High-availability systems must be available most of the time. Service-level agreements (SLAs) specify your organization's availability expectations. System uptime can be expressed as three nines, four nines, or five nines. These expressions indicate system uptimes of 99.9 percent, 99.99 percent, or 99.999 percent. How many downtime hours per year will be covered with an SLA of 99.9% uptime

An important source of public scrutiny is "watchdogs." these are: the efforts of a firm's competitors, including how often the competitors attack the firm's strategies. taxpayer-supported government agencies that limit a firm's ability to compete in foreign markets. companies designated by the government to only produce products that support the government defense program. socially conscious groups that make it their mission to measure the social responsibility levels of businesses, and provide consumers with their opinions about the level of corporate responsibility of various companies.