• 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

1. Customer based SLA’s

2. Service based SLA’s

3. Multilevel SLA’s

4. 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:

1. Purpose: objectives to achieve by using an SLA

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

3. Validity period: SLA working time period

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

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

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

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

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

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

Example: characteristics in SLA