Definition of Service Level Management

Service level management is the process responsible for negotiating and complying with service level agreements. IT is one of the 5 components of the ITIL service delivery area. TDM processes provide a framework for defining services, agreeing on service levels, developing service level agreements (SLAs) and operational level agreements (ARAs) to fulfill contracts, as well as the cost of services under development. Many SLAs follow the specifications of the Information Technology Infrastructure Library when applied to IT services. Any professional looking to develop their career in IT service management should consider an ITIL v4 certification course. Once you are ITIL Foundation certified, you can help a business organization implement IT service management best practices and use IT as a tool for its growth or change. Ultimately, business units justify to senior management the service levels required to support business processes, not IT. And integrated continuous improvement processes ensure that IT support services change as business requirements change. In terms of SLM, ITIL v3 focused on utility and warranty – whether a service was suitable for use and use.

ITIL 4 goes even further and includes Customer Experience. In other words, that it is not enough to provide a service, service providers need to look at how they provide the service from the customer`s perspective so that they can truly deliver business-focused results. Service Level Management (TDM) is defined as „responsible for ensuring that all service management processes, operational level agreements and underlying contracts are appropriate for agreed service level objectives. SLM monitors and reports on service levels and conducts regular customer assessments. Engagement and listening activities provide a great opportunity to build better relationships and focus on what really needs to be delivered. They also provide service delivery staff with an experience-based understanding of the day-to-day work done with their technology and enable them to provide a more business-oriented service. When the customer is engaged and listened to, he feels valued and his perception of service and service management activities improves. Outsourcing is the process of transferring responsibility from an organization to a supplier.

This new agreement is managed by a contract that may include one or more SLAs. The contract may include fines and the right to terminate if any of the SLA measures are systematically missed. Defining, monitoring, and managing SLAs is an important part of the discipline of Outsourcing Relationship Management (ORM). Specific SLAs are usually negotiated in advance as part of the outsourcing contract and used as one of the key tools in outsourcing governance. For example, there are activities in service design processes to identify and define target service levels. Service levels are continuously monitored as part of service operations, and if service level objectives are not met, corrective action is taken. A Web Service Level Agreement (WSLA) is a standard for monitoring compliance with the Web Services Service Level Agreement. It allows authors to specify the performance metrics associated with a Web service application, the desired performance goals, and the actions to take when performance is not achieved. RP7 IRMOS also explored aspects of translating application-level SLAs into resource-based attributes to bridge the gap between client-side expectations and cloud provider resource management mechanisms.

[14] [15] The European Commission presented a summary of the results of various research projects in the field of ALS (from specifications to monitoring, management and implementation). [16] Understanding the structure of service level management and service level agreement gives you an advantage in helping your business deliver on its promises. The ability to create and manage service solutions ensures that your business and its customers can communicate more clearly to meet common needs. Running service-level management processes enables IT staff to deliver identified service levels to the business more accurately and cost-effectively. Processes ensure that the company and IT understand their roles and responsibilities and hold business units accountable. The underlying advantage of cloud computing lies in the sharing of resources supported by the underlying nature of a shared infrastructure environment. Therefore, SLAs cover the entire cloud and are offered by service providers as a service-based agreement rather than as a customer-based agreement. Measuring, monitoring, and reporting on cloud performance is based on the end-user experience or its ability to consume resources. The disadvantage of cloud computing over SLAs is the difficulty of determining the cause of downtime due to the complex nature of the environment. .

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