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What is a Master Service Agreement?

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A Master Service Agreement (MSA) is a contract between two parties, in this case the software provider and the buyer, outlining the terms and conditions of the agreement. It will typically cover pricing, payment terms, service levels, intellectual property rights, confidentiality, liability, termination, and dispute resolution.

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Unlike a service level agreement (SLA) which outlines the specific performance metrics and criteria for the delivery of a particular service, for example uptime guarantees and support response times, an MSA covers the broader terms of the business relationship.

What is SaaS sprawl?

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SaaS sprawl, also known as software sprawl, occurs when an organization’s SaaS stack consists of a large — and often unmanageable — number of applications.

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Ultimately, as business needs grow, the number of digital tools required increases, which leads to new applications being subscribed to, be this through a centralized process or at the will of individual employees.

What is an instance in the context of cloud computing?

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In cloud computing, an instance refers to a virtual server provided by a third-party cloud service, for example AWS, Azure or Google Cloud. These instances ultimately enable companies to deploy and run their applications or services in the cloud, in a scalable and flexible manner. This is because instances are on-demand and can be adjusted based on your workload requirements.

What is meant by data storage?

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In the context of cloud computing, data storage refers to the process of storing and managing digital information in either a remote server or a data center provided by a cloud service provider such as Amazon Web Services (AWS) or Microsoft Azure.

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The cloud ultimately provides a versatile platform for storing various types of data, whether that be documents, media files, application data, machine learning data or structured data.

What are overages in SaaS?

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In SaaS, overages refer to the additional costs or fees that are incurred when a user exceeds the contracted usage limits or terms of their plan. Examples of overages include user overages, storage overages, API usage overages, feature overages and support overages.

What is a service level agreement in SaaS?

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A Service Level Agreement (SLA) is a subset of a Master Service Agreement (MSA) and contains specific details about the level of service that will be provided by the SaaS vendor. This agreement will specifically define the performance metrics, responsibilities, and expectations of both parties.

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An SLA is likely to include uptime guarantees, the level of support that will be provided to the customer, response times for any support requests, information on how these requests will be managed and escalated, information on how the vendor will protect the customer’s data and ensure the security of its systems and networks, as well as details on how it will compensate the customer if it fails to meet the agreed-upon service levels.