Service-Level Agreement Basics

Given the broad use and relative importance of service-level agreements (SLAs) in a variety of contexts, in this blog post, we provide an overview of the basics of SLAs and what they should address. An SLA is an important part of any contract with a provider of technology-based products or services. Customers and providers use SLAs to establish performance expectations for a wide variety of services, ranging from software-as-a-service (SaaS), maintenance, hosting, support, or other cloud-based services, to delivery of tangible goods.

An SLA sets out the provider's performance obligations with respect to the services it provides to the customer in measurable and objective terms via defined service-level requirements.