With the StatusPage SaaS service, cloud providers can professionally create public status pages in the browser. This allows customers to find out about the current availability and performance of their booked online services at any time.
Functionality
Serious cloud services have to meet high requirements in terms of reachability, availability and performance. System administrators are therefore dependent on server monitoring solutions with which they can monitor the current status of their system infrastructure and act quickly in the event of errors or bottlenecks. However, this information is usually designed for internal teams. The start-up StatusPage from Mountain View goes one step further with its SaaS service of the same name.
The tool offers an easy way to clearly present the current status of any system components on a public website. Well-known StatusPage customers such as the application performance service New Relic and the versioning system BitBucket from the software company Atlassian show what such a status page can look like. Here, customers can find out at any time whether there are problems with the system, when there were failures, or when maintenance work is scheduled.
Installation
The tool works entirely in the cloud. A local software installation is not required. Interested parties can easily create a free account on the product website. As long as you do not publish your status page on the net, the service remains free. This means that interested parties can put the software through its paces before subscribing to the service.
Operation
After you have registered, you will be guided step by step through the creation of your status page. A wizard explains all necessary tasks in detail. First, the components to be monitored must be specified. These can be online shops, web apps, individual software modules, API (Application Programming Interface) endpoints, or Internet protocols such as SSH and FTP. In a second step, the layout of the status page can be adjusted to your own taste. Then you enter your contact data. Finally, individual system failures of the last few days can be entered manually.
At the end of the wizard, you are redirected to the central online dashboard where you can manage your status page. The status page shows whether individual components are available or not, whether there were downtimes, errors or other events. In addition, there is the possibility to present performance metrics in clear diagrams. Also practical: You can inform your user via e-mail or SMS about downtimes and planned maintenance work. The current status of each component can be entered manually or, much more efficiently, updated automatically using numerous integration options with popular monitoring services such as Pingdom and PagerDuty.
Conclusion
Cloud providers, especially SaaS providers, find StatusPage a lightweight tool that allows them to systematically inform about the current status of their online services. This increases transparency towards the customer and thus creates more trust.