Question about SLAs

Fri Feb 9 05:06:12 UTC 2007

Agreed, any termination liability is something to consider.  You also
need to consider the impact to your business that the SLA violations is
causing and how that might translate to dollars.

Documentation is going to be key if the vendor is nickel and diming you.
If you have solid documentation of a pattern of behavior that is
contrary to the spirit (and hopefully letter) of your SLA the vendor is
probably not going to push the termination liability.  They may not
refund for SLA violations but they also would probably not push the
termination liability too far.  SLA claims can turn into a game of
chicken at times.  If you honestly feel your position is solid, don't
blink.

Good luck,
Chad

-----Original Message-----
From: Valdis.Kletnieks at vt.edu [mailto:Valdis.Kletnieks at vt.edu] 
Sent: Thursday, February 08, 2007 7:29 PM
To: Chad Skidmore
Cc: Barry Shein; nanog at merit.edu
Subject: Re: Question about SLAs

On Thu, 08 Feb 2007 19:09:34 PST, Chad Skidmore said:

> Find a new vendor is certainly one solution.

Your current vendor probably knows how much it would cost for you to
move to another vendor (quite possibly to more significant digits than
*you* know).
They also know exactly how much they're making/losing on SLA issues, and
what percent of the move cost you're willing to tolerate - there's
probably very few of us that can get away with being righteous and
principled and spending $100K on a move to a new vendor over a $980 SLA
issue.  And even those of us who
*can* do that probably can't do it a second time anytime soon.

Of course, YMMV - spending $25K to get out of a contract with somebody
who's already shafted you for $12K of SLA rebates and shows no sign of
stopping is probably justifiable by almost all of us....

But I think Barry was asking specifically about the vendor who nickels
and dimes you precisely because they know it's not enough to make a
business case for moving.