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The Case Against Cloud Computing, Part Three

The Case Against Cloud Computing, Part Three

So if the purpose of an SLA is more after-the-fact conflict resolution guidelines, the implication is that many of the situations "covered" by SLAs don't go very well; in other words, after all the best practices seminars, all the narrow-eyed negotiation (BTW, doesn't it seem incredibly wasteful that these things are negotiated on a one-off basis for every contract?), all the electrons have been sacrificed in articles about SLAs, they don't accomplish that much regarding the fundamental requirement: system availability. Why could that be?

First, the obvious problem I've just alluded to: the presence of an SLA doesn't necessarily change actual operations; it just provides a vehicle to argue over. The point is system uptime, not having a contract point to allow lawyers to fulfill their destiny.

Second, SLAs, in the end, don't typically protect organizations from what they're designed to: loss from system uptime. SLAs are usually limited to the cost of the hosting service itself, not the opportunity cost of the outage (i.e., the amount of money the user company lost or didn't make). So besides being ineffective, SLAs don't really have any teeth when it comes to financial penalty for the provider. I'll admit that for internal SLAs, the penalty might be job loss for the responsible managers, which is pretty emotionally significant, but the SLA definitely doesn't result in making the damaged party whole. After all, having the IT department pay the marketing department is just transferring money from one pocket to another.

Finally, the presence of an SLA incents the providing organization to behavior that meets the letter of the agreement, but may not meet the real needs of the user; moreover, the harder the negotiating went, the more likely the provider is to "work to rule," meaning fulfill the bare requirements of the agreement rather than solving the problem. There's nothing more irritating than coming to an outside service provider with a real need and having it dismissed as outside the scope of the agreement. Grrrr!

Given these-if not shortcomings, then challenges, shall we say-of SLAs, does that mean their absence or questionable quality for cloud computing providers means nothing?

No.

However, one should keep the service levels of cloud computing in perspective, with or without an SLA in place.

Remember, the objective is service availability, not a contractual commitment that is only loosely tied to the objective. So here are some recommendations:

One, look for an SLA, but remember it's a target to be aimed for, not an ultimatum that magically makes everything work. And keep in mind that cloud providers, just like all outsourcers, write their SLAs to minimize their financial exposure by limiting payment to cost of the lost service, not financial effect of the lost service.

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