Cloud Service Level protocol: Another challenge for enterprise it

Introduction: The network expansion of cloud computing delivery of IT services is leading to another commercial problem pending, that is, service level agreements.

The network bloat caused by the delivery of IT services by cloud computing is leading to another commercial problem pending, that is, service level agreements.

Service level agreements (SLAs) have become a major barrier to all delivery of enterprise IT services, some of which have been largely met by federal regulation, as in the case of a communications provider agreement. As an SLA, it clearly prescribes what the vendor needs to do and how to do it, such as responding to user problems within a specified time period, and how the vendor should compensate for the user's business losses once downtime occurs, but the rules are changing in cloud computing, often taking companies by surprise.

"The simplicity and convenience of preparing for cloud computing is likely to tempt users to overlook the significant problems that host critical data and processes pose to cloud service providers." "A new report, released in March, said. The report was published by Cloud Legal project of Queen Mary College, University of London. The authors studied 31 contracts from 21 cloud providers and found that a large number of pervasive problems need to be brought to the attention of IT experts.

Some cloud computing contracts have provisions that specifically discard data protection requirements, including accidental damage to the application data or deliberate sharing of user data, and other contracts that have the right to terminate the account without notice or reason.

Most contracts offer the right to dynamically modify their contract terms and simply update them via the site, Cloud Legal Project's "Most disturbing" facts can put it managers on pins and needles (at least severe stress). Even the highly credible terms of the contract may be problematic.

"The supplier may be in different countries; The contract may enforce another authority under the law, and the contract may seek to circumvent the liability of the user in case of loss or limit liability, in fact, only nominal value." "the report said.

With cloud computing, a lot of common sense about SLA execution has been messed up, for example, when the elastic Block Store (EBS) service outage of Amazon Web Services (AWS) in May severely impacted thousands of user business systems. But the accident was not mentioned in Amazon's terms of service, and the terms of service only guaranteed 99.95% uptime for elastic Compute Cloud (EC2). AWS Refunds credit to affected users, but in fact it has no responsibility to do so (Amazon is also one of the providers that expressly reserves the right to modify or terminate the account without notice).

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Experts believe that this may happen many times before cloud computing enters the IT market, and IT experts who think cloud computing is strong should look back. SLAs has become a masquerade for IT pros and traditional service providers, according to Las Vegas, vice president of the switch company managing the data center, Mark Thiele.

"We all know that service agreements are often just superficial. "he said.

For example, Thiele when it comes to refunds, the usual way of calculating the SLAs is that it is difficult to make a reasonable compensation or a definition, and conversely, the commercial value lost during the blackout may also be extremely vague. Most of them just formalize the responsibilities between the supplier and the user. In 1996, Telecom law introduced regulations to make telecommunications companies more "trustworthy" in negotiating service levels. The service level was already there before, but it was meaningless.

Thiele pointed out that in the cloud computing, SLAs from the original paper tiger into meaningless confetti, SLAs is often the supplier in accordance with user requirements, but the cloud inherent and contradictory existence of self-service services, a knife-cutting theme. The scope of workloads within AWS covers a wide range of applications, ranging from large-scale scientific computations to web-based operations that require millions of requests.

Cloud providers next to the users who will be, there is no spectrum, so they write SLAs just "feel good", according to Thiele said. This means that it is fundamentally unsafe, especially for professional enterprise it. The enterprise's IT managers and CIOs are aware of this, and often this factor directly determines whether they will adopt cloud computing.

"We rarely use public cloud providers, and usually just treat them as other SaaS vendors." "Thermo Fischer Scientific's system architect Dmitri Ilkaev said. He says it work that protects business needs can be translated into the SLA language of the provider, and it is necessary to run internal reporting and monitor service providers.

Ilkaev that the Web-service-style SLAs for cloud computing is now practical, but cloud computing is still evolving, and no solution can solve the problem completely.

On the other hand, cloud computing technology stacks are evolving with different standards, protocols, and frameworks. "he said.

How will the development of cloud market affect SLAs

The good news is that the market is booming. In 2008 there were only three to four public cloud providers; now there are many, most of them targeting conservative, cautious corporate users.

"Amazon is like a huge gem that's sparkling," says David Snead. He is a D.C lawyer who deals with day-to-day SLA agreements for telecommunications. "There are more than one cloud provider here that can negotiate with you. ”

At a group meeting in interop 2011, Snead said that "buyer prudence" is the rule of cloud computing at the moment, but he hopes the rules will be introduced to help make the choice clearer, as it did in the 90 's legal-regulatory communications service. He noted that German regulators were well aware that they expected private and business data (such as cases and bank records) to remain in Germany, and that the cloud providers would have to set up data centres in the right jurisdictions if they wanted to join.

Snead said it vendors had to have an absolute advantage in trying to get rid of discussions with cloud providers, and some group participants agreed.

"If your cloud provider doesn't keep you at the minimum of the medium level, you'll need to find another one ... and you'll always meet the right cloud provider, just like the spring that belongs to you." "Snead said.

"For suppliers we take action from three aspects: assessment, adoption, and wait-and-see." For cloud computing, it's usually: wait and see. "The speaker is an IT contract manager from an insurance company in the country, and for a variety of reasons she is unable to make public comments."

She says her company and others are very willing to wait, only to the cloud provider to provide the appropriate way to assess performance and accessibility. Others need to be careful and clear about their own risks; now, according to the contracts we can see, they are worth considering, difficult to change and unstable.

(Responsible editor: admin)