Effective cloud SLAs should cover QA, uptime, availability and more

Grazed from TechTarget. Author: Christine Parizo.

As more and more businesses turn to cloud services to replace on-premises applications, they must also negotiate service level agreements (SLAs) with cloud providers. Doing that job well requires that software architects and developers understand exactly what they need in terms of quality assurance (QA) testing, uptime and other core business functionality.

But frequently, experts say, SLA negotiations tend to focus more on price and less on function and enforcement. QA, in particular, gets short shrift. "All too often, they haven’t thought about which things are really meaningful … especially in test coverage," said Matt Johnson, chief marketing officer of Southborough, Mass.-based testing provider uTest. That misstep is particularly common in smaller businesses with less in-house development experience and fewer staffers…

Getting core business needs covered in SLAs for Software as a Service is especially important as many businesses new to cloud services adopt public-cloud applications. According to research by Gartner Inc., 71% of enterprises surveyed had been using SaaS for less than three years, but Gartner expected adoption to remain strong. In addition, 77% of enterprises using SaaS plan to increase their spending in that area, said Charles Eschinger, a Gartner research vice president. The SaaS market is expected to reach $28 billion by 2015, he added…

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