A Service Level Agreement (SLA) is significant because it outlines the expectations and deliverables to be executed by the parties involved in managed services. A Service Level Agreement also serves as the standard for the quality of services that will be provided by the vendor to their client. An SLA is like a contract that clearly defines the extent and limitations of services, the level of services that will be provided and the cost involved in executing the service.
Scope of the Service Level Agreement
The Service Level Agreement also provides a viable time frame for the project to be completed. Contracted between two parties, the client or customer and the service provider, an SLA is often like a binding legal contract that helps safeguard the interests of both these parties. Note that contracts or similar legal agreements between service providers and other third parties are not the same as a Service Level Agreement.
A typical SLA will also include other responsibilities such as a guarantee of repairs and maintenance, etc. Each of these services can also be further broken into different levels of availability. For example, an SLA may specify that a particular service can only be provided at a fixed level. This also helps create expectations that are more realistic and probably more practical for both parties.
Specifying levels of service in the Service Level Agreement itself also helps measure the time and efforts and helps resolve any misunderstanding or conflict later on.
Technical details
SLAs will often cover deeply technical aspects of a project, including defining specifics such as uptime for servers, further detailed as time between failures and the time taken for recovery. The specific terms of the Service Level Agreement will depend on the industry it is drafted for. If it is a contract for customer services, elements like call attendance and call abandonment may come into picture. If it involves data, then details such as data input rate and other data handling and other measurable data management criteria too may be taken into account.
SLA enforcement
Because the Service Level Agreement takes multiple areas into its consideration, it is vital that your application monitoring tools include SLA enforcement as well. A robust application monitoring system also monitors SLA compliance and whether the agreed-upon standards for services and other technical details are being met or not. For small and mid-sized businesses particularly, even small differences in server uptime or data errors can make for large expenses in the long run. Adherence to the SLA elements can prevent losses of time and money, while improving system or application performance, server uptimes and overall quality standards of your business operations.
0 comments:
Post a Comment