Uptime & SLA

A measure of how much of the time a service is available, and the contractual promise, a service level agreement, that sets the target and consequences for missing it.

Definition

Uptime is the proportion of time a system is available and working, usually expressed as a percentage such as 99.9%, while a service level agreement, or SLA, is the contract between a provider and its customer that specifies the promised uptime and performance, how they are measured, and the remedies, such as credits, if targets are missed. In iGaming, where downtime during a big sporting event or a popular game release means lost revenue and frustrated players, uptime and latency commitments are core to contracts between operators and their platform, aggregation, payment and data suppliers. SLAs also cover support response times and maintenance windows. High availability is achieved through redundancy, failover and monitoring, and is tracked closely because so many interdependent systems must all be up for players to play.

Worked example

An aggregator's SLA promises 99.9% monthly uptime and a maximum support response time; when an outage during a major match pushes availability below target, the contract entitles the operator to service credits, and both sides review the incident.

Why it matters

For learners, it is the promise that a service will almost always be available and what happens if it is not. For professionals, uptime and SLAs govern the reliability of every supplier relationship in the stack and translate directly into revenue and player trust, so they are central to vendor selection, operations and contracts.

Related

Note: Specific uptime percentages, measurement methods and remedies are set per contract and vary widely; the figures here are illustrative.