I don't quite understand the marketing magic that the term "SLA" has over people... | Hacker News

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		eli on April 5, 2011 \| parent \| context \| favorite \| on: Let us pay for this service so it won't go down I don't quite understand the marketing magic that the term "SLA" has over people. Are there SLAs that cover my actual losses due to downtime? Perhaps they exist, but I've never seen them If my customers can't email me for a week, I assure you that a partial refund on the fee from my email provider is not going to make things right.

JoachimSchipper on April 6, 2011 | [–]

A good SLA makes downtime painful enough for the provider that they'll want to fix things. Most SLA's have no teeth though - marketing only. (Any "100%" SLA falls in this category.)

wmf on April 5, 2011 | [–]

I think the point of SLAs (at least strong ones) is to incentivize the provider to spend real money to avoid downtime.

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