Google and Workday Outages Show SaaS Isn't Perfect

Google and Workday Outages Show SaaS Isn't Perfect

Companies should think about IT Support when choosing software as a service over on premises software because it is inexpensive and flexible, yet recent outages at Google and Workday are reminders that SaaS isn't perfect.
Most SaaS vendors only guarantee 99.9% high availability or better, depending on the app, because in any IT infrastructure, unplanned outages cand and do occur.



SaaS customers should expect their vendors to provide a "trust site" for monitoring service levels (such as Trust.salesforce.com or status.netsuite.com), although not all vendors provide such sites.

Workday, which offers human resources, financial apps, and payroll-as-a-service, is among those that don't offer a trust site. But it's still a small company, with only 100 customers, so it was easy enough to call or e-mail customers with status updates during a 15 hour outage on Sept. 24.



But rather than simply logging it, the device took itself offline. When Workday couldn't resolve the problem within a few hours, it began the 12-hour process of moving its systems over to a back-up data center.