The reason for this perception is that non engineering folks don't understand the enginnering behind almost perfect uptimes. Typical Joe executive just knows he believes his business is mission critical and must always be available. If you give someone two router ports running hsrp, connect an alteon or similar 1 public many private ip switch to each of these, and put at least 2 servers behind each switch, provide instant generator power backup, and multiple links thru different providers to the net, this can provide the 99.bazillion 9s level that customers desire. Some slas are meaningful. Just make it so as time goes on in the outage, an increasing portion of the customer's costs are waived. Nothing talks like money in business or politics.
IMHO, based on my previous professional services life, for people for whom uptime really matters, link costs tend to be negligable. For people who really needed their stuff to work and would be SLA candidates, a carrot bigger than 'your service is free for x yrs' would have to be presented. Especially for outtages costing millions of dollars in lost revenue, not to mention lawsuits etc. Just look at what happens to Amazon when their service craps out for 30 minutes, you got an interview on CNNfn right away. Just look at the exposure. Unless you got an SLA with teeth and penalties several multiples or magnitudes of the cost of the service, they're pointless IMHO and just yet another marketing tool a la "free installation" or "1st mth is free" type deals. Cheers, Chris -- Christian Kuhtz <ck@arch.bellsouth.net> -wk, <ck@gnu.org> -hm Sr. Architect, Engineering & Architecture, BellSouth.net, Atlanta, GA, U.S. "I speak for myself only."