Managed IT services SLA: what to demand before you sign

• Resolution, not just response Most contracts promise the first, but the business only recovers with the second.
• Severity criteria The clause fewest people read is the one that decides which deadline applies.
• Penalty Without a written consequence, the SLA is a wish, not an obligation.
• The value of one hour of downtime Anyone who does not know this figure negotiates blind.

IT contracts almost always include an SLA, and it is almost never read before signing. It usually gets opened for the first time after an outage, in search of what can be claimed.

An SLA makes the service measurable. Without one, quality is argued in impressions: the client feels they waited too long, the provider feels it delivered, and nobody has a ruler to settle it.

Response time runs until someone confirms receipt of the request and starts working on it. Resolution time runs until the problem no longer exists.

If the contract only sets "response within 1 hour", a server can stay down for three days without a formal breach, provided the first reply arrived on time. This is the ambiguity that most often works in the provider's favour.

A serious MSP commits to resolution times for critical incidents and to targets for the rest. That is acceptable. What is unacceptable is a contract that blurs the two concepts.

Ask: "Beyond response, what resolution time is guaranteed in writing, and for which type of incident?" An evasive answer reveals an equally evasive commitment.

That is the question that decides the deadline. SLAs sort incidents into tiers with different times, typically:

• Critical The business is at a standstill or a vital service has failed for everyone.
• High Heavy impact, many users affected or no workaround.
• Medium Contained impact, with a way to keep working.
• Low Day-to-day requests, questions, small changes.

If classification rests solely with the provider, any short deadline becomes theoretical: it is enough to label as "medium" what the client sees as critical. A fair contract sets objective criteria and an escalation path for when the parties disagree.

From 99% to 99.9%, permitted downtime drops to a tenth, and the price rises, because every extra nine requires redundancy that has to be paid for.

Always read how it is measured: the reference period, whether planned maintenance counts and who measures. An annual 99.9% tolerates eight consecutive hours down without a formal breach.

Normally, the client receives credits on the next invoice, proportional to the severity, and gains the right to terminate at no cost if failures recur. None of this pays for the real loss from an outage, but it puts the incentive on the right side.

Exclusions define what cannot be attributed to the provider: telecoms operator faults, hardware not covered by maintenance, changes made by the client without notice, force majeure. Specific exclusions are normal; exclusions so broad that they void the agreement are not.

Start by calculating what one hour of downtime costs the business: salaries without output, lost sales and the effort to catch up. With that figure, the negotiation becomes financial, if an hour costs X, it is worth paying Y a month to reduce expected downtime.

1. Which resolution times are guaranteed, and for which severity levels?
2. Who assigns severity, and how is that decision challenged?
3. What cover exists outside business hours, and who actually answers?
4. What is the concrete consequence of each SLA breach?

A sign of confidence: a provider that offers to send the SLA compliance report every month, without being asked, believes in what it signed.

DataRoad - IT Services and Consulting operates with contracted SLAs, measured and reported to the client, calibrated to the criticality of each operation, within its managed IT services under the IT Unlimited model. Response is immediate, and cover for nights, weekends and public holidays is included in the Premium 365 plan.

Send us the SLA you have today and we will show you, clause by clause, what it is missing. Request a no-commitment proposal.

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