25.10. Summary

This chapter introduced service level (SL) and service level management (SLM). More and more companies and business plans are demanding that MIS maintain SL standards. To ensure that MIS or IT and IS managers adhere to the performance requirements of the business, the service level agreement, or SLA, is going to be seen a lot more often in many enterprises.

As the e-commerce phenomenon continues to explode, so too will the number of applications and business processes that demand SL adherence. The customer will be more and more directly involved in the health of your systems. These include data interchange systems, Web servers, applications servers, ISP equipment, and so on.