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Posted on behalf of Lee Frazier

Why aren’t we at Service Level Agreement (SLA) nirvana? I mean really, we have had SLA tools for 10, 15 years or more. You probably have 1 or 10 or more tools that measure SLAs, of which most probably aren’t used. Why aren’t all of our data centers, applications, servers and everything else just numbers on some dashboard that we just glance at to make sure everything is good to go and that we are open for business? This troubled me so I decided to make a list of some of the possible reasons:

1. Too many different tools, specialties and areas of focus

2. SLA monitoring via trouble tickets

3. SLA status based on Network availability

4. Can’t get the data.

5. Technical vs business data

6. Data is too bad

7. SLA’s just a punishment tool

As we have remained in a reactive mode for many years, now is the time to turn that around into proactive and aligning with the objectives of the business. My favorite is #7.

I also find that internal SLAs are quite meaningless and merely report the score after the game is over much like financial reporting. Now imagine monitoring all of your technology as the service that they deliver, watching the components in real-time and knowing the impact minor and major events have during the course of operaitons and being able to take action before melt down occurs. This is possible today with Novell Operations Center and becoming more of an imperative with cloud computing and complex infrastructures.

Here's an analogy of what real-time SLA monitoring provides. Think of it as the dashboard in your car, the early warning system that something is not quite right, but not wrong enough to stop the car. You can continue driving and wait for melt down and collateral damage or you avoid the melt down, out of service impact and swap the car out and have it repaired.

What would you add to this list of challenges and what holds you back from Service Level nirvana?

Michele

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Disclaimer: As with everything else at Cool Solutions, this content is definitely not supported by Novell (so don't even think of calling Support if you try something and it blows up).

It was contributed by a community member and is published "as is." It seems to have worked for at least one person, and might work for you. But please be sure to test, test, test before you do anything drastic with it.