Enterprise Service Level Agreement

When it emerged in the late 1980s, SLAs evolved as a mechanism to govern these relationships. Service level agreements set out a service provider`s performance expectations and set penalties for meeting targets and, in some cases, bonuses for exceeding them. Since outsourcing projects were often customized for a specific client, outsourcing SLAs were often designed to govern a particular project. SLAs define the contractual terms for the services, including things like the availability and responsiveness of support. For example, promising customers 99.9% service availability or a support response within 24 hours. In addition to formalizing service expectations, SLAs define the conditions for correcting compliance violations. On an average day, your service center team doesn`t consider a printer failure to be the highest priority ticket. But the CEO`s printer? That`s another story. In practice, IT teams prioritize tickets in different ways: from relevant parts of the company to whom the ticket was opened, to even more complex combinations (for example. B, a failure of the sales reservation system at the end of the quarter). Tools that automate the collection and display of performance data at the service level are also available.

Stakeholders – Clearly defines the parties involved in the agreement and defines their responsibilities. It will take some time to determine whether SLAs are being applied by companies with the same enthusiasm as their data service relatives. It will also take some time to determine the set of solutions most desired by IT departments: point-of-service monitoring products or tools that take a holistic approach to SLA compliance. Sam Alunni is Vice President of Networking at Sterling Research (Sterling, Massachusetts). Contact him at alunni@sterlingresearch.com. SLAs have been so successful in this market that the concept has quickly become part of network awareness and is now moving into the enterprise. Enterprise SLAs offer the same type of security as their older and more widespread network brethren, the main difference being that they represent agreements between organizations within the same company rather than agreements between companies. Otherwise, their purpose is the same, namely to provide a mechanism in which explicit criteria are used to measure the quality of a service between an organization that uses it and the organization that provides it.

SLAs include agreed penalties, called service credits, that can be applied if, after the peak of sla quality in the late 1990s, the value to the customer has begun to decline. Support agreements have been rewritten to put the undeserved emphasis on response times when what companies really need is a solution. OEM cost-cutting efforts have resulted in outsourcing basic troubleshooting levels to low-cost vendors. Once you`ve negotiated the best SLAs for your current business and customer needs, you can implement them. Here are some tips for taking SLAs to a whole new level of ease and efficiency. Choose measures that motivate good behavior. The first objective of each metric is to motivate the appropriate behavior on behalf of the customer and the service provider. Each side of the relationship will try to optimize its actions to achieve the performance objectives defined by the metrics.

First, focus on the behavior you want to motivate. Then, test your metrics by putting yourself in the place on the other side. How would you optimize your performance? Does this optimization support the desired results? For the defined measures to be useful, an appropriate baseline must be established, with measures defined at an appropriate and achievable level of performance. This baseline will likely be redefined throughout the participation of the parties to the agreement using the processes set out in the “Periodic Review and Amendment” section of the SLA. Service level credits, or simply service credits, should be the only recourse available to customers to compensate for service level outages. A service credit deducts an amount of money from the total amount payable under the contract if the service provider does not meet service delivery and performance standards. Other measures include the schedule for prior notification of network changes that may affect users and general statistics on service usage. Cloud providers are more reluctant to change their default SLAs because their margins are based on providing basic services to many buyers. In some cases, however, customers can negotiate terms with their cloud providers. Define carefully. A vendor can optimize SLA definitions to ensure that they are met. For example, the Incident Response Time metric is designed to ensure that the vendor processes an incident within a minimum of minutes.

However, some vendors can meet the SLA 100% of the time by providing an automated response to an incident report. Customers should clearly define SLAs so that they represent the intent of the service level. SLAs are an essential part of any outsourcing and technology provider contract. In addition to listing expectations for the type and quality of service, an SLA provides remedies if the requirements are not met. When sending an offer, the customer must specify the service levels expected as part of the request. This affects the supplier`s offer and price, and can even influence the supplier`s decision to respond. For example, if you need 99.999% availability for a system and the vendor cannot meet this requirement with your specified design, they may suggest a different and more robust solution. In a service-based SLA, all customers who work with the service provider receive similar terms. For example, a cable TV provider indicates the services it offers to all its customers, as well as the additional services or channels available as part of the package. Ideally, SLAs should be aligned with the technology or business objectives of the order.

Misalignment can have a negative impact on prices, the quality of service delivery and the customer experience. .