SearchCIO recently ran a great piece called, “Cloud SLAs: Tips for tackling uptime in the cloud .” The article highlights the best practices approach Shaklee CIO Ken Harris takes when partnering with SaaS vendors like PivotLink. I’m glad the unglamorous subject of up-time is getting the air time it deserves. Here are some key take-aways from the piece.
1. IT has a critical role assuring that the right service is purchased.
It is a myth that IT has no role to play in purchasing and using cloud services. Business users can evaluate service functionality but only IT can counsel on subjects like up-time, integration, availability of data, recovery of data and security. IT should be involved in purchasing cloud services to evaluate the service aspect of the Software-as-a-Service.
2. Businesses should demand a practical up-time, not an idealistic one
It’s important to demand an up-time that meets practical usage requirements. Typically a 99.9% (8.8 hours of downtime in 1 year) is sufficient. Most leading cloud vendors promise 99.9% and typically deliver more. Ditto for PivotLink.
3. For SaaS BI BI there is more to up-time than meets the eye
Typical contract language discussing up-time and availability can get pretty geeky. What’s most important to understand is how business users will use the service. Each BI deployment has many moving parts. A cloud BI vendor may provide 99.999% availability for a user to log in and run reports, but if the data in the report is not up to date it won’t meet the business requirements. One needs to think critically about data availability. For example, we recently worked with a well-known retailer that wanted point-of-sales analysis reports ready each day by 7 a.m. because the entire merchandising department met at that time to discuss sales trends. In their case it was more important to have the service available a few hours before and after 7 a.m. each day than at any other time.
4. Validate cloud vendors’ service quality with industry accepted audits
Mature cloud companies are universally SAS 70 Type II certified. To obtain SAS 70 Type II certification a cloud provider must demonstrate they are delivering a quality service, with well-designed and well-documented processes that assure availability, up time, support and security
SAS 70 Type II is different from SAS 70 Type I, which is less rigorous. SAS 70 Type II shouldn’t be confused with SAS 70 certification for the data center. Beware of cloud providers that use these terms loosely. It is important to specifically ask if the entire service and not just the data center is SAS 70 Type II certified.
For another good read about practical up-time and the costs involved in doing so, check out this post on the SmoothSpan blog.
