Does anyone know if Google Apps for Business edition hosts the apps (gmail, calendar, etc.) on a physically separate infrastructure than the Standard (free) infrastructure? We've been growing increasingly annoyed with the lost/severely delayed email messages, downtime, etc. of Google Apps (standard) over time, and we are wondering if moving to the paid version would bring any benefits. Specifically, if the Business edition is not in some way on a different physical infrastructure, and we are in essence paying for a few small perks but still run on the usual standard/free setup, then we would probably have the same (or just as many) issues with the Business version.
I've emailed Google's sales team responsible for GApps, but haven't heard anything back in 4 days, which already doesn't speak well for the service. So, anyone have any insight into this?
Thanks in advance for any and all help :)
Google is pretty much silent on how their physical infrastructure works, but the Business edition of Google Apps does have a SLA agreement
http://www.google.com/apps/intl/en/terms/sla.html
You can also see their service history on the Apps Status Dashboard
http://www.google.com/appsstatus#hl=en
No, google apps for business is run from the same infrastructure as the rest of google apps. There are some that run on a separate infrastructure (early adopters, I believe), but these are being transitioned back into the main infrastructure.
You can tell if a given google apps account is being run from the core infrastructure by trying to load one of the apps email accounts alongside a regular gmail account on the same browser session. If you can open both at once, they're on separate infrastructure. If you can only open one at a time, they're in the same infrastructure.