Overview

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The IT systems and the corporate networks present in today's businesses have become what's known as mission-critical ”that is, they are crucial to the survival of the business. Unlike a tangible asset, such as a building or production equipment, the corporate network is a collection of assets and services. The networks today are central to supporting the business objectives of the organization.

The system manager is responsible for providing the IT services to the business. He must be in a position to deliver those services in an efficient and effective manner and, more importantly, in a way that is acceptable to the business so that it can survive in today's extremely competitive global market.

The system manager's customers, or clients , are becoming increasingly dependent on the services that he provides. They also are becoming more technically aware, which has given them a much better idea of what they can reasonably expect of the IT department. The client is now demanding more, particularly in terms of the quality of service. Conversely, the IT department is being expected to do more with less. Computer networks are expanding at a frighteningly fast rate, both in size and complexity, but the expenditure and human resources are not increasing at a corresponding rate; they are reducing because of so-called automation tools that have come on to the market. So far, these have shown only limited success, partly because the system management tools and utilities that are necessary for controlling and monitoring the enterprise network are missing or underpowered. As a result, there has been insufficient meaningful data available to be capable of determining the level of success that IT departments are achieving. For a long time, data has been available for various portions of a service, such as individual system performance, network performance information, and so on, but nothing really has been available on the end-to-end delivery of a service. It is this kind of data that will allow the performance to be measured to any degree of accuracy.

The question being asked is this:"How does the business ascertain the level of success, or failure, that the IT department is achieving?"

Previously, the system manager measured success by various factors, which were always related to hardware and software components , such as system availability, performance, and so on. These might have given the impression that all was well, that he was doing a great job, and that all the customers must also think the same.

On the other hand, the client may have had a different opinion. Certainly, the main computer system may have been up and available for 364.99 days out of the last 365, but the network was not, and neither were the printers, so the client lost a lot of time and became increasingly frustrated at the lack of service being provided.

The result is that there is no mutually acceptable agreement between the two perspectives, and that is where service level management comes in.

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