• Strengthen service-level agreements
by Shally Bansal Stanley
Use the right terms in your SLA to make sure service providers deliver what you're paying for. Scroll down for a useful table detailing distinctions between a carrier .s standard service-level agreement and one that better protects you.

• Crafting service-level agreements that work
By Johna Till Johnson
There's good news and bad news on the topic of service-level agreements. The good news is that most large organizations have begun to define SLAs for all carrier service contracts - and they include items such as latency and availability that have a real impact on user satisfaction.

• Sifting through the SLM mess
by Lisa Erickson-Harris
The market is flooded with service-level management products and services, making selection of an appropriate service management product a challenge.

• System Level Agreement (SLA) Boot Camp
by Andy Quick
Service Level Agreements, or "SLA's" are tricky but useful mechanisms for managing the risk of an on-going relationship with IT service providers. Unfortunately, most SLA's that show up in service contracts as worthless, cosmetic paper additions. SLA's can be extremely powerful tools to help you and your service provider get the most out of a relationship.

• Improve service levels with meaningful measurement
by Anne Brazao
Measuring service levels is one of the most important aspects of service-level management (SLM). If you cannot accurately measure service levels, you will never be able to improve them. Managing something that is not being measured is not only difficult, it is impossible to quantify success without proof points verifying improvements over time.

• Blueprint for an Exchange Service Level Agreement
by Steve Bryant
A service level agreement (SLA) is a mechanism for creating a common understanding between two parties about services and service delivery. It is a communication tool that helps to manage expectations, clarify responsibilities, and provide an objective basis for assessing service effectiveness. This article describes the specific attributes of a messaging SLA. Warning: This document is not technical, but contains an extremely detailed business process for developing a Service Level Agreement between a company and an outsourcing vendor. The processes could also apply to an SLA between departments in the same company.

• Best practices in Web hosting service-level agreements
by Corey Ferengul, Meta Group
During 2001/02, 75 percent of services providers (xSPs) will experience significant shortcomings in meeting expected service levels or in providing seamless delivery and process integration. By 2003/04, successful XSPs will include large vendors with "variable" pricing options, niche vendors dominating vertical markets, and aggregators with strong customer service orientation. Use of third-party "trusted intermediaries" for service-level validation will be common by 2005.

• Creating IT Service Level Agreements (subscription required)
by ITtoolkit
A realistic Service Level Agreement may be a key to IT success. This assessment tool will help you to evaluate your need for an SLA, presenting key steps for preparation and implementation.

• Setting Standards For Service-Level Agreements
by Larry Greenemeier
The MSP Association program will help with templates for writing SLAs based on the ITIL standard, plus self-assessment surveys to determine where standardization is needed.

• ISPs Up Ante on Guarantees
Any time data travels on the public network, even for a comparatively small portion of a trip, no service provider can offer a 100 percent guarantee of the delivery performance. Nonetheless, ISPs are beginning to offer SLAs designed to approach the reliability and availability of private networking.

• E-business Trends Boost Enterprise Interest In SLM
Information technology (IT) departments have long discussed Service Level Management (SLM), and some have even pushed for its adoption. Recently, however, SLM has become as much a business pull as a technology push, thanks to the inexorable trend toward e-business.

• What to Do When a Service Provider Can't Meet the Terms of an SLA
Sometimes the service provider simply doesn't perform as promised. The enterprise and service provider either work things out or figure out how to split up.

• 12 Ways to a Better SLA
Tips on how to get the most out of your service level agreement.

• A Global Users Guide to Application Service Provisioning
Application service provisioning is a very attractive proposition to many companies but how can you tell which application service provider will best fulfil your company’s needs? This article sets out the questions you need to ask before choosing your ASP.

• Service-Level Disagreement
Carriers and their enterprise customers go head to head over soft Internet service-level agreements

• Balancing the Load
It used to be that Web hosters, just like ISPs before them, would offer uptime guarantees for Web sites. Now, customers want advanced technical details about the interaction between the data center ecosystem and their own equipment and services.

• Two Essential Parts for Service Contracts
2001 If you're drafting a contract for a vital ongoing service such as outsourcing or telecommunications, business continuation and transition clauses should be essential parts of the deal.

• The Forgotten Five: What Your SLA Does Not Cover
The ‘all-inclusive’ service level agreement (SLA) does not exist. 'Outs' always exist for vendors when services provided fall below contractually stipulated levels. Customers, enraged at the fact that their SLA does not protect them against everything, blame providers for poor service and ‘unfair’ SLAs. Customers often forget that the more comprehensive the SLA, the greater its cost.

• Check That Network Service Level Agreement
Imagine typing in your company's Web address and discovering that your site is down. Or, what if your entire company lost access to the Internet for even just a few hours? Although you can't prevent these things from happening, you can address these potential blows to your workday by clarifying your expectations in your service level agreement, or SLA.

• A Strategy for the Right Service Levels
Establishing realistic service levels and remedies for vendor nonperformance can be very difficult. The challenge manifests itself during contract negotiations.

• What Constitutes an ASP Service Level Agreement?
A service level agreement (SLA) represents a series of commitments by a vendor to a customer. SLAs do not have to be complex or mysterious. However, many Application Service Providers (ASPs) use arcane language and incredibly detailed standards to make the SLA appear to be a serious, life or death obligation.

• The "Availability Gotcha" or Why 99.999% Still Equals Nothing
The IT industry has a long, consistent history of sweeping promises accompanied by slow or missing follow-through. This makes IT customers understandably skeptical when faced with new, rapidly growing players in the IT industry, such as Application Service Providers (ASPs). While these points certainly ring true in many circumstances, customers also share responsibility for the equal proliferation of unreasonable, inflated, essentially meaningless SLAs.

• Liquidated Incentives, Performance Damages: Thoughts On the Delicate Art of SLA Remedies
A service level agreement (SLA) without realistic remedies qualifies as a waste of time for all concerned, both during the actual negotiations as well as for the life of the relationship. A well-written contract depends directly on its ability to respond to failure with appropriate mechanisms proactively designed to restore the agreement's integrity.

• SLAs: The Good, the Bad, the Ugly
What's par for the course for the "service level" part of a service-level agreement from an Internet-infrastructure provider means different things to different people. Or so says a report by Tier 1 Research, an Internet-infrastructure software-and-services research firm based in Minneapolis.

• Fit To Be Tied
As outsourcing of complex Internet functions becomes the norm, it's becoming increasingly important for service providers and their customers to come up with effective service-level agreements (SLAs).

• Waiting for Service-level Management
In the circles of managers the subject of service-level management is one of great interest. Managers around the world recognize the importance of establishing a program for managing the level of the service they provide to their clients, but they seem to be paralyzed.

• The Well-Mannered Application
The distributed nature of E-commerce applications requires better and more precise measurements for performance and reliability. The advent of ASP-provided applications adds yet another wrinkle to the application performance challenge.

• A Structured Approach to Service Level Management
Your service level agreement only highlights whether or not the service is reaching agreed quality standards. A structured approach to service level management enables your business to manage more effectively the factors that lead to world-class service delivery.

• Is 50% Uptime Sufficient?
Most companies want 99.8% or better with a desire for constant improvement in their IT service level. But high service levels may not be that necessary for some decentralized organizations whose operations are distributed worldwide.

• Stepping Up to Multitiered Service-level Agreements
If you are a service provider you also may have to step up to the fact that your end-user clients also depend on a whole mix of other service providers. So how do you manage these environments? How do you control what politically and organizationally is beyond your purview?

• Two Essential Parts for Service Contracts
What you need to know when you're drafting a contract for a vital ongoing service.

• The Well-Mannered Application
The distributed nature of E-commerce applications requires better and more precise measurements for performance and reliability. Add ASP-provided applications to the mix brings another wrinkle to the application performance challenge.

• Internet Research Task Force (IRTF) Authorization, Authenitication and Accounting (AAA) Architecture Research Group Service Level Agreement Outline

• METAView on Service Level Management (report)
Forward-thinking IT organizations will focus on internal service-level management (SLM) functions as a vehicle for continuous process improvement and external communication.

• SLAs: Who Needs 'em?
Are businesses making the right use of SLAs?

• Whatever Happened to SLM?
Have SLAs disappeared -- or just evolved into something else?

• Put IT in Writing - Service Level Agreements
Today's service level agreements are distinguished by clear, simple language and a tight focus on the business. For IS groups that use them, the benefits can be substantial.

• Service Level Management Can Be Key to IT Success
More than just the latest buzzword, SLM can be a key component to IT success

• VPN Service-Level Agreements - Always Check the Fine Print
Tips from a service provider about what to look for in virtual private network service-level agreements.

• Will SLAs Hold Up in Court?
It's hard to say how Service Level Agreements (SLA) will hold up to the scrutiny of a court. See how one ISP was put to the test.

• App-Specific SLAs Raise Hosting Stakes
Adding another measure of credibility to application hosting, Qwest Cyber.Solutions is set to unveil new service level agreements guaranteeing availability of applications, in addition to the networks they run on, for small and midsized businesses.

• In the Trenches at an ASP Application service providers are locked in serious combat for a share of their burgeoning market. We take a look at how one, NaviSite, does its work.

• Asps Outsourcing Raises Risks for Clients
Some Asps are taking advantage of ASP offerings themselves in order to grow their business more quickly. But users need to protect themselves, ...

• Building a Better Service-Level Agreement
Two years ago, Naomi Karten did consulting work for a bank. Her job: Figure out why its initial information technology service-level agreement (SLA) had ...

• Service Pacts Ease Conflict
Call it a pre-emptive strike weapon. Under siege by frustrated users and determined to head off outsourcing efforts, more IS departments are hammering out service-level agreements

• Data Warehouse Users Seek Guarantees
Service-level agreements are finding their way into data warehouses, giving business users a written guarantee of access to analytical data.

• Taking the Measure of Metrics
The unreliability of distributed client/server systems and the ups and downs of network performance are putting service-level agreements (SLA) back in the limelight.

• Monitors to Track Frame-Relay Service Levels on WANs
Managers of wide-area networks,under pressure to meet service-level agreements for internal users, must make sure they get the best frame-relay service...

• Avoiding Loopholes
Items to negotiate in your next SLA, plus some suggested targets

• SLA Savvy
Five secrets for making sure you get the most from your service-level agreements.

• ISP competition fuels stronger SLAs
Service-level agreements (SLA) for dedicated Internet access offerings are stronger than ever, but many of these guarantees still lack automatic credits and real-time monitoring tools.

• Negotiating An Effective Service Level Agreement - I
"Service Level Agreements" are essentially service agreements. It is very easy to lose sight of this simple fact.

• Negotiating An Effective Service Level Agreement - II
A service level agreement is a commitment entered into between a service provider and a customer to specify services to be supplied by the service provider; and to specify standards that must be met by the service provider in the provision of those services.

• Check That Network Service Level Agreement
Although you can't prevent IT system problems from happening, you can address these potential blows to your workday by clarifying your expectations in your service level agreement, or SLA.

• Service Level Agreement from the User Perspective
Different elements that compose a Service Level Agreement Contract and a new approach to further develop SLAs towards an integrated Service Level reporting that takes into account QoS from the user perspective.

• The Truth About Service-level Management
Service-level management, properly done, can offer tremendous benefits to service providers and users.

• Service Level Management
Service-level agreements are taking on new meaning, as they become a business requirement for firms rapidly deploying e-business initiatives, and as the use of service providers becomes increasingly popular.

• IDC Believes the Service-Level Management Market Will Triple
to $849 Million in 2004
IDC looks into the future of service-level management.

• Service-level Agreements
Working with an ASP can be a risky proposition, especially for established companies that entrust the care and management of core business applications to small or emerging companies. How can you ensure an ASP will perform well, respond quickly to problems or perform regular maintenance checks?

• Avoiding ASP Angst
The lessons are clear for information technology managers: If you don't ask your ASP the right questions up front, you risk paying the price later. Fortunately, managers contemplating moving to an ASP can learn from the experiences of veteran users.

• A Structured Approach to Service Level Management
Your service level agreement only highlights whether or not the service is reaching agreed quality standards. A structured approach to service level management enables your business to manage more effectively the factors that lead to world-class service delivery.

• Is 50% Uptime Sufficient?
Most companies want 99.8% or better with a desire for constant improvement in their IT service level. But high service levels may not be that necessary for some decentralized organizations whose operations are distributed worldwide.

• Shared Pain
IT managers are discovering just how difficult they are to manage and market shared services.

• Stepping Up to Multitiered Service-level Agreements
If you are a service provider you also may have to step up to the fact that your end-user clients also depend on a whole mix of other service providers. So how do you manage these environments? How do you control what politically and organizationally is beyond your purview?

• Two Essential Parts for Service Contracts
What you need to know when you're drafting a contract for a vital ongoing service.

• The Well-Mannered Application
The distributed nature of E-commerce applications requires better and more precise measurements for performance and reliability. Add ASP-provided applications to the mix brings another wrinkle to the application performance challenge.

• Making IT Accountable
Service-level agreements are a requirement for relationships with service providers. Wouldn't it seem that the same would hold true for making the relationship between internal departments and the IT department smoother?

• SLAs: A Customer-Oriented Tool
What is a service level agreement (SLA)? Is it a piece of paper that an application service provider's (ASP's) customer pulls out when they can't access their systems, only to find that their ASP is meeting the letter, if not the spirit, of every clause? There are SLAs like that but, frankly, if you have one you have only yourself to blame.

• Searching for SLM Tools
Whether it's Bob Vila planning another home improvement project, or an IT manager contemplating service-level management, our thoughts quickly turn to tools. In the case of SLM, it is usually a software product (although there are some hardware products relevant to SLM).

• The SLA Rule Book
Recently, the Information Technology Association of America released a set of guidelines that highlights the critical pieces of an SLA that enterprises and government agencies should consider when looking to buy services from an ASP.

• A Beginner's Guide to SLAs
When it comes to hosting your company's mission-critical applications, there's little room for downtime or sub-par bandwidth. That's why application service providers (ASPs) and their customers often sign service-level agreements, or SLAs. These contracts lay out the specific quality and performance levels you can expect from a service provider.

• Ten Key Questions for Developing Effective Service Level Agreements
The first and most important step in developing an effective SLA is to ask the right questions. This article will give you those questions and some background on how to choose the right answers.

• Incentives: Don't Sign an Outsourcing Contract Without Them
Buyers and vendors, if you've never used incentives in an outsourcing contract, start considering them. They are an idea whose time has come.

• Why and How of SLAs
As the movement toward more comprehensive service management evolves within IT, there is renewed emphasis on service level agreements (SLAs), executed between IT organizations and their "customers"—internal departments—which spell out specific cost and performance targets.

• ASP FAQs
Frequently Asked Questions and Answers from the ASP Industry Consortium.

• Taking It To the Web
The problem is that many are in such a rush to get to the Web that they are not integrating their Web applications with their back-end processes. While this technique provides a quick, temporary business solution, the reality is that the partial solution may not be in the best interests of the company for the long term.

• Service Level Agreements
Working with an application service provider (ASP) can be a risky proposition, especially for established companies that entrust the care and management of core business applications to small or emerging companies. How can you ensure an ASP will perform well, respond quickly to problems or perform regular maintenance checks?

• IDC Believes the Service-Level Management Market Will Triple to $849 Million in 2004
According to IDC, IP-service management and a growing reliance on service-level agreement (SLA) reconciliation for managed and hosted services will propel revenues in this market from $278 million in 1999 to $849 million in 2004.

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