Zoho opens up their kimono and the blogosphere applauds

Big news from Zoho (provider of online applications and services that compete with Google and Microsoft). As of yesterday, they have reached the next level in uptime transparency by launching Zoho Service Health Status! As Raju Vegesna states in their big announcement, "This initiative is yet another step to being more open and transparent with our users." Kudos to Zoho for recognizing the need and delivering. They join Amazon AWS and SalesForce as the three large service providers offering a very public health dashboard of their services.

I'm really excited to see that the blogosphere gets the significance of this move:

Mashable:

"One frequent problem with web applications and services - and thus the whole web 2.0 phenomenon - is lack of communication when something goes wrong. Sure, it’s nice to have your online e-mail client available from every computer, but what happens when it goes down? Often, it’s just you in the dark, waiting for problems to be resolved, with little or no official information on what’s happening to ease your mind...

This is a great idea. If something goes wrong with any one of Zoho’s applications, you can quickly check out if the problem is on your side or theirs. Of course, I’m sure that the folks at Zoho will continue to inform their customers about problems, updates, downtime and similar issues via blog posts, but being able to see what’s wrong for yourself, at any given time, is an advantage Zoho’s customers will certainly enjoy. All other web startups take notice: this is the level of transparency we’d like to see from everyone, not just Zoho."

WebWorkerDaily:

"After taking a look, I’d say that all applications hosted online could benefit from this level of kimono-opening."

CNET:

"Web application specialist Zoho has joined the growing ranks of companies willing to share detailed information on how well their online services are holding up.

This move toward transparency is increasingly important as potential customers consider relying on such services...

Publishing the performance measurements for online services is catching on as cloud computing grows more serious. Going hand in hand with that is offering service level agreements (SLAs) with specific uptime commitments."

Who's next to open up? I'm looking at you Google!