OFF-SITE, 'hosted' internet services for email, calendars, and the like are often held up as cheaper, easier and more reliable option for many businesses.
But when those web-based systems eventually do drop out, what does that mean for the user?Google Calendar users have experienced just that, with some individuals and organisations unable to access some of their calendars on the service, wreaking havoc on what would otherwise have been a normal working day.
Martin Peake, Director of holistic education centre The Phoenix Institute, says his organisation has been daily using the free version of Google Calendar for 3 months, and up until now had found the service very useful.
Thanks to this glitch, though, his school has already decided to give Calendar the flick.
"It's a bit of a disaster, really," he said.
"We won't be staying with Google Calendar after this, we'll be moving on to something else."
Mr Peake said the calendars that failed concerned a number of day-to-day running sheets and schedules that they couldn't afford to be without.
"We lost interview times, we lost class schedules, we lost supervision timetables... we lost a lot of things."
While they had hard copies of all important schedules, Mr Peake says the time spent sorting through those contributed to the "disaster."
The Phoenix Institute, according to Mr Peake, was already going to start using another hosted service called Wise.Net for email and other services, but he now says they will be looking to use their calendar service as well.
While Google has not yet said what the causes of the problem may be, they say it has affected a very small percentage of users.
“Last night we became aware that a small number of Google Calendar users (approximately 0.4%) were unable to access their secondary calendars, though they could still access their primary calendars," they said in a statement.
“We've started restoring service for some users and are working to resolve the issue for the few still impacted as soon as possible.”
However, at least some of those unlucky few continue to suffer, with multiple Australian users still experiencing problems at time of writing.
The currently nine-page long support thread can be viewed on the Google Calendar Help forum, with status updates available on the App Status Dashboard.
http://www.news.com.au/technology/biz/google-calendar-failure-disaster-for-australian-business/story-fn5lic6c-1225935963282#ixzz11kWj4ChM
"We won't be staying with Google Calendar after this, we'll be moving on to something else."
Mr Peake said the calendars that failed concerned a number of day-to-day running sheets and schedules that they couldn't afford to be without.
"We lost interview times, we lost class schedules, we lost supervision timetables... we lost a lot of things."
While they had hard copies of all important schedules, Mr Peake says the time spent sorting through those contributed to the "disaster."
The Phoenix Institute, according to Mr Peake, was already going to start using another hosted service called Wise.Net for email and other services, but he now says they will be looking to use their calendar service as well.
While Google has not yet said what the causes of the problem may be, they say it has affected a very small percentage of users.
“Last night we became aware that a small number of Google Calendar users (approximately 0.4%) were unable to access their secondary calendars, though they could still access their primary calendars," they said in a statement.
“We've started restoring service for some users and are working to resolve the issue for the few still impacted as soon as possible.”
However, at least some of those unlucky few continue to suffer, with multiple Australian users still experiencing problems at time of writing.
The currently nine-page long support thread can be viewed on the Google Calendar Help forum, with status updates available on the App Status Dashboard.
http://www.news.com.au/technology/biz/google-calendar-failure-disaster-for-australian-business/story-fn5lic6c-1225935963282#ixzz11kWj4ChM
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