Why SLA compliance should be top of mind for IT leaders
SLA compliance requires monitoring
Compliance can perform the monitoring function in an SLA relationship, ensuring SLA agreements are followed precisely. After all, the result is satisfaction of the SLA requirements for however long the SLA is required.
An SLA may require that IT systems be restored within eight hours of a disruption, based on an agreed-upon recovery time objective, for example. Or, following disruption of local access facilities, an SLA may require the recovery of network connectivity to the internet within four hours. It may also be based on the time required to complete a failover from primary to backup servers — for example, within one hour.
To get the most out of an SLA, IT leaders should consider preparing a table of SLA compliance monitoring activities, such as the following.
SLA compliance can be occasionally overlooked by IT management due to the number of projects, workloads and the inevitable handling of emergencies they are faced with. Considering a loss of service — with failure or delay by the service provider to do its job fixing the problem — could result in a serious disruption to the business, compliance with SLAs is an essential activity.