Hello, my name is Jeff Whitehead, and I’m the CTO for Zetta. My background is in scale computing, and in running mission critical operations sites. This is the first entry in a blog series where I will share some of my experiences with scale computing, and describe how the Zetta Enterprise Cloud Storage Service is designed to make data storage simpler, safer, and approachable.
Today, I want to talk about the SLA, or Service Level Agreement. Service Level Agreements are agreements, typically between a service provider organization and its customers, as a way of setting expectations. I have to admit, as a buyer of IT services, I’m generally not satisfied with what are offered as SLAs from providers.
Most SLAs in the market are uninteresting because they lack consequences and are not aligned with the real business issue. An example would be a typical “premium,” or “platinum,” support package on some enterprise software. The SLA states that calls will be answered within 15 minutes 24×7x365. This illustrates a fundamental misalignment of purposes between the service organization and the customer—there is often quite a path (in terms of complexity and duration) between “answer the call,” and “fix the problem,” which is the customer‘s true objective.
SLAs are effective business tools only when they align business interests between two parties, have consequences, and are properly defined. Good SLAs are ones that ensure that the output of a technology system is business useful. There is a small technical difference between an ISP’s SLA of “being able to ping the upstream router,” and “being able to ping customers,” but a very large business utility difference; the first has zero business utility, and as such is an inappropriate target for an SLA.
Zetta attempts to align business interests with its customers by providing business meaningful targets, and has consequences in the form of financial penalties.
Smart cloud storage customers have four major questions of their provider:
- “Can I get to the data right now?” I.e., is the data available? Availability is a pretty common SLA metric.
- “Can I get to the data ever? Can you prove that the data hasn’t changed while it was in your system?” Data Integrity is critical.
- “Can I get to the data at a rate sufficient for my business needs?” I.e., is performance consistent and guaranteed?
- “Is my data secure?” Ensure only authorized access to the system.
Zetta’s SLA covers all of these concerns and is backed by financial consequences. It represents a meaningful, business useful tool.
Tweet This
| 
RSS