On Premises: E-Commerce Growth Makes Service Level Agreements Critical
May 1, 2000
Posted: 05/2000
E-Commerce Growth Makes Service Level Agreements Critical
By James R. Dukart
In the age of e-commerce and instant communication, telecommunication networks move closer to the crux of business operations for many companies. One result is that performance becomes crucial to–in some cases indistinguishable from–the overall performance of
the business.
Simply put, for many of today’s businesses, if the network goes down, the business goes down.
That fact has not escaped the notice of customers and carriers alike, who increasingly are asking for and/or are providing SLAs to address network performance.
SLAs are formal or informal agreements between carriers and customers to measure and analyze network availability, delay, throughput, customer service and overall network cost. The agreements are particularly hot today because of increased reliance on public networks, such as, the Internet, recent high-profile network outages and carrier competition for enterprise business.
International Data Corp.
(www.idc.com) reports that a recent poll of 500 network executives at large businesses showed nearly 90 percent of them may require an SLA from carriers within the next 12 months. That number is an increase from the 30 percent responding in a similar poll only two years ago.
IDC’s network management research director Elisabeth Rainge says she expects the SLA demand to grow in number and in scope. They will evolve performance measurements and restitution schedules to overall plans for managing network resources, she says.