Service Level Agreement

A Service Level Agreement is an agreement between an IT Service provider and a customer. Particular aspects of the service - scope, quality, responsibilities - are agreed between the service provider and the service user.

An SLA  document consist of

An introduction to the SLA, what does this agreement propose

A Service description, what service this SLA supports and details of the service

Mutual responsibilities, who’s responsible for what part of the service

Scope of SLA.

Applicable service hours, from what time till what time is the service available according to the agreement

Service availability, how much is the service available during the service window and outside of service window

Reliability.

Customer support arrangements.

Contact points & escalation, a communication matrix

Service performance.

Security.

Costs and charging method used.

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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 car service station offers a routine service to all the customers and offers certain maintenance as a part of offer with the universal charging.
• A mobile service provider offers a routine service to all the customers and offers certain maintenance as a part of 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.