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Service Level Agreements – What are the Goals?

Service Level Agreements – What are the Goals?. Alan Clark CEO, Telchemy Incorporated. Outline. Services and Service Levels SLA Agreements Customer objectives Service provider objectives Defining meaningful SLAs Where are we today?. What is a “Service”. “Service functionality”

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Service Level Agreements – What are the Goals?

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  1. Service Level Agreements – What are the Goals? Alan Clark CEO, Telchemy Incorporated

  2. Outline • Services and Service Levels • SLA Agreements • Customer objectives • Service provider objectives • Defining meaningful SLAs • Where are we today? Workshop on End-to-End Quality of Service. What is it? How do we get it?

  3. What is a “Service” • “Service functionality” • Set of formal or informal expectations with respect to: • Cost • Performance • Availability • Reliability • …… Workshop on End-to-End Quality of Service. What is it? How do we get it?

  4. “Service Levels” • Abstract • Desired - expectation with regard to some element of a service • Actual – perception that service is “good” or “bad” with respect to expected level • Concrete • Desired - measurable aspect of service • Actual – measured aspect of service Workshop on End-to-End Quality of Service. What is it? How do we get it?

  5. A Classic SLA Agreement • Availability • Capacity • Performance • Change notification • Help desk response time • Billing/ Usage statistics Workshop on End-to-End Quality of Service. What is it? How do we get it?

  6. Customer objectives for SLAs • Agreed level of service from vendor/ provider • Means to hold service provider accountable when objectives not met • Safety – confident in using critical applications that rely on service • Prefer SLAs to be “narrow” – to reflect events that affect user experience of quality Workshop on End-to-End Quality of Service. What is it? How do we get it?

  7. Service Provider objectives for SLAs • Clear delineation of service expected by customer • SLA metrics can be used to set internal performance objectives • Prefer SLAs to be “broader” - averaged, not specific to individual events, reflecting overall experience of quality • Prefer that SLA measurements can be correlated with customer satisfaction – avoid “artificial” service quality problems Workshop on End-to-End Quality of Service. What is it? How do we get it?

  8. Why isn’t this easy? • Easy if • service quality is uniformly good or bad • SLA expressed in terms of things that are easy to measure • Unfortunately • Problems may be intermittent/ irregular • Things that are easy to measure may be difficult to relate to “actual” service quality Workshop on End-to-End Quality of Service. What is it? How do we get it?

  9. What should an SLA be • Measurable • Countable, quantifiable • Objective • Related to user perception of service quality • Comprehensive • Address all aspects of service delivery Workshop on End-to-End Quality of Service. What is it? How do we get it?

  10. “Real World” SLA from a major service provider (Sept ’03) • Availability – 100% uptime • Packet loss – average monthly loss rate 0.1% • Latency – average monthly latency < 55mS • Jitter – average 500uS • Maximum jitter – exceeds 10mS less than 0.1% of a calendar month Workshop on End-to-End Quality of Service. What is it? How do we get it?

  11. Example Average quality = 86 “Quality event” noticeable by the subscriber Workshop on End-to-End Quality of Service. What is it? How do we get it?

  12. Lesson • Average quality level may be within limits • User may be unhappy with service quality • And worse - if the service provider only measures average service level • they may be unaware of widespread problems • Problem diagnosis can be difficult Workshop on End-to-End Quality of Service. What is it? How do we get it?

  13. Recommendations • With regard to call/ session performance metrics • If the customer’s perception of service is affected by transient problems and • If the service can experience transient problems then • Measure service level in a way that reflects this. Workshop on End-to-End Quality of Service. What is it? How do we get it?

  14. What should an SLA beHow do we measure up? • Measurable • Countable, quantifiable • Objective • Related to user perception of service quality • Comprehensive • Address all aspects of service delivery A D B+ Workshop on End-to-End Quality of Service. What is it? How do we get it?

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