Assessing and Improving SLAs for IT Service Providers, Linking Theory with Business

Abstract

IT within organizations has changed from being a support area into playing a strategic and functional role that non-IT organizations could not maintain on their own, thus IT functions were outsourced to specialized service providers to help deliver a reliable service and reduce costs. Services as such include a wide variety of information transmission, communication and many other technology services, from which, networking and internet provision are essential. In order to govern the relation between organizations and their respective service providers, Service Level Agreements are used as a method of contracting so that the service is delivered as expected. Although these agreements are widely used, they have been criticized due to the lack of standards in various areas. This paper presents the literature and theory behind IT service management and answers the questions of how services can be measured and sustained, combining the academic research and frameworks with a case-study of business Service Level Agreements for companies that provide networking and Internet services, analyzing indicators and metrics and suggesting a best-practices method that can be used as a template for preparing clear Service Agreements and Indicators.