Gmail Down Again; SaaS-based E-mail Gets Another Black Eye

Blogger: Guy Creese

Once again, Gmail was down, this time for several hours, but is now back up. Gmail had a hiccup back in mid-April as well, when its IMAP support vanished for awhile. As I noted back then--and I'll say it again--it's this kind of behavior that gives an enterprise pause when considering a move to SaaS-based e-mail.

As a cost-saving move, SaaS-based e-mail can be very attractive to enterprises looking to save money in these economically trying times. However, there are arguments against it--will users be willing to adopt a new user interface, and will the hosted version stay up more than an internally run version? These are the questions that enterprises need to ponder, which is why Larry Cannell wrote a Burton Group report on SaaS-based e-mail that will be out in the next several months.