A service-level agreement (SLA) is a commitment between a service provider and a client. Particular aspects of the service – quality, availability, responsibilities – are agreed between the service provider and the service user. The most common component of an SLA is that the services should be provided to the customer as agreed upon in the contract. As an example, Internet service providers and telcos will commonly include service level agreements within the terms of their contracts with customers to define the level(s) of service being sold in plain language terms.
Service level agreements are also defined at different levels:
- Customer-based SLA: An agreement with an individual customer group, covering all the services they use. For example, an SLA between a supplier (IT service provider) and the finance department of a large organization for the services such as finance system, payroll system, billing system, procurement/purchase system, etc.
- Service-based SLA: An agreement for all customers using the services being delivered by the service provider. For example:
- A mobile service provider offers a routine service to all the customers and offers certain maintenance as a part of an offer with the universal charging.
- An email system for the entire organization. There are chances of difficulties arising in this type of SLA as level of the services being offered may vary for different customers (for example, head office staff may use high-speed LAN connections while local offices may have to use a lower speed leased line).
- Multilevel SLA: The SLA is split into the different levels, each addressing different set of customers for the same services, in the same SLA.
- Corporate-level SLA: Covering all the generic service level management (often abbreviated as SLM) issues appropriate to every customer throughout the organization. These issues are likely to be less volatile and so updates (SLA reviews) are less frequently required.
- Customer-level SLA: covering all SLM issues relevant to the particular customer group, regardless of the services being used.
- Service-level SLA: covering all SLM issue relevant to the specific services, in relation to this specific customer group.
Components of SLA:
A well-defined and typical SLA will contain the following components
- The service’s desired performance level, especially its reliability and responsiveness
- Monitoring process and service level reporting
- The steps for reporting issues with the service
- Response and issue resolution time-frame
- Repercussions for service provider not meeting its commitment
Approx. Costing for Documentation
Pricing for the documents varies from agreement to agreement. It is not fixed. There are many factors on which the pricing is decided. For example; the size of the agreement, complexity of agreement, ETC. Approx. pricing starts from Rs. 5,000/- to Rs. 10,000/-
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