On Tuesday, Google's Apps went down for 100 minutes, read the story here. This outage left users of all Google tools without access during the middle of a business day. Companies that rely upon these applications for email, word processing documents, and spreadsheets, were left out in the cold as their customers wondered why they were not being tended to and projects were delayed.

Free or very cheap software as a service (SaaS) products like Google Apps provide a nice entry point for many companies that cannot afford reliable, more established services. However, if your company provides a service or goods to organizations with high demands on performance and reliability (what company does not now?), then you should ensure your vendors have a long history of performance before implementing a system. This is how Zepol does business and how we choose the companies that we do business with. We do not choose fly-by-night organizations, but rather heavily research vendors, ensuring they are not only reliable and established, but also do business the right way.

From our experience in the trade data industry, we know there are many companies that work like ours, researching vendors before subscribing to the service that may not be the least expensive, but provides the lowest cost of ownership and most benefits. There are others that choose providers based completely on cost and ignore the time wasted when they experience inevitable down times that come from vendors using either antiquated systems or unreliable outsourcing vendors to cut costs.

In the last week, several companies in our industry have experienced interruptions in service to their email programs and databases because they outsource their business applications and storage to companies that are unable to maintain the huge computing requirements in this industry. Because outages affect our core business (providing timely, on-demand data to our customer base), Zepol ensures that we fully vet our vendors, own and manage the most advanced server technology on the market, and have redundant systems to ensure our customers and prospects always receive the best care.