Release It!

4.10 SLA Inversion

A service-level agreement (SLA) is a contractual agreement about how well the organization must deliver its services. These are quantitative measures of service delivery with financial penalties if the service provider does not meet them. A number of trends are combining to make SLAs increasingly important. Outsourcing—of people, infrastructure, and operations—is a major driver. Increased awareness of the IT Infrastructure Library (ITIL, soon to be ratified as ISO 20000)^[42] and the IT Service Management Framework (itSMF)^[43] also drives interest in SLAs. Beyond those, however, there is a general trend in IT operations toward ...