Best Practice Report

How To Create A Realistic Global SLA For Managed Network Services

Use Industry Standard Metrics And Thresholds For Guidance

January 5th, 2011
Brownlee Thomas, Ph.D., null
Brownlee Thomas, Ph.D.
With contributors:
Christine Ferrusi Ross , Mark Grannan

Summary

Sourcing and vendor management (SVM) professionals at large multinational companies (MNCs) want to ensure that global service-level agreements (SLAs) for managed network services are as strong as possible. However, mature SVM organizations will need to balance the desire for highest-possible SLAs against achieving realistic and variable SLA thresholds and metrics for the different types of sites and connections under management. Best practices observed during our work with MNC clients include thoroughly analyzing overall and site-specific network performance needs along with building cost comparisons for a standard versus custom SLA. It also is important to establish what's possible to actually measure and report when asking for nonstandard metrics.

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