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that uptime is not met only when services are unavailable for periods
exceeding one hour. To further complicate this, many CSPs define
availability (another measure of reliability sometimes used within the
definition of uptime) in a way that may exclude CSP planned service
outages. Organizations need to fully understand any ambiguities in
the definitions of cloud computing terms in order to know what levels
of service they can expect from a CSP.
Measuring SLA Performance
When organizations place data in a CSP environment, they are inher-
ently giving up control over certain aspects of the services that they con-
sume. As a best practice, SLAs should clearly define how performance
is guaranteed (such as response time, resolution/mitigation time, avail-
ability, etc.) and require CSPs to monitor their service levels, provide
timely notification of a failure to meet the SLAs, and evidence that
problems have been resolved or mitigated. SLA performance clauses
should be consistent with the performance clauses within the contract.
Organizations should enforce this by requiring in the reporting clauses
of the SLA and the contract that CSPs submit reports or provide a dash-
board so that organizations can continuously verify that service levels
are being met. Without this provision, an organization may not be able
to measure CSP performance.
SLA Enforcement Mechanisms
Most standard SLAs provided by CSPs do not include provisions for pen-
alties if an SLA is not met. The consequence to a customer if an SLA is not
met can be catastrophic (unavailability during peak demand, for exam-
ple). However, without a penalty for CSPs in the SLA, CSPs may not have
sufficient incentives to meet the agreed-upon service levels. In order to
incentivize CSPs to meet the contract terms, there should be a credible
consequence (for example, a monetary or service credit) so that a failure
to meet the agreed-upon terms creates an undesired business outcome for
the CSP in addition to the customer.
With many of the high-profile cases of cloud service provider
failures relating to provisions covered by SLAs, as a best practice,
organizations need SLAs that provide value and can be enforced
when a service level is not met. SLAs with clearly defined terms and
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