[2] To ensure that SLAs are consistently met, these agreements are often designed with specific lines of demarcation and the parties involved are required to meet regularly to create an open forum for communication.
[7][8][9] The U.S. Telecommunications Act of 1996 does not expressly mandate that companies have SLAs, but it does provide a framework for firms to do so in Sections 251 and 252.
For fixed networks subscribers, service modeling appears to be one of the most suitable ways to effectively monitor SLA's and ensure they are met.
Measuring, monitoring and reporting on cloud performance is based on the end UX or their ability to consume resources.
The downside of cloud computing relative to SLAs is the difficulty in determining the root cause of service interruptions due to the complex nature of the environment.
As applications are moved from dedicated hardware into the cloud, they need to achieve the same even more demanding levels of service than classical installations.
[14] Any SLA management strategy considers two well-differentiated phases: negotiating the contract and monitoring its fulfillment in real-time.
[citation needed] The main point is to build a new layer upon the grid, cloud, or SOA middleware able to create a negotiation mechanism between the providers and consumers of services.
FP7 IRMOS also investigated aspects of translating application-level SLA terms to resource-based attributes to bridge the gap between client-side expectations and cloud-provider resource-management mechanisms.
[17][18] A summary of the results of various research projects in the area of SLAs (ranging from specifications to monitoring, management and enforcement) has been provided by the European Commission.
The contract may involve financial penalties and the right to terminate if any of the SLA metrics are consistently missed.