In today’s times, most businesses and enterprises are migrating to the cloud. If you have decided to integrate a cloud environment into your business or enterprise, then you are at the right place. You need to know all about a service level agreement (SLA). An SLA or service level agreement will have all the guidelines and details on the responsibilities of your enterprise and the cloud provider. In this blog, we discuss the five factors you must look for in a cloud service level agreement (SLA).
Availability
The major quality-of-service concept that should be guaranteed in any SLA is the provider’s promised availability. Sometimes providers may break down availability depending on factors such as time frame. For instance, providers will promise 99.99% availability during business hours. However, providers should lay out the regulations with clarity. They should mention about occasional downtime. Also include circumstances like alerting users and sending updates on maintenance and service repairs.
Hardware and Software
The cloud provider need to use both hardware and software for its services to be operational. The provider should give its clients full knowledge on the hardware that its cloud services rely on. This will usually include servers and other devices. It is important to know your what equipment and software your cloud is based on. This will help you to understand the specifics of your cloud environment. Also, prepare you better so that you can further educate your staff well.
Data Ownership
It is important to know who is the owner of the data in the cloud? Often this is one factor that prevents many businesses and enterprises from migrating to the cloud. Especially when businesses are involved with sensitive data. All SLA must specifically outline its data ownership policies to its clients. This must be done to uphold clarity and transparency. In an ideal scenario, the ownership of the data is always with the user. Keep in mind that if the provider didn’t explicitly mention about its data ownership guidelines in the SLA, the safety of your data can be jeopardy.
Recovery and Backup
If disaster strikes your cloud provider should be well prepared to prevent complete loss of your data. Cloud providers should have a section in the SLA that describes in detail about their recovery and backup solutions. This is crucial as it will be the deciding factor whether your cloud provider can give you automatic backups and snapshots of the data. The user must know whether they should have recovery and backup set-ups for unpredictable disasters.
Customer Responsibilities
The SLA is basically a contract outlining all responsibilities shared between both the parties the cloud provider and the user. The SLA also means both parties agree on the guidelines. The cloud provider must inform you of your liabilities when you sign the agreement. Ensure to read the entire SLA carefully to understand what the cloud provider is offering and what are looking for as a client.
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