There is probably a question here of the difference between a
consumers SLA with a service and a producers SLA with its environment. Taking
our outsourcing business as an example there tends to be a difference between
the SLA that applies to end-users (consumers) and the one that we give to the
client around the hosting and support. The hosting and support element
includes specific details around number of calls, what type of calls, DR policy,
backup policy etc etc which I guess could be called the service owners SLA, or
you could consider the infrastructure et al as being a service in its own right
and the DR et al being its SLA for providing hosting services to the business
service. The consumer SLA will have availability, response times and not much
else.
The amount of content in an SLA is massively dependent on the
business value and the business impact of a service. So taking something like
a production line management service that directly impacts the company
financially when it fails then the SLA will be pretty complete, something
around monthly HR reporting will have a best endeavours style of SLA.
Steve
From: Ken Laskey [mailto:]
Sent: 24 January 2007 05:19
To: Danny Thornton
Cc:
Subject: Re: [soa-rm-ra] definition of SLA
Danny,
Thanks for the pointer. I was out of the office today
and didn't have a chance to look at this beyond your summary below, but my
first impression is that definition includes every possible aspect of a
service, and that doesn't make sense. Do you really expect the SLA of
every service (or even a significant number) to go into the details of disaster
recovery? I may want some assurance a critical service will be there
during times of extreme duress, but I probably do not care (and would not
appreciate) the details of how the provider will do it.
But let me read this and the other responses to my SLA
definition question and let me see if I migrate to a more enlightened view.
Ken
On Jan 23, 2007, at 12:47 AM, Danny Thornton wrote:
The following link is one description:
http://www.sla-zone.co.uk/index.htm
It lists the following pieces to the SLA:
Definition of Services
Problem Management
Performance Management
Customer Duties and Responsibilities
Warranties and Remedies
Service
quality
Indemnities
Third
party claims
Remedies
for breaches
Exclusions
Force
majeure
Security
Information
Security Policies
Security
Audit and Internal Audit
Disaster Recovery
Termination
Several parts of the SLA can translate into policies
and configurables for services and devices. The
policies created from the SLA can result in automated
run time adjustments to services and devices to meet
the requirements in the SLA. A failure in ability to
meet the SLA in the SOA results in an elevation of the
problem which might have legal ramifications.
In terms of the service description, we could state
that Interactions Policies and Contracts can contain
an aggregation of one or more SLAs. We could then
extend the SLA to include the above types of
information in a separate diagram.
Danny
--- Ken Laskey <>
wrote:
This will probably need to be tackled at some point
and I have the
question biting me now.
Is there an accepted
definition of a service
level agreement? How
would we define it? For what
purposes is it
used? When
should someone care?
Answer these and I have more questions?
Ken
------------------------------------------------------------------------
------------------
Ken Laskey
MITRE Corporation, M/S H305 phone: 703-983-7934
7515 Colshire Drive
fax:
703-983-1379
McLean VA 22102-7508
____________________________________________________________________________________
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------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Ken Laskey
MITRE Corporation, M/S H305
phone: 703-983-7934
7515 Colshire Drive
fax:
703-983-1379
McLean VA 22102-7508
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