Today the jargon patrol is tackling another acronym that gets tossed around quite a bit---SLA, or service level agreement.  Here's the Wikipedia definition:

A service-level agreement (SLA) is a part of a service contract where the level of service is formally defined. 

In the world of Enterprise software as a service, an SLA is an agreed-to performance metric that includes some penalties if the metric is not met.  In plain English, "if our service is unusable for x percent of time in a given time period, we'll give you a refund."

After all, if you're buying Enterprise software, it's critical to your mission, right?

Ideally, all hosted applications would have 100% uptime, but that's not reality.  In reality, the magical "five nines" or 99.999% uptime is the gold standard.  Therefore, many Enterprise contracts will offer a tiered approach, with financial penalties tied to each tier.  

Usually, the penalty means credits back on the next month's service invoice.

Social Strata offers SLA on Hoop.la Pro level plans, and we're very proud of our uptime track record.  Interested in Hoop.la Pro?  Send us a note!