Here we go again

Leaving aside the question of whether Jeff jinxed Salesforce.com, the recent failure of yet another web service company is another indication of a relative lack of operations maturity within web services companies.

Zoli Erdos makes the point,

"The Typepad outage prompted Brad and Jeff write their piece was storm in a teacup; this is the real thing, the Storm."

I agree. SFdc is the standard bearer for the web services industry. What happens to them reverberates through the industry. I expect 2006 will be the year that web service companies gain operational maturity. Or slide off the radar.

As more and more people and businesses conduct their lives and make their living using web services, reliability of even simple services will increasingly be a competitive point. Those who achieve a perceived reliability of service will thrive and prosper. Passing the buck on reliability because it is companies feel it is to difficult (and/or expensive) to achieve is not going to be a successful survival strategy.

Update: Companies are losing/have lost money from the SFdc outage. Will they be compensated? SFdc does face the prospect for being sued for liability.

Links: Salesforce.com Outage article in Infoworld

Tags: web services, on-demand, salesforce.com, engineering operations, reliability