Glossary
SLA (service level agreement)
Also called: Service level agreement
In one sentence
An SLA is the part of a service contract that defines measurable commitments — such as how quickly a provider responds to and resolves problems — and what happens if they miss them.
Every provider says they're responsive. A service level agreement puts numbers and definitions on it. A typical IT support SLA sets priority levels (for example, “critical: the whole office can't work” versus “low: a printer setting”), then a target response time and sometimes a target resolution time for each, plus the hours those targets apply. Cloud services like Microsoft 365 publish SLAs for uptime instead.
Read the details carefully. Response time usually means someone acknowledged and started working on your issue, not that it's fixed. Check what counts as business hours, how after-hours emergencies are handled, how priority is decided, and what remedy (if any) you get when targets are missed. Also check which services are covered — some contracts treat projects, on-site visits or third-party software as separate.
Why it matters: for a medical or dental practice, “the front desk can't check patients in” needs a very different response than a slow laptop. An SLA that reflects your real priorities protects your schedule. It also matters for RTO planning: your recovery targets can only be as fast as your vendors' commitments.
Example: a dental office's internet goes down at 8 a.m. Under its MSP's SLA, an outage affecting the whole office is critical priority, so a technician is working on it immediately — confirming the cellular failover kicked in and opening a ticket with the internet provider, whose own SLA determines how quickly the line gets repaired.
See our guide to choosing a managed IT provider for SLA questions worth asking.
Related terms
- MSP (managed service provider)An MSP is an outside company that runs and supports your IT on an ongoing basis — help desk, monitoring, updates, security and planning — usually for a predictable monthly fee.
- Help deskThe team (and system) your staff contact when something IT-related breaks or they need help, with every request tracked to completion.
- RTO (recovery time objective)The longest your business can afford to be without a system before the outage causes serious harm — your target for getting it back.
- FailoverAutomatically switching to a backup system or connection when the main one fails, so work carries on with little or no interruption.
- MSSP (managed security service provider)An MSSP is a company that provides ongoing, outsourced security services — such as threat monitoring, log analysis and incident response — rather than general IT support.