Availability needs context
Availability becomes meaningful when you know what is measured, over which period, and which exceptions apply. Ask about planned maintenance, dependencies, and how incidents are classified.
A clear SLA reduces the risk of different interpretations when an incident is already stressful.
Support paths are part of the SLA
Look at response times, ticket paths, escalation, and when phone support is available. A technically strong environment becomes hard to buy if the support path is unclear.
The agreement should also state what the supplier does, what the customer owns, and when a third party needs to be involved.
Compensation does not replace operations planning
SLA credits can matter, but they do not solve the consequence of an outage. That is why SLA should connect to backup, redundancy, monitoring, and communication planning.
The best SLA makes both supplier and customer clear before the incident happens.
