The Importance of Service Level Agreements (SLA)

Editor's note: This article is a repost. The original post was published on October 26, 2017.

Building a house requires both a floor plan as well as obtaining permission from local authorities. Buying a car comes with a warranty. These rules and regulations are well-established and are all about safety, security and accountability. With regards to software, the development of such standards is steadily growing and evolving to meet today’s state-of-the-art demands.

With software having become an essential part of any business today, it has also become a key factor in generating an increased ROI. Make sure to treat it as such!

Germany is a pioneer in that it has passed the IT Security Law which introduces the legal obligation of software updates. But using updated software is only part of the equation.  Another aspect is securing the value of your website by engaging with professionals on a Service Level Agreement (SLA)–a fixed-cost, practical solution that ensures a maximum uptime for your website.

There are tons of good reasons for using open source software (OSS) - it’s been a big boom and firmly rooted in today’s business world. But OSS does not come with warranty, and more importantly, typically does not assign legal liability to anyone. The good news? When it comes to software support and maintenance, you can contract professionals to share the responsibility with you. 

Some businesses are too large to handle all IT and software operations. Others can’t afford having an in-house support team. Some find that having to handle IT is distracting them from their business focus. And some cannot tolerate any downtime whatsoever. So it’s time to boost your ROI and ask for a SLA.

In addition to our standard software support services we are proud to be able to offer TYPO3 Service Level Agreements (SLAs) for businesses. Once hard to come by, they are now an official option for securing the value of your website. SLAs help keep your website safe and secure. And the longer a site is safe and secure, the better your ROI.

The best way to guard against software failure is opting for an SLA.

With our service, when a problem in TYPO3’s core occurs, regardless of its level of complexity, help is only a phone call away. Our team of dedicated developers enjoys the highest certification of the industry. They are highly trained and specially equipped to answer a company’s unique challenges. We maintain your TYPO3 installation in close collaboration with your digital agency and/or your IT team to provide you with a smoothly running TYPO3 system operating at peak performance.

Being a formal document, SLAs are often defined in formal language starting along the lines of “SLAs set out the expectations between a customer and a supplier and govern the delivery of a specific service or product.” and diving deep into complicated definitions.

Our SLA is fairly simple (and I can gladly write it up for you in official language):

• Software can fail, even TYPO3 CMS. If vulnerabilities show up in the core, we’ll fix them for you.

• We have 5 different packages ranging from troubleshooting within 48 hours to support within 4 hours 7 days a week 24 hours a day.

• Do you want a personal account manager? Two of our packages include this option.

• A TYPO3 SLA provides you with online, telephone and email support in addition to other deliverables.

Depending on which SLA package you choose we’re able to guarantee a response time as quick as 4 hours. When you have a critical software problem, we drop everything to help get your website running again.

Engaging with TYPO3 GmbH on a Service Level Agreement makes your business more effective as it ensures a maximum uptime for your website. The process of fixing things is faster and the IT cost is lower. The risk of business failure or productivity losses are transferred from your business to us with a fixed-cost solution. An outstanding level of service, flexibility and reliability is guaranteed. Let us take care of your software, so you can focus on the core of your business.

Do you need your TYPO3 installation to be up and running without downtime? Contact us! We are ready to help you.