[DifE-Q]

While the many points of this article are true...I would like to point out that an SLA provides a means to punish the service provider...in hopes of better behavior.

I run an IT department with a massive MPLS network from ATT. When a circuit goes down - it is true that I don't regain MY costs by enforcing the terms of the SLA and collecting the remuneration that is due. However, I do many times collect a significant amount of credits at times...and that causes regional managers at ATT to take notice and start making infrastructure improvements to improve actual up time...which is what I want - and then that allows me to actually pay them for their circuit - which is what they want.

[jon_dahl]

From my perspective as a service provider, I feel major pain whenever our service hiccups. If something goes down, the fear of unhappy customers (or losing customers) looms much larger than the fear of having to issue a service credit. For us at least, the latter is a tiny motivator compared to the former.

But a small startup is probably motivated by different things than a large, vaguely monopolistic company (like an ISP).

[rbranson]

Right -- it's sort of a way for sales & marketing departments at service providers to force operations to improve uptime.

[lolipop1]

Yeah, that's the perspective of the client.

The perspective of the service provider is that it's a marketing feature to sell. The trade off being that the service starts to be "risk managed" more and more.

I personally haven't seen better services due to SLAs, but I do know I'm not the center of the universe.