SLA

[Wim Van den Wyngaert]

Not a VMS question.

I hear a lot about outsourcing and SLA's.

I wonder if anyone has a case where penalties or bonusses got paid because SLA's were violated or thresholds reached. I have the impression that there is always a line in the contract that puts the case on the exception list.

Wim

[RBrown_1]

Dunno. What's an SLA?

[Andy Bustamante]

I suppose it depends on which side has better negotiation skills.

I was with a vendor who paid downtime penalties for leased systems we hosted, although it was a rare issue. Using one hosting service we received credit due to a prolonged outage. We had definitions to define billable downtime in both cases, and the amounts were never more than the monthly service fees.

Andy

[Wim Van den Wyngaert]

SLA = Service Level Agreement.

Andy, what was the reason of the outage ?

Wim

[marsh_1]

wim,

i'd agree with andy here , the devils in the detail , you have to have very specific definitions laid down , we have had one or two occasions where our legal dept have negotiated a contract without verifying the exact technical details with IT resulting in virtually no comeback on issues at all.

fwiw

[Rob Leadbeater]

Hi Wim,

Again, it very much depends on how the contract is worded.

I'm working for an outsourcing company and we definitely do pay penalties when we don't hit our SLAs.

Cheers,

Rob

[Andy Bustamante]

>>>what was the reason of the outage?

During a major snowstorm grid power was lost for almost 24 hours. The generator kicked in as expected. Due to the prolonged outage, refueling was required. The explanation we received was 'operator error during refueling led to a contaminated fuel line.' In other words they let water get into the fuel, it froze and shut down the generator(s).

We only had the one site issue in the 8 years I was associated with that location.


Andy Bustamante

[Wim Van den Wyngaert]

An extension of this old question.

Did anyone hear about penalties being paid for application or database performance ?
Or not being paid because of ...

IMO applications and db's are so alive that it is almost impossible to make promisses. Or to make promisses with so many if's that you are sure never having to pay for them.

Wim

[Peter Zeiszler]

I know of conditions where SLAs have been missed and penalties were to be applied. I also know where SLAs were missed but due to conditions all penalties were waived because it was outside the scope once the details were investigated.

I also know one company that worked out such a deal that getting paid the normal working fee and then NOT providing anything, the penalty wasn't enough to actually make them do the work. So for 6 months they fired everyone except one person who explained that they didn't meet their SLAs and then paid that penalty.

I have never heard of bonuses for meeting an SLA but I am sure there are negotiators that can make sweet deals like that.

Funny - I remember one generator instance that happened. The generators were under our contract/maintenance - but refueling was still controlled by customer. Then during a power outage the generators kicked in, things were going good, but nobody remember to check the fuel levels and they ran out.