[snewman]

Agreed -- SLAs are a pet peeve of mine. I wrote a post [0] about this a few years ago, it still feels fairly current. Basically, I don't think SLAs are a useful tool for managing service provider relationships; it's too difficult to capture nuance in a legal document. Transparency and track records seem like a more realistic approach. We've been seeing some movement here, but not much. Most service providers offer very little hard data about historical performance, and don't say enough about their internal operations to let you make a realistic assessment of disaster probabilities.

[0] http://amistrongeryet.blogspot.com/2011/04/slas-considered-h...