SLA passthrough...Service Level Agreement passthrough...anyone know about this?

[Feudicial]

anyone know about service level agreements? specifically with respect to a scenario such as the following:

company A relies on company B (amazon web services) to provide their own specific web service. Company B promises 24/7 service to be defined as no downtime longer than 5 seconds...can company A now promise the same in their own SLA? i know this is a bad example since failures can come in from the software side of the service, thus giving no guarantees, but lets assume company A to have a simple service that can't fail.

 

[Zigner]

What US state?

 

[AlmostThere]

Company A can promise anything they want.

Questions to think about:
What penalties do you have for provider B if they fail to meet their SLA?
What penalties will provider A be responsible for if they don't make their SLAs?
Will the penalties collected from provider B be enough to cover the payout on provider A's penalties?

This is more a business question than a legal question.

 

[quincy]

anyone know about service level agreements? specifically with respect to a scenario such as the following:

company A relies on company B (amazon web services) to provide their own specific web service. Company B promises 24/7 service to be defined as no downtime longer than 5 seconds...can company A now promise the same in their own SLA? i know this is a bad example since failures can come in from the software side of the service, thus giving no guarantees, but lets assume company A to have a simple service that can't fail.

Company A can promise it’s customers/clients whatever it wants BUT if Company A cannot live up to its promises, the failure opens Company A up to lawsuits.

It is best to limit guarantees to what you personally can control.

 

[zddoodah]

anyone know about service level agreements?

Yes. Lots of people know about them.

Company B promises 24/7 service to be defined as no downtime longer than 5 seconds...can company A now promise the same in their own SLA?

Company A can promise anything it wants. I doubt that's what you actually intended to ask, but I can't figure out what your real question might be.

 

[quincy]

I believe Fuedicial is asking if Amazon’s web service guarantees can be used as part of Company A’s customer guarantees. It can be risky for any company to promise its customers anything over which it has no control.

A lawyer should go over Company A’s legal promises and disclaimers before Company A moves ahead.