Cloud Computing: Cloud Service Level Agreement
The article explains that cloud services have developed to be the mainstay of the IT industry, and are crucial in this age of technology. They provide a commodity service from one user to another via software. Currently, multiple providers are offering a range of cloud services, making it challenging for cloud customers to choose a safe and reliable platform. Therefore, there is a need for a legal contract between both cloud parties to negotiate the terms and conditions of service, which is known as the Service Level Agreement (SLA). SLA is vital for outlining the requirements for quality of service, especially in the critical service processes. However, the customer may lose control of his IT infrastructure due to the provider’s failure to adhere to the SLAs, lack of transparency, or flaws in the billing process verification (Neidhardt, Köhler & Nüttgens, 2018).
When the customers’ IT infrastructure is outsourced to a cloud service provider, it may reduce their control over the system. This is because they will be unable to see into their infrastructure, leaving them to only rely on the information that they are given by the provider. Consequently, the customer cannot take any significant action if he or she suspects inconsistent behavior. SLA monitoring can be used to solve the issues related to governance control, portability, and legal agreements. This approach verifies if the provider is compliant with the uptime service level agreements using a smart contract (Neidhardt, Köhler & Nüttgens, 2018). For every service that the provider offers, it keeps a list of the consumers. It also allows the customer to check how the service is provided after specific intervals. The system will also notify customers whenever services are unavailable, and if they are inaccessible beyond a certain threshold, the provider will be liable for the violation of SLA.
References
Neidhardt, N., Köhler, C., & Nüttgens, M. (2018). Cloud Service Billing and Service Level
Agreement Monitoring based on Blockchain. In EMISA (pp. 65-69).