Service Level Agreement
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A Service Level Agreement (SLA) is a formal written agreement made between two parties: the service provider and the service recipient. The SLA itself defines the basis of understanding between the two parties for delivery of the service itself. The document can be quite complex, and sometimes underpins a formal contract. The contents will vary according to the nature of the service itself, but usually includes a number of core elements, or clauses.
Generally, an SLA should contain clauses that define a specified level of service, support options, incentive awards for service levels exceeded and/or penalty provisions for services not provided. Before having such agreements with customers the IT services need to have a good quality of these services, Quality management will try to improve the QoS, whereas the SLAs will try to keep the quality and guarantee the quality to the customer. Although, the following model improve the SLA for each cycle.
ServiceManagement_Lemniscate.jpg
This model has to be interpreted as follows. The service needs of a customer have to be covered by the IT service of a particular service provider. Therefore the IT needs have to be identified and specified in SLAs. The SLA is the central point in the service Management Lemniscate. In a specified SLA the two parties have to reach an agreement, both on the IT services to be provided and the level or the quality of the services. The service Management Lemniscate shows the role and the importance of a SLA as means for bridging the gap between a user and a user provider. A SLA supports the communication about services and forms a basis form the implementation of the services processes.
Any time where a service commitment cannot be reached is called a "breach", and should be avoided at all costs, with a management contact alerted if a breach event threatens to occur. Breaches often cause penalties to be incurred upon the organisation which cannot fulfill their service contract.
External links
- The Service Level Agreement (http://www.sla-zone.co.uk) An outline of the usual core elements of an SLA
- Basic information about SLAs (http://www.5blocks.com/sla.html)