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Planning & Processabbreviation · /ɛs.ɛl.eɪ/

SLA

In simple English

In tech companies, an SLA is a critical document that outlines measurable commitments. For example, a cloud provider might guarantee 99.9% uptime, or a support team might promise to respond to critical issues within one hour. If the service provider fails to meet the SLA terms, there are usually penalties or compensations involved. SLAs are common in software-as-a-service (SaaS) products, cloud infrastructure, and customer support operations. Teams regularly monitor SLA compliance and use SLA metrics to drive reliability improvements and prioritize work.

Definition and explanation of Service Level Agreements and how they are used in tech companies.

At a glanceCEFR B2
Commonness5/5
Versatility4/5
FormalityCasualFormalFormal
Spoken ↔ WrittenSpokenWrittenBoth
Directness ↔ DiplomaticDirectDiplomaticNeutral
RegionUS and UK
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Say it like this

✓We need to meet our SLA targets this quarter.
✓That incident put us at risk of breaching the SLA.
✓The SLA requires us to respond within 30 minutes.

Real examples

in a standup

"Yesterday we had a database outage that violated our SLA for 45 minutes, so we need to conduct a postmortem."

in a team meeting

"Our new SLA with the enterprise client specifies 99.99% uptime and a 4-hour response time for critical bugs."

in an email to management

"We are currently tracking at 98.5% uptime this month, which is below our 99.9% SLA commitment."

Don't say this

Handle with care. Do not confuse SLA (Service Level Agreement) with SLO (Service Level Objective). SLA is a contract; SLO is an internal target.

✕We need to SLA the system before deployment.
✓We need to ensure the system meets our SLA before deployment.— SLA is a noun (an agreement), not a verb. You do not SLA something; you meet or breach an SLA.
✕Our SLA says we should try to respond quickly.
✓Our SLA guarantees a response within 30 minutes.— SLAs contain firm commitments and measurable targets, not vague intentions like try or should.
✕The SLA and SLO are the same thing.
✓The SLA is a contract with the customer; the SLO is our internal reliability target.— SLA is external (customer-facing); SLO is internal. They are related but distinct.

Other forms

noun

SLA

"We signed an SLA with the client last month."

noun

SLA breach

"An SLA breach resulted in a penalty of $10,000."

noun

SLA compliance

"Our SLA compliance rate has improved to 99.8% this quarter."

Often used with

meet the SLAto achieve the promised service level
breach the SLAto fail to achieve the promised service level
SLA termsthe specific conditions and commitments in an SLA
SLA violationfailure to comply with SLA requirements
uptime SLAa commitment about system availability percentage
response time SLAa commitment about how quickly support will respond

Similar words

service contractMore general term; SLA is more specific and technical.
performance agreementSimilar meaning but less commonly used in tech; SLA is the industry standard.

Opposites

SLV (Service Level Violation)

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Practice

Try it

4 quick exercises

Pick the most natural phrasing

1. You are discussing why the payment system went down. What would you say?

Complete the sentence

2. If our uptime falls below 99.5%, we _______ the SLA and must compensate the client.

Spot the mistake

3. Which sentence uses SLA incorrectly?

Rewrite naturally

4. Rewrite using SLA: The company promised the customer that the service would be available 99.8% of the time, and if it was not, there would be financial penalties.

Questions

Quick poll

Have you said "sla" in a standup this week?

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