Abstract
The management of converged solutions for corporate customers presents service providers with substantial challenges in the delivery of service level agreements (SLAs). While historically SLAs have focused on individual network products, corporate-scale customers are increasingly demanding SLAs targeted at their business applications. The goal is quite simply to guarantee that the applications will work — with predictable and consistent performance over the entire IT and networking infrastructure. Underlying this, however, is the complex myriad of information and communications technology components from the desktop through to the data centre, each of which contribute to the overall performance. This paper summarises the issues and requirements for such application-level SLAs, and outlines a five-step technology roadmap to achieve a sophisticated level of capability.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
’A survey of 2000 European businesses’, Coleman Parkes Research (2004).
Wittgreffe J P and Dames M: ’From Desktop To Data Centre: OSS Challenges for the Delivery of End-to-End ICT Service Management’, The Communications Network Journal, Vol 3, Pt 4 (October–December 2004).
Dames M and Wittgreffe J: ’Achieving End-to-End SLA Management of Convergent ICT Solutions’, The Journal of The Communications Network, 5, Pt 3, pp 3–14 (July–September 2006).
diVitantonio G, Legh-Smith J, Millar W and Wilkinson M: ’Meeting business objectives through adaptive information and communications technology’, BT Technol J, 24, No 4, pp 113–120 (October 2006).
Psytechnics — http://www.psytechnics.co.uk/
The APDEX scoring system, APDEX organisation — http://www.apdex.org/
Millar W and Audisio T: ’The BT HP alliance — integrated service delivery’, BT Technol J, 24, No 4, pp 11–20 (October 2006).
Carter S F: ’Quality-of-Service in BT’s MPLS-VPN platform’, BT Technol J, 23, No 2, pp 61–72 (April 2005).
Dann T, Gillam J and Thornhill D: ’The applications assured infrastructure’, BT Technol J, 23, No 2, pp 73–80 (April 2005).
Application-Centric VPN — http://www.bt.infonet.com/services/internet/ac_vpn.asp
Dames M, Fisher M A and Wittgreffe J P: ’Use of policy management to achieve flexibility in the delivery of network-centric ICT Solutions’, BT Technol J, 23, No 3, pp 137–148 (July 2005).
Dames M and Wittgreffe J: ’Closed-Loop Applications Assured Infrastructure: Achieving End-to-End Management of Convergent ICT Solutions’, Telemanagement World, Dallas (November 2005).
Wilkinson M: ’Designing an adaptive enterprise architecture’, BT Technol J, 24, No 4, pp 81–92 (October 2006).
Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards (OASIS) — http://www.oasis-open.org/
Technical Programs, NGOSS Overview — http://www.tmforum.com/
About this article
Cite this article
Wittgreffe, J., Dames, M., Clark, J. et al. End-to-end service level agreements for complex ICT solutions. BT Technol J 24, 31–46 (2006). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10550-006-0095-9
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10550-006-0095-9