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Google Apps and the cloud: Improved reliability and security
Wednesday, April 14, 2010
Editor's note:
This post is the second in a three-part series on the benefits of
Google Apps’ cloud-computing architecture
. - Ed.
Last week’s post
kicked off our series on the advantages of Google’s cloud, and described how our infrastructure gives customers faster access to innovation than on-premises technology, single-tenant hosted applications, and “software plus services”. Here, part two focuses on how
Google Apps
is designed from the ground up to provide higher reliability and better security.
Improved Reliability and Security
Through
synchronous replication
, data and user actions in Google Apps are mirrored in nearly real-time across multiple data centers. If one data center becomes unavailable for any reason, the system is designed to instantly fall back to a secondary data center with no user-visible interruption in service. For Google Apps customers, our recovery point objective (RPO) design target is zero, and our recovery time objective (RTO) design target is instant failover. Gmail, Google Calendar, Google Talk, Google Groups, Google Docs and Google Sites have a 99.9% uptime guarantee, and our actual reliability has been significantly higher than this commitment. Attempting to replicate this level of reliability with on-premises or hosted technology is tremendously costly and complex. Even very large enterprises with state-of-the-art disaster recovery systems typically target a recovery time of one hour and accept the loss of one hour’s worth of data.
On the security front, Google’s large investments in physical and process-based security are passed on to customers. First, Google is able to hire many of the worlds leading security experts to protect our systems and conduct cutting-edge security research. Our data centers are hardened with many of the latest measures in security precautions, including biometric access controls and multi-tiered security perimeters. Furthermore, Google has implemented a multi-layered security process protocol designed to help keep customer data safe. Our processes have been independently verified in a successful third-party SAS 70 Type II audit to verify our confidentiality, integrity and availability of customer data. Finally, Google is able to efficiently manage security updates across our nearly homogeneous global cloud computing infrastructure, so customers aren’t exposed to known vulnerabilities until they install security patches themselves.
Browser-based applications also help keep sensitive data more secure. Unlike traditional software, when a user is finished using a web-based application, minimal data is left on the machine that could be compromised. Also, when employees can securely access their data from any browser, they’re less likely to store data locally on unsecured end-points like thumb drives. In a world where one out of ten laptops go missing in the first year
1
and 66% of workers report having lost a thumb drive
2
, making data securely available from the browser and minimizing the amount of sensitive data stored on devices is an effective security strategy.
Next week I’ll conclude this series by sharing how Google’s economies of scale can help companies reduce costs and free up technology resources for higher value initiatives that can make businesses more competitive.
If you’re interested in going a level deeper, we invite you to
geek out with us
on Thursday, April 22nd, when we’ll be holding a webcast to explore the advantages of Google’s cloud. Hope you can join us!
Geek out on the Cloud-Based Infrastructure of Google Apps
Thursday, April 22, 2010
2:00 PM ET / 11:00 AM PT / 6:00 PM GMT
1. The Federal Bureau of Investigation & The Computer Security Institute’s annual Computer Crime and Security Survey, 2005.
2. “Thumb Drives? The New Portable and Convenient Way to Lose Data”, 2007.
Posted by Jeremy Milo, Google Apps Marketing Manager
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