Give Microsoft credit: In a blog post, the software giant has publicly apologized for recent cloud and SaaS outages involving BPOS (Business Productivity Online Suite). The outages impacted North American customers leveraging Exchange Online, SharePoint Online and other Microsoft hosted applications. Feeling bruised, some channel partners are seeking alternative hosted Exchange and hosted SharePoint options. Here’s the update.
As you may recall, Microsoft has suffered roughly three BPOS outages in recent weeks, raising questions about Microsoft’s ability to host its own applications. Further complicating matters, Microsoft seems to be locked in a SaaS price war with Google Apps, so any outage is particularly troubling for the software giant.
On September 8, Microsoft’s Morgan Cole posted a public apology to BPOS users. Within the apology Cole wrote:
“We aspire to deliver quality services, and in the last couple of weeks, we have fallen short of this aspiration. During this time, we experienced two network access issues in North America, and just yesterday, two brief periods of service degradation also affecting users served from North America. These incidents were unique to BPOS and not related to other Microsoft services.
I wanted to write here to, first, apologize to you, our customers, for any inconvenience these issues may have caused. We know how important these services are to the daily operation of your business, and we take our responsibility as your partner and service provider very seriously.”
Cole also offered deeper details about what caused the outages and described Microsoft’s commitment to delivering a “quality service experience every day.”
Kudos to Cole for offering the public apology. Generally speaking, The VAR Guy believes Microsoft will ultimately improve BPOS service levels. Plus, our resident blogger thinks Microsoft’s sister service, the Windows Azure cloud, is one of the most promising cloud platforms on the web.
The Big Question for Partners
But here’s the real challenge: Even as Microsoft publicly apologizes to end-customers, channel partners also are suffering from the BPOS outages. Each time BPOS goes dark, VARs and MSPs that promote BPOS to end-customers have also had to apologize for the service outages.
In other words, Microsoft’s BPOS outages potentially tarnish the reputations of VARs and MSPs that recommend the service to end customers.
In recent weeks, The VAR Guy has heard from six readers — mostly small VARs serving SMBs — that are mulling a move to alternative hosted Exchange providers including Apptix, Intermedia and Verio. Again: The VAR Guy believes Microsoft will eventually get BPOS right. But short-term, some channel partners are feeling bruised and looking for pain relief elsewhere.
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[...] to what happened in 2009 when Google Apps went down for two hours. There were some reporting, here, and here, but I have not seen any news about these problems in general public sites. Is this [...]
You hit it on the head – here is the real problem from the channel perspective:
“But here’s the real challenge: Even as Microsoft publicly apologizes to end-customers, channel partners also are suffering from the BPOS outages. Each time BPOS goes dark, VARs and MSPs that promote BPOS to end-customers have also had to apologize for the service outages.”
Microsoft doesn’t understand that when someone is reselling your product, what you’re asking them to do is go out and put their name and reputation on the line for you. VAR’s have put years and years into building their businesses and earning the trust of their customers. When Microsoft goes into something unprepared like this they’re big enough to absorb bumps in the road and move on – they don’t realize the kinds of problems this can cause for a VAR.
Keep in mind here intermedia has had some outages in the past week, one occuring right now where i have users with limited blackberry services going on 2 days now from intermedia. The best of them suffer outages, we just all hope they are learning from them and doing everything in their power to minimize them
Agreed; Intermedia has hit a few bumps in recent months. But as a whole the cloud market seems to be getting more and more reliable, The VAR Guy believes.
-TVG
[...] part and a make-good on service-level commitments. But The VAR Guy went as far to ask: “Will Partners Accept BPOS Apology?” Even in opining that Microsoft will continue to improve its SaaS, The VAR Guy left the specter [...]
“Give Microsoft credit: In a blog post, the software giant has publicly apologized for recent cloud and SaaS outages involving BPOS (Business Productivity Online Suite). …”
Why is Microsoft getting credit here? Apologising is the least they should be doing. I really don’t want to get all fanboy here. But a Microsoft product not performing as it should is an all too familiar experience these days.
It’s time people and businesses started calling time on Microsoft.
Aikiwolfie: The VAR Guy appreciates the fact that you took the time to comment. Our resident blogger continues to watch BPOS closely for signs of potential progress…
-TVG
[...] It’s always a bit tricky — and potentially risky — for executives to step into the spotlight and talk about their cloud reliability enhancements. I’ve seen plenty of executives take the step, only to suffer a partial or complete outage a few weeks later. I witnessed that exact scenario happen to a major hosted Exchange provider in mid-2010. And keep in mind: Even giants like Microsoft have spent recent weeks apologizing for SaaS outages. [...]