Service Level (SLA)

Service Level Agreement (SLA) is a document that contains an agreed to level of service quality.

SLA Structure

• Identification of the provided service, the parties involved, and the terms of the agreement
• Days and hours when the service will be offered, including testing, maintenance and upgrade
• Number and location of users and/or equipment using the service
• Description of the issues reporting procedure including conditions of escalation to the next level
• Description of the change requests procedure
• Specifications of service quality objectives including:
  • Maximum term for incidents elimination (removal of faults that interfere with work)
  • Maximum term for service issues solving
• Cost of services, description of charges associated with the service
• Customer’s responsibility while using the service (training, support of the respective equipment and software configurations)
• Procedure for resolution of disagreements relating to service provision
• Process of SLA improvement

SLA. Responsibility

• SLA includes a list of the responsible employees from the customer’s party together with their rights (request formation, work acceptance, additional services ordering, etc.)
• SLA includes description of confidentiality levels
• SLA includes the list of provided reports

SLA. Regulations

• The list of hardware facilities accepted for maintenance in accordance with the audit performed
• The list of services accepted for maintenance in accordance with the IT audit performed
• Description of service availability (downtime per year or per month, the period of availability — 24x7 or 8x5 on weekdays, the total number of outages, planned outages)
• The list of options and rules for adding new applications, users and services
• The frequency of routine maintenance (backup, reservation and recovery)
• Upgrade and update procedures

SLA. Other conditions

• User data restrictions (for example, absence of viruses)
• Procedure for introduction of changes in SLA
• Conditions for SLA termination (transfer of all the data to the customer, assistance in migration, destruction of backups and archives, confidentiality period)

Services per SLA:

• IT Audit — SLA development, if the contract of IT outsourcing is planned to be concluded
• IT Outsourcing — in accordance with the SLA.