Cloud Computing SLAs are making news again… or maybe they never really left the news but rather became page two or three? Either way, the Cloud Standards Customer Council (CSCC), which is a consumer advocacy group with the support and backing of many of the largest cloud computing providers, found that generally speaking there is a lack of commonality across SLAs. And lack of commonality can lead to difficulty in making accurate SLA comparisons from provider to provider and lead to general confusion on what’s covered and what is not.
A recent Network World article by Brandon Butler – Cloud SLAs ‘Fall Short,’ Says User Advocacy Group – underscores the problems and difficulties that cloud computing SLAs can create, along with the fact that SLAs are weighted heavily in the providers favor.
…Its critical for enterprises to do their homework before jumping into the public cloud. In many cases, businesses evaluate their public cloud based on performance, price and other apples-to-apples benchmarks among providers. But, in some cases cloud SLAs could have terms and conditions that are non-negotiable that may prevent a business from using the service.
If this is the case, then you may find that a private or hybrid cloud computing solution might hold up better for your needs.
A while back, we published a blog – 30 Questions to Ask Before Turning to the Cloud – which detailed what you need to know (or ask) a cloud computing provider before making your final selection. Since cloud SLAs seem to be back on page one of the news – at least for the short term – we thought it would be good to review these thirty questions once again. While not all are SLA-related, they can identify critical requirements and conditions that the SLA may not cover.
1. What happens when the cloud goes offline?
2. How will I get notified if the cloud does go offline?
3. Are your services restarted automatically or is it a manual process?
4. If I want to terminate a contract before the term ends, what kinds of ‘lock-in’ or ‘still must pay’ clauses exist, and are they negotiable?
5. Do contracts have to be terminated ‘for cause’ and if so how easy is it for the customer to prove a ‘cause’?
6. What is the cost to customize my apps once they’re in the cloud?
7. How is QoS provided to our business?
8. Do you provide load balancing or availability guarantees?
9. How much does it cost to import my data? How much will it cost to export my data?
10. How must does it cost to back up my data once it’s in the cloud?
11. What are my expecting RPO and RTO from your cloud provider?
12. What are your annual revenues (might be tough to get an answer if private but ask anyways)? How long have you been in business? How many customers do you have?
13. Is your new cloud provider providing you with SLAs that are currently better than what you have today?
14. How will you transfer your software licenses you currently own?
15. Will your apps be clustered in the cloud?
16. How will you manage your apps for performance and/or outages?
17. Will your cloud provider use an underlying IaaS for their own infrastructure? Or will they build their own infrastructure?
18. What is the your SLA? What happens if you don’t meet it?
19. Do you have a disaster recovery plan? If so, can you send me a copy?
20. Can you provide documentation of your uptime for this year and last year?
21. How do you communicate problems, outages, and fixes to your customers?
22. How are backups implemented and how long is my data kept?
23. Who has access to my data and/or the hardware on which it is running?
24. How is redundancy implemented within your environment?
25. Do you have spare disk drives, servers, power supplies, internet circuits?
26. Do I have full ownership of my data?
27. Do you provide a standard annual termination for convenience?
28. Do you allow for annual usage-level alignment (up or down) based on my business needs?
29. Can I apply monthly ―rollover usage to address seasonal peaks?
30. Do you provide long-term price protection?
Cloud computing is real and not going anywhere. Like all technologies and services it will evolve and I’m sure that SLAs will too. Ask the right questions before jumping into the cloud and protect your critical business applications.
Do you have a cloud computing SLA story, good or bad, that you’d care to share? Drop a comment and tell us about it.
