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Yale Delays Move To Gmail
Mortimer.CA writes "The Yale Daily News is reporting that the move to Gmail has been postponed. After further consultations with faculty and staff, the concerns raised 'fell into three main categories: problems with "cloud computing" (the transfer of information between virtual servers on the Internet), technological risks and downsides, and ideological issues.' In the latter category, 'Google was not willing to provide ITS with a list of countries to which the University's data could be sent [i.e., replicated], but only a list of about 15 countries to which the data would not be sent.'"
I would be more than a little interested in that list too...
the preceding post was not spell checked... suck it.
Yeah, they just print them out and leave them in the lobby.
Sorta, Google call them shards.
http://news.zdnet.com/2100-9588_22-141569.html
Shards can be located by different masters and different masters are located in different locations according to the data type.
So I think Japan (That's where they just dropped their Asia - US cable after all, so it makes sense) has a "complete" replication of all Google data. Some data is also replicated to containers (YouTube etc) for hosting at major ISPs. So all email data would be replicated in non-realtime. If you request something that isn't in that DC it's located in the US or wherever is closest (I guess).
There are multiple "complete" copies on the east and west coast as well as European hub sites or directly connected to European hub sites.
If you ask for a citation, I can dig something up for you....
Curiosity was framed; ignorance killed the cat. -- Author unknown
I was considering a GAPE deployment for a much smaller organization (about 150 users) and ran into real problems finding answers to some questions. In my particular case I was considering a migration off of Exchange. The exact specifics involved were really vague and often times the suggestion was, "Talk to a solutions provider." I went ahead and talked to two of them. When I pressed them for specifics about GAPE replication of Exchange features (Public Folders for example), I got a lot of vague answers along the lines of either, A. "Well, it can kind of do that." or B. "You don't need to do that because the Google way is better."
The major consideration that turned me away from Google was their support (or seeming complete lack of it). I had a terrible time getting my pre-sales questions answered when I went directly to Google. The "premiere partners" (companies that are trying to make a business based on deploying GAPE for organizations) were just as vague. One of them even admitted to me that they have problems getting answers out of Google about new features, or the status of outstanding issues.
I am subscribed to a thread on Google's forums that details people's real world problems with Google support.
http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/Google+Apps/thread?hl=en&tid=384dd0d72db87c6d
Some of the people are obviously idiots who can't read the documentation. The large majority of them have serious problems that are ignored. Just recently someone mentioned that Google quoted them 5 days to recover an accidently deleted mailbox.
I don't doubt that Google Apps could very well be a great product. The key is that it "could" be a great product. Great products require great support. Great products require a certain ease of implementation and use. As it stands currently, GAPE is more like a beta framework that requires a lot of heavy lifting on the part of an IT department. It is hardly a production ready, polished product that can be sold as a service.
There is no fucking way there are google servers in 190 some odd countries.
The cliche IT answer to "Where does your cloud store data?" is "Why do you want to know?" And it is with good reason.
Are you trying to avoid embargoed countries? The list of places it will not be stored should be pretty good. Are you trying to avoid a specific country? Again, the list of places it will not be stored will reveal enough.
If your customer (in this case, Yale would be Google's potential customer) wants data stored in a specific country, they gotta ask why instead of just caving. If you care WHERE your data is stored, then you don't really want Cloud storage. And I'm pretty sure Google would like to reserve the right to have servers in the Vatican if they got a sweet deal there.
This is kind customers with non-functional requirements ("you should use SQL Server, I saw an ad in InformationWeek magazine that says it costs less in the long run!").
More Twoson than Cupertino
Only half the bits are on one server vs. another
While this is of course theoretical, if you put all the "zero" bits on one server and the "one" bits on another, you could also achieve fantastic compression ratios.
Come to think of it, this gives me a great idea for a defragmentation program...
How can I believe you when you tell me what I don't want to hear?
There is no fucking way there are google servers in 190 some odd countries.
The cliche IT answer to "Where does your cloud store data?" is "Why do you want to know?" And it is with good reason.
The answer is NOYB (none of your business) and it is with good reason. Even though Google provides the service, the data belongs to the customer, i.e. Yale. It is in Yale's discretion where they want to store their data and what reasons they are willing to give out to 3rd parties for doing so.
However, I'll give you a good reason. If Google can guarantee that the data will be stored in certain countries (or even offer an option for an extra fee or whatever), then it will satisfy Yale's comfort level with respect to the privacy and legality of their data.
For example, for argument's sake, if Google could guarantee the data would only stay in the U.S. Yale would be well aware of the legal process and rights with regard to their data. However, this may not be the case in other countries such as China, Iran, Italy, Indonesia, etc.. I bet there are plenty of Chinese students studying at Yale, and there are professors of Chinese descent who then would be exposed if the data is stored in China. If Chinese government gets access to their communication and determines it needs to put certain individuals on their watch list based on their views on free speech, human rights, government, etc. they will risk being detained and jailed next time they travel home to visit relatives or after they finish school. It is in Yale's interest to protect their faculty and students from such threats.
And, from no reasonable perspective, does Yale have to come out and state to any 3rd party, including Google, that so and so is a member of their faculty and they have a concern that that person's communication is stored in such and such countries then they may have a problem. It's NOYB.
On the other hand, why doesn't Google provide an additional service to their clients where they, the clients, get to pick the countries to which their data could potentially be replicated? It seems like a feature that their clients (companies, universities, governments, etc.) would very likely pay extra for; especially considering Google's own recent encounters with Chinese and Italian governments.
We're going through this same conversation at my employer (a higher-ed liberal arts university). This article came up yesterday in my team, and we had a bit of a discussion about it. Here's the email I sent out to the group about the article and Yale's decision. Hopefully this will help to clear up some of the misinformation in the article.