SLA is a formal contract used to guarantee that consumer’s service quality expectation can be achieved.

A service level agreement (SLA) is a part of service contract where a service is formally defined.

SLA records a common understanding about services, priorities, responsibilities, guarantees and warrantees.

The level of service may be specified as minimum or expected which allows customers to be informed on what to expect.

SLA’s are defined at different levels

• Customer based SLA’s

• Service based SLA’s

• Multilevel SLA’s

• Corporate level SLA’s

It is a negotiated agreement between two or more parties where one is customer and others are service providers.

SLA components :

Purpose: objectives to achieve by using an SLA

Restrictions : Necessary steps or actions that need to be taken to ensure that the requested level of services are provided.

Validity period: SLA working time period

Scope: Services that will be delivered to customers and services that will not be considered in SLA

Parties: Any involved organizations or individuals and their roles (e.g. provider and consumer)

Service Level objectives (SLO): Levels of services which both parties agree on. Some service level indicators used are availability, performance, reliability.

Penalties: If delivered service does not achieve SLOs or is below the performance measurement, some penalties will occur.

Optional services: services that are not mandatory but might be required.

Administration: Processes that are used to guarantee the achievement of SLOs and the related organizational responsibilities for controlling these processes.

Example: characteristics in SLA