Google Commits to

99.99% Uptime for Google Apps
 

Google has announced that it has made some changes to its service level agreement (SLA) for Google Apps, to reduce the possibility that users will experience any downtime. The company says it has eliminated maintenance windows from the SLA, so Google will never plan for users to be down when they're upgrading services or maintaining their systems.  

"People expect email to be as reliable as their phone's dial tone, and our goal is to deliver that kind of always-on availability with our applications," says Matthew Glotzbach, Google's Enterprise Product Management Director. "Going forward, all downtime will be counted and applied towards the customer's SLA." 

Google has also made changes to the SLA so that any intermittent downtime is counted. "Previously, a period of less than ten minutes was not included," explains Glotzbach. "We believe any instance that causes our users to experience downtime should be avoided -- period."