In December 2010 Google launched Google Message Continuity for Exchange Server. This service provides synchronization of Exchange Server data into the cloud to allow email to continue operations if a disaster occurs.
At the time of launch Google Message Continuity only supported Exchange 2003 and 2007. Today Google has announced that Google Message Continuity also supports Exchange Server 2010.
At face value I consider Google Message Continuity to be a decent offering for a limited group of customers who can’t or won’t implement an Exchange-based off-site DR capability. However I am not convinced of the accuracy of the statistics that Google uses when they are promoting the merits of the service.
Recent research conducted by the Radicati Group suggests that users of Microsoft Exchange® face on average over five hours of downtime a month, which is a combination of both unplanned outages and regularly scheduled downtime.
I’m sure I’m not the only Exchange specialist who would love to meet some of these customers who are experiencing five hours of downtime a month (or more, considering that is an average) and help them out with what is clearly a serious problem.
Microsoft also shared their thoughts on Google’s claims. You can read more about that here.
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