An SLA (Service Level Agreement) is the agreement between a service provider and a client about the level of service: response times for incidents, availability of systems, help desk opening hours and what happens if the agreed levels are not met.
SLA in practice
In IT management, the SLA is the document that separates expectations from assumptions. Pay particular attention to the difference between response time (when someone responds) and resolution time (when it is fixed), to what applies outside office hours, and to what does and does not fall under the fixed fee — that is where the surprises are.
An SLA is not an end in itself: a supplier who meets exactly the minimum standard every month can still be a poor partner. So look beyond the SLA at proactivity and the exit arrangements (data, tenant, documentation). More on that in What does IT management cost? and Switching IT partners.
Related terms
- SaaS — SaaS (Software as a Service) is software you use over the internet and pay for per user or per month, without running servers yourself — think Microsoft 365, Exact Online, Shopify or your ATS.
- Data processing agreement — A data processing agreement is the contract that the GDPR makes mandatory between an organisation (data controller) and any party that processes personal data on its behalf (data processor) — such as your IT partner, your ATS vendor or an integration platform.
- Tenant — A tenant is your own, isolated environment within a cloud service such as Microsoft 365 or Google Workspace: all the users, mailboxes, files, settings and security rules of your organisation together.