Summary

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This chapter is not intended to provide a comprehensive guide to service level management. It is intended to provide sufficient insight into the types of issues that must be addressed.

Service level management is about value for money and quality of service. These two terms are fundamental to the whole process. The provider of the service is expected to deliver a specified, agreed, level of service, and the consumer requires value for the money being spent on the service.

A service level agreement is a contract between two parties that comprises an agreed definition of the service to be provided and a number of tolerances that must not be exceeded. If they are exceeded, however, defined escalation procedures describe how to proceed.

An SLA is only as good as the information available to support it. There must be accurate, reliable, and timely data so that performance can be verified .

The example scenario demonstrates the need for a system manager to be absolutely certain that he can provide the level of service being requested before agreeing to it.

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