The growth of outside contracts with services providers and other third-party vendors is placing greater pressures on service providers to develop comprehensive sets of SLAs (service-level agreements) to help manage the services contracted for, and to ensure that full value is delivered to the end business.

Service-level agreement (SLA) is a contract between a service provider and a customer.  Specifies, usually in measurable terms, what services the service provider will furnish.

Although an SLA is an excellent expectations-management mechanism, it is important to manage your own expectations of what it can realistically accomplish.

This workshop will discuss the definition, contents, uses, benefits and general outcomes of a Service Level Agreement.

At the end of this workshop, participants should be familiar with:

• The value of an SLA
• The sources of SLA provision
• The steps for establishing an SLA
• The key components of an SLA

Course Outline:

Module One:

What is an SLA?

Module Two:

Why Do I Need SLAs

Module Three:

Who Provides the SLA?

Module Four:

What’s in an SLA?

Module Five:

What Are Key Components of an SLA?

Module Six:

Is an SLA Transferable?

Module Seven:

How Can I Verify Service Levels?

Module Eight:

What Kind of Metrics Should be Monitored?

Module Nine:

What should I consider when selecting metrics for my SLA?

Module Ten:

What Uptime Provisions are Typical for Network Service

Providers?

Module Eleven:

When Should We Review our SLAs?

Module Twelve:

Wrapping Up