IT Service Level Management, Research Paper Example

The service level management (SLM) is a process that forms the link between the IT organization and the customers. SLM ensures that the information and technology required by a customer are continuously maintained or improved. This is attained by monitoring and reporting about the performance of the IT organization. The process of SLM provides a framework by which the services are defined and the levels of service supporting the client business are agreed upon. Service level agreements (SLAs) and operational level agreements (OPAs) are developed to satisfy the condition of agreements. An effective service level management improves the performance of the client, business, and results to greater customer satisfaction. SLM is one of the key elements within ITIL framework (Brooks, 2006).

Normally both the client and the IT organization agree on the metrics used to measure success together. In SLM, most metrics are related to IT service quality. Some of the tools used to measure the IT service include IUM (Impacted users minutes). The IUM has four aspects security, availability, capacity, and data integrity. IT has control of only three elements that is availability, capacity, and security. The other aspect, data integrity is outside the IT controls thus the measure of quality focus on the three elements. Normally, as mentioned earlier, the aspect of availability, security, and capacity are agreed in SLAs. If the IT service fails to meet the component agreed on SLA, then the IUM will show that the service is degraded and is not sufficient for users to accomplish their job. Personally, I believe all the three elements are all important in measuring the level of service. One advantage of the IUM is that it as well shows the perceptions of the users toward the IT service.

Reference

Brooks, P. (2006). Metrics for IT Service Management, Van Haren Publishing. 3(1) :pp. 76–77. ISBN 978-90-77212-69-1