#	Pagina
attuale pagina	/open-h2020/projects/194180/results.html

Report

Teaser, summary, work performed and final results

Periodic Reporting for period 1 - SLALOM (Service Level Agreement - Legal and Open Model)

Teaser

Summary

SLALOM is an H2020 support action tackling the complexity of cloud computing SLAs and contracts through standardization of the SLA and contract terms and a reference model for SLA management. In doing so it supports the adoption of cloud (SLA complexity is an identified barrier to adoption) and supports the exploitation of results from the cloud and SLA research communities, effectively by factoring in advances from the research sector into the SLALOM legal and technical models which will be promoted as industry standards. The project involves interaction with policy makers, cloud providers, research projects and cloud adopters from various areas.
SLALOM set out to provide an open, modular and comprehensive model terms for the specifications of cloud computing SLAs and contracts, and a reference model for the SLA lifecycle management, covering both current market practice and the needs of emerging technology. The SLALOM team is formed by a group of consultants from global service provider Atos, the legal specialist Bird and Bird, researchers from the National Technical University of Athens and University of Pireaeus, and the Cloud Industry Forum, an industry body championing transparency and trust of online services.
The main outcomes of the project are the SLALOM legal MSA and technical specifications. The legal and technical teams have also provided additional, focussed support and guidance documents.
The SLALOM legal model is effectively a complete contract for use between a cloud user (adopter) and their provider. (Placeholders are included for situation-specific content such as the description of services, and charges.) The SLALOM legal model is set out as a cloud service agreement (CSA) document, following a common industry approach, with more detailed content (e.g. specific service levels, privacy, and consideration) as annexes. The contract is ready to use, and can provide a starting point for creating new contracts, or it can be used as a benchmark for comparing with existing ones. It has been designed to be extendible or modifiable because it is recognized that in general variations will be needed.
The SLALOM legal model is found in the public contractual deliverable D2.2 Final Legal Terms for adoption available for download from the SLALOM website.
On the technical side, the SLALOM technical team has produced a series of technical documents which develop and define the SLALOM technical specification. The first major document is the technical reference model, which is the conceptual basis for creating unambiguous and non-contestable (i.e. non-repudiable) metrics. The technical reference model is primarily expected to be used by researchers and specialists in developing metrics. The second major document is a set of proposed example metrics, developed using the technical reference model, but presented in a way which should be more immediately usable by providers and adopters alike.
The SLALOM reference model was created with the aim of standardising the definition of SLAs in a manner that serves the whole lifecycle of SLAs for cloud services and overcomes the shortcomings of existing approaches, by eliminating ambiguities in the definition and calculation of metrics and facilitating the measurement, monitoring and enforcement of SLAs to achieve non-repudiability, so that these measurements cannot be contested. Another objective was to abstract the metric definitions as much as possible so as to facilitate the direct comparability of SLAs among providers.
The SLALOM reference model is ISO-compliant, utilising the classes and parameters of the draft ISO/IEC 19086-2 metric model, but further allows for the use of a â€˜samplingâ€™ class for concretely defining the sampling process of the metric. Furthermore, all metrics defined via the SLALOM model should be machine understandable.
In order to prove the applicability of the SLALOM model in a wide range of real world scenarios, a number of metrics directly stemming

Work performed

Over the course of the 18-month project, the SLALOM partners have first set the bases for a legal model and technical specification by seeking input from key stakeholders to define the initial set of terms that were then presented for consensus to a wide range of stakeholders in order to further align with SLALOM final products with the market and address any concerns raised through the consensus phase. The final outcomes of SLALOM are detailed below.
The main outcomes of the project are the SLALOM legal MSA and technical specifications. The legal and technical teams have also provided additional, focussed support and guidance documents.
The SLALOM legal model is effectively a complete contract for use between a cloud user (adopter) and their provider. (Placeholders are included for situation-specific content such as the description of services, and charges.) The SLALOM legal model is set out as a cloud service agreement (CSA) document, following a common industry approach, with more detailed content (e.g. specific service levels, privacy, and consideration) as annexes. The contract is ready to use, and can provide a starting point for creating new contracts, or it can be used as a benchmark for comparing with existing ones. It has been designed to be extendible or modifiable because it is recognized that in general variations will be needed.
The SLALOM legal model is the public contractual deliverable D2.2 Final Legal Terms for adoption available for download from the SLALOM website.
On the technical side, the SLALOM technical team has produced a series of technical documents which develop and define the SLALOM technical specification. The first major document is the technical reference model, which is the conceptual basis for creating unambiguous and non-contestable (i.e. non-repudiable) metrics. The technical reference model is primarily expected to be used by researchers and specialists in developing metrics. The second major document is a set of proposed example metrics, developed using the technical reference model, but presented in a way which should be more immediately usable by providers and adopters alike.
The SLALOM reference model was created with the aim of standardising the definition of SLAs in a manner that serves the whole lifecycle of SLAs for cloud services and overcomes the shortcomings of existing approaches, by eliminating ambiguities in the definition and calculation of metrics and facilitating the measurement, monitoring and enforcement of SLAs to achieve non-repudiability, so that these measurements cannot be contested. Another objective was to abstract the metric definitions as much as possible so as to facilitate the direct comparability of SLAs among providers.
The SLALOM reference model is ISO-compliant, utilising the classes and parameters of the draft ISO/IEC 19086-2 metric model, but further allows for the use of a â€˜samplingâ€™ class for concretely defining the sampling process of the metric. Furthermore, all metrics defined via the SLALOM model should be machine understandable.
In order to prove the applicability of the SLALOM model in a wide range of real world scenarios, a number of metrics directly stemming from commercial cloud providers were successfully mapped to the SLALOM model. The SLALOM technical model is contained in the contractual deliverable D3.6 SLA specification and reference model â€“ c. They are also available as a free-standing document entitled â€œCloud SLA Metrics Based on the SLALOM Specification and Reference Modelâ€ available on the SLALOM website.
To arrive at the above legal and technical models, extensive efforts were undertaken to consult stakeholders (providers, adopters, policymakers) to better understand the concerns and priorities of the different constituencies. This consensus was supported by the SLALOM dissemination team through the organization of events and online workshops.

Final results

On the legal track, SLALOM has provided a ready-to-use / adapt Master Service Agreement that has already been adapted for real-world use. The SLALOM legal model is effectively a complete contract for use between a cloud user (adopter) and their provider. (Placeholders are included for situation-specific content such as the description of services, and charges.) The SLALOM legal model is set out as a cloud service agreement (CSA) document, following a common industry approach, with more detailed content (e.g. specific service levels, privacy, and consideration) as annexes. The contract is ready to use, and can provide a starting point for creating new contracts, or it can be used as a benchmark for comparing with existing ones. It has been designed to be extendible or modifiable because it is recognized that in general variations will be needed.

On the technical side, the SLALOM technical team has produced a series of technical documents which develop and define the SLALOM technical specification, pushing forward current work and making it usable for research and for commercial providers and adopters.
The first major document is the technical reference model, which is the conceptual basis for creating unambiguous and non-contestable (i.e. non-repudiable) metrics. The technical reference model is primarily expected to be used by researchers and specialists in developing metrics. The second major document is a set of proposed example metrics, developed using the technical reference model, but presented in a way which should be more immediately usable by providers and adopters alike.
The SLALOM reference model was created with the aim of standardising the definition of SLAs in a manner that serves the whole lifecycle of SLAs for cloud services and overcomes the shortcomings of existing approaches, by eliminating ambiguities in the definition and calculation of metrics and facilitating the measurement, monitoring and enforcement of SLAs to achieve non-repudiability, so that these measurements cannot be contested. Another objective was to abstract the metric definitions as much as possible so as to facilitate the direct comparability of SLAs among providers.
The SLALOM reference model is ISO-compliant, utilising the classes and parameters of the draft ISO/IEC 19086-2 metric model, but further allows for the use of a â€˜samplingâ€™ class for concretely defining the sampling process of the metric. Furthermore, all metrics defined via the SLALOM model should be machine understandable.
In order to prove the applicability of the SLALOM model in a wide range of real world scenarios, a number of metrics directly stemming from commercial cloud providers were successfully mapped to the SLALOM model.