Issues with Google Mail in September, and more recently with Google’s Postini and T-Mobile’s Sidekick data hosted by Microsoft and Danger have brought to light one of the important aspects of using cloud computing: your data integrity and system performance is based directly on the technology partner you choose. These issues are not necessarily a failure of cloud computing, but an example of what can happen when you have poor IT management.  SaaS solutions can be more cost effective initially, but having your data managed by large scale third parties could lead to some dire consequences for your business. As we have seen with Danger, Google, and other SaaS providers, there is no way for you to be entirely sure your data is secure or your systems will always be available.

Today, some of Util-IT’s customers were directly affected by the issues at Postini. Fortunately, because of our monitoring and management solutions we were able to quickly work around the issue, allowing their mail to flow into their inboxes without delay. While they may have lost some of their SPAM filtering features provided by Postini, the important thing was they were able to get their messages. All of our clients have their e-mail hosted locally and manged by Util-IT. This gives them direct control of there data and the ability to react quickly to any issue. And while bringing services like e-mail in-house instead of hosting them with a third party may be more expensive on the front-end, there are clear advantages to having them there if you are working with a knowledgeable technology partner that has a financial responsibility to keep them up and running.