Checklist of Common SLA Metrics

  May 19, 2020

The software-as-a-service (SaaS) industry has many benefits, but the risk for enterprise customers is relying entirely on third parties to keep it up-and-running without downtime.

That’s why service level agreements, or SLAs, are critical to most technology vendor contracts. In these agreements, the vendor and customer agree on expectations for service quality, and define remedies for when requirements aren't met (e.g. excessive downtime).

Read more about SLAs, when you need one, how to set the right expectations, and how load testing plays a role.

Service level agreements are a common component of technology vendor contracts, but they should be carefully designed to minimize risk.

Use the following checklist of common service level agreement metrics as guidance for developing your own SLAs.

  • Availability - SLAs may define the uptime or availability for the application or service, such as a 99.9% uptime guarantee for a cloud service.
  • Error Rates - SLAs may define the percentage of errors that occur in a service, such as errors affecting a public-facing API.
  • Quality Assurance - SLAs may define quality-related metrics, which can be measured in a variety of different ways.
  • Security - SLAs may address security metrics, such as the number of unclosed vulnerabilities or other issues.
  • Results - SLAs may incorporate business results into the SLA, such as the number of leads or other key performance indicators.

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