Despite some shining examples of SLAs that embody a strong, clear, value proposition, however, many fall far short of the mark. Some are narrow in their coverage. Still others have exceptions large enough to admit a truck. This situation can't continue. Not only must ASPs compete harder, but they must also cater to customers that are increasingly savvy.
Customers know they can shop among ASPs for the best terms on service as well as price.
Let's examine how they can do that by analyzing the scope, components and management of an SLA, including some checkpoints that customers and ASPs should ask themselves. Physically, the applications and services an ASP delivers reside in a data center on servers running one or more operating systems, as well as any of a wide variety of database and middleware programs. Services are delivered over a variety of networks to end users that, for purposes of this discussion, we can think of as businesses of various types and sizes. Most SLAs still focus on service availability because, practically speaking, it is quite difficult to extend SLA coverage to include the performance experienced by end users in a variety of settings and using a variety of devices. The range of SLA challenges that ASPs face is too wide to detail in this article, but we can summarize those challenges briefly.