Service Level Agreements (SLAs)

When selling a product or service you establish a relationship with your customers. To protect both parties and to support the sale a number of aspects should be clearly defined so that both parties understand the boundaries of the relationship.

Particularly important in this respect is the SLA. SLAs are formal contracts guaranteeing quantifiable performance under specified conditions that define Quality of Service and attempt to quantify it so it can be measured.

MorganDoyle has developed a rich library of SLAs covering:

• Network services;
• Departmental IT;
• Hosted applications; and
• reducing waste; and
• Messaging.

MorganDoyle's White Papers - Don't Get Bitten by Your ASP and  Writing SLAs - provide further detailed information.

	A generic SLA should address the following issues:
	Define the service	being provided, in terms of parties to the contract, boundaries, responsibilities and service features. It is often worth including an explicit statement of what is not included if this is not obvious.
	Specify	operating conditions, environment and constraints in which the service will operate; availability of the service usually in terms of a percentage uptime over a defined time period; and volume of transactions and/or user level events that can be performed in a given period.
	Quantify timeliness	i.e. delay or response times, usually in terms of a percentage of events, e.g. round trip acknowledgements or user transactions, which will be completed within the specified time.
	Define procedures	for reporting and rectifying faults, e.g. response times, Mean Time To Restore, escalation, etc.
	Prescribe responsibilities	for users and/or consumers, so that the provider can perform his part of the bargain.
	Describe service monitoring	both in terms of report contents and the reporting period.
	Define all parameters	or metrics in unambiguous, technical terms.
	Allow for renegotiating	the SLA in the longer term, as industry norms and your needs change.
	Provide guarantees	in terms of compensation if service levels are compromised.