Google: SLAs Here and QoS’s Not Far Behind
July 14, 2008
Stephen Shankland’s essay “Google Aims to Earn Business Trust in the Cloud” provides a good summary of Google’s service level agreement for Gmail. An SLA specifies a level below which a an operation will perform. Mr. Shankland’s focus is on the white hot topic of cloud computing. Organizations are reluctant to trust any information to a service that is flaky. The most important point for me in his essay was:
Google is trying to communicate better with users and customers…
SLAs alone are not enough to reduce risk for an organization contemplating moving services and information “out there” in the cloud. This summer is what I have called “the summer of transparency”. Everywhere I look I see Google executives chattering about the technical innards, the child care services, privacy, and other Google issues. One of my clients said, “Enough Google already.”
But there is an interesting aspect of Google’s SLA that warrants mentioning. In late 1998 or early 1999, Google engineers began working on a Quality of Service invention. You can read more about this invention by downloading US7142536, Communications Network Quality of Service System and Method for Real Time Information, Filed December 14, 2000. Granted November 28, 2006. Google’s SLA is just one component in a broader set of guarantees which extend into the methods often associated with assuring system level functions, not application level functions.
With “guarantees” like these, Google can assert that risks associated with moving to the cloud are to some degree ameliorated.
Stephen Arnold, July 15, 2008
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