Case Study Example

DTGOV begins its SLA template authoring process by working with a legal advisory team that has been adamant about an approach whereby cloud consumers are presented with an online Web page outlining the SLA guarantees, along with a click-once-to-accept button. The default agreement contains extensive limitations to DTGOVs liability in relation to possible SLA non-compliance, as follows:

The SLA defines guarantees only for service availability.

Service availability is defined for all of the cloud services simultaneously.

Service availability metrics are loosely defined to establish a level of flexibility regarding unexpected outages.

The terms and conditions are linked to the Cloud Services Customer Agreement, which is accepted implicitly by all of the cloud consumers that use the self-service portal.

Extended periods of unavailability are to be recompensed by monetary service credits, which are to be discounted on future invoices and have no actual monetary value.

Provided here are key excerpts from DTGOVs SLA template:

Scope and Applicability

This Service Level Agreement (SLA) establishes the service quality parameters that are to be applied to the use of DTGOVs cloud services (DTGOV cloud), and is part of the DTGOV Cloud Services Customer Agreement (DTGOV Cloud Agreement).

The terms and conditions specified in this agreement apply solely to virtual server and cloud storage device services, herein called Covered Services. This SLA applies separately to each cloud consumer (Consumer) that is using the DTGOV Cloud. DTGOV reserves the right to change the terms of this SLA in accordance with the DTGOV Cloud Agreement at any time.

Service Quality Guarantees

The Covered Services will be operational and available to Consumers at least 99.95% of the time in any calendar month. If DTGOV does not meet this SLA requirement while the Consumer succeeds in meeting its SLA obligations, the Consumer will be eligible to receive Financial Credits as compensation. This SLA states the Consumers exclusive right to compensation for any failure on DTGOVs part to fulfill the SLA requirements.

Definitions

The following definitions are to be applied to DTGOVs SLA:

Unavailability is defined as the entirety of the Consumers running instances as having no external connectivity for a duration that is at least five consecutive minutes in length, during which the Consumer is unable to launch commands against the remote administration system through either the Web application or Web service API.

Downtime Period is defined as a period of five or more consecutive minutes of the service remaining in a state of Unavailability. Periods of Intermittent Downtime that are less than five minutes long do not count towards Downtime Periods.

Monthly Up-time Percentage (MUP) is calculated as: (total number of minutes in a month total number of downtime period minutes in a month) / (total number of minutes in a month)

Financial Credit is defined as the percentage of the monthly invoice total that is credited towards future monthly invoices of the Consumer, which is calculated as follows:

99.00% < MUP % < 99.95% 10% of the monthly invoice is credited in favor of the Consumers invoice

89.00% < MUP % < 99.00% 30% of the monthly invoice is credited in favor of the Consumers invoice

MUP % < 89.00% 100% of the monthly invoice is credited in favor of the Consumers invoice

Usage of Financial Credits

The MUP for each billing period is to be displayed on each monthly invoice. The Consumer is to submit a request for Financial Credit in order to be eligible to redeem Financial Credits. For that purpose, the Consumer is to notify DTGOV within thirty days from the time the Consumer receives the invoice that states the MUP beneath the defined SLA. Notification is to be sent to DTGOV via e-mail. Failure to comply with this requirement forfeits the Consumers right to the redemption of Financial Credits.

SLA Exclusions

The SLA does not apply to any of the following:

Unavailability periods caused by factors that cannot be reasonably foreseen or prevented by DTGOV.

Unavailability periods resulting from the malfunctioning of the Consumers software and/or hardware, third party software and/or hardware, or both.

Unavailability periods resulting from abuse or detrimental behavior and actions that are in violation of the DTGOV Cloud Agreement.

Consumers with overdue invoices or are otherwise not considered in good standing with DTGOV.

Answer the following questions in a substantive manner:

What are some of the reliability metrics that Innovartus should include in the SLA? Performance metrics?

Why did they switch from a cold-standby high availability model to a hot-standby?

What is the difference?

In the revised SLA the average availability is 99.98%. How many seconds is that of downtime in a month?