The definition of a Service Level Agreement is: "Services to be provided, the standards to be managed in the execution of those services, and the cost that occur in event that standards are not met."
The quality of service to be provided is agreed upon in a written contract. That contract is known as a Service Level Agreement. Focusing on
IT service management, Service Level Agreements provide professional terms rather than promises in words.
SLA is basically a result-oriented performance agreement that can
measure application performance and determine the quality of services provided from one group to another.
Some features of a Service Level Agreement are as follows:
- Service Level Agreement initiates communication with other vendors to offer service to clients
- Service Level Agreement aims to create
a base of effective evaluating or quality reviewing
- SLA works as a dispute prevention tool and clears all doubts among parties
- It is a sound base to determine resource requirements covering software, hardware, human resource, process and organization. It also covers what the business experts
need to do meet the terms of the Service Level Agreement
The user satisfaction factors included in the Service Level Agreement are key measurements of
application availability and performance and recovery.
Various resources to use and trends in help desk use and software costs
are also included. Performance management and fault management are incontestable components found in Service Level Agreement.
CitraTest APM is an all encompassing
APM solution that addresses the needs of Service Level Agreement enforcement for EVERY application across an organization. CitraTest APM periodically executes synthetic transactions, taking
response time measurements along the way. By automating the driving of an application just like a real user at the client end, CitraTest APM can ensure that all critical aspects of an application or service are available and working within limits and if not, generate an alert. In this way, CitraTest APM helps keep functions at level with Service Level Agreement.
"Best-in-Class companies identified by Aberdeen surveys and interviews were found to be twice as likely as
others to manage deployed services proactively. This demonstrates and underscores how solutions such as
Tevron's CitraTest APM can help companies to maximize the business value of their IT investments by
monitoring application performance proactively and comprehensively."
- Michael Dortch
Senior Analyst, Aberdeen
Author of the recent study "Performance in a Service-Oriented Architecture World."