Service Level Agreements (SLAs) offered by cloud providers are too often about Specification and not Service. It should come as no surprise that vanity metrics, like Availability, are used instead of business metrics because they are simple to measure and easy to misconstrue. Metrics that truly matter, like “will I be able to delight my customer,” are about as far removed as one can imagine. It should come as no surprise, then, that in a recent survey of 740 CIOs and IT Leaders 97% wanted more than a simple Availability guarantee.
Imagine a company selling a premium new car whose warranty includes 2M piston revolutions, 10k door latch cycles, and 20k window open and closes. And even then, with 99.5% availability, you might still be unable to start the car two days a year, or during winter there might be two weeks where the doors won’t unlock until the sun melts the ice in the door locks. Ready to buy?