It is a fair policy. What is Microsoft's policy, to passively apologize? Will they "only apologize" when the time comes when big bucks are paid for their cloud services? It is impossible for me to recommend Microsoft cloud services to corporate customers without a written 99.99% uptime guarantee and one day's refund when they go down for, say, an hour. I don't accept "trust me".
#2 By
15406 (216.191.227.68)
at
9/13/2010 8:10:08 AM
Hermes: Alright, alright. What do we do when we break somebody's window?
Dwight: (sheepish) Pay for it?
[Hermes laughs.]
Hermes: Oh, heavens, no! We apologise, with nice, cheap words!
Futurama - "The Route of All Evil"
#3 By
4240821 (213.139.195.162)
at
10/27/2023 9:36:48 AM