Uptime and the SLA
Service Level Agreement (SLA) is a formal written agreement made between two parties: the service provider and the service recipient. It is a core concept of IT Service Management. The SLA itself defines the basis of understanding between the two parties for delivery of the service itself. The document can be quite complex, and sometimes underpins a formal contract. The contents will vary according to the nature of the service itself, but usually includes a number of core elements, or clauses.
In some cases, because of the importance attached to this document, It does turn out somewhat complex – almost like a binding contract paper. But content of SLA document could be created to point to two factors, thus: 1) The kind of business in focus on one hand, and 2) The service provider and clients on the other. However certain principles (or clauses) are generally used in drawing it.
SLA should basically contain clauses that define a specified level of service, support options, incentive awards for service levels exceeded and/or penalty provisions for services not provided. Before having such agreements with customers the IT services need to have a good quality of these services, quality management will try to improve the quality of service, whereas the SLAs will try to keep the quality and guarantee the quality to the customer.
Especially in the web hosting industry, SLAs are a sought after commodity. Hosting companies has a number of guarantees they offer clients, principally to convince and woe them to become paying clients. The most often used is the money back guarantee while the second is Uptime Guarantee.
These guarantees usually compromises of promises made by the hosting companies as a marketing slogan to lure customers into trusting them on their server reliability factor. Most of them will have a 99.999% Uptime Guarantee or something similar.
These uptime guarantees is calculated on a monthly basis, not daily. Whenever the service falls below the promised service level, then a compensation of credits can be asked for from the hosting companies. However, at times, these credit payout can cause a lot of disagreement between customers and the company.
At most times, because there is not clear calculations stated on how these credit refunds are done, customers will often find that they have been cheated out of their promises. Many customers once encountered with such a problem will definitely cancel their accounts outright. Most honest companies then to stay away from this gimmickry, but will at times be pulled into the mess because of the stereotyping public. Most hosting companies will also turn their heads away when pressed on the problem of their compensation reasoning.
To be concluding that Uptime SLA is just a gimmick, we have to understand that it is impossible to have a 100% in anything; especially when it comes to machines. They are prone to faults, and expecting them to breakdown will minimize our expectations on what is promised for us by hosting company.
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