Service Level Agreement - Definition

Updated at June 30th, 2021

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Service Level Agreement (SLA) Definition A Little More on What is a Service-Level Agreement Common metrics Academic Research

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Service Level Agreement (SLA) Definition

A service-level agreement (SLA) simply means the contract or agreement that exists between a service provider and the end user or client. SLAs refer to outputs from a service provider that the customer is expected to receive. SLA describes the agreement and commitment to quality service, availability of service and fulfilment of responsibilities between a service provider and a customer. Whether it is an internal or external service provider, it is expected that the services and responsibilities included in the contract are met.

A Little More on What is a Service-Level Agreement

A service-level agreement can be a legal contract or informal agreement binding the relationship between service providers and their customers. SLAs define what a customer is expected to get from a service provider in a business agreement. However, any service rendered that is not in alignment with the contract between the service provider and the client is not a SLA. The main focus of the service level agreement is the output received by the customer as a result of the service provided. SLAs can occur at different levels which include;

Service-based SLA: this is an agreement for all customers using a specific service, good examples are services provided by a mobile phone/service provider or a service provided by an email system that an organization uses.
Customer-based SLA: unlike the service-based SLA, this type of SLA is customer specific. It is an agreement between individual customers.
Corporate-level SLA: this is generic, it covers the agreement between a service provider and a corporate organization.

Other common levels of SLAs are multi level SLA, service-based SLA, customer-level SLA among others. There are some major components of Service Level Agreements, these include;

The definition of services that a customer is entitled to.
The specifics of services to be provided by the service provider without leaving any detail.
The reliability and responsiveness of the SLA.
Monitoring of SLA and periodic reports on its effectiveness.
Modifications for reporting issues with the services provided.
Response time-frame from the service provider on the complains by the customer.
Periodic check on issues and time-range of when they will be resolved.
Consequences of failure to keep to the terms and conditions of SLAs both by the customer and the service provider.
The period for termination of service agreement.

Common metrics

There are certain metrics associated with service-level agreements, these metrics constitute the mode of operations and corresponding service-level objectives exhibited in service-level agreements. The common metrics of service level agreements include;

The time taken to complete a task during the phase of a project (TAT; Turn-around Time)
Time taken to recover after an outage of service. (MTTR; Mean Time to Recover)
The percentage of calls answered within a time-frame (TSF; Time-service factor)
The percentage of calls abandoned otherwise called (Abandonment Rate).
The percentage of incoming calls that can be resolved without the caller calling back the helpdesk. (FCR; First-Call Resolution)

Academic Research

level agreement in cloud computing, Patel, P., Ranabahu, A. H., & Sheth, A. P. (2009). Web service level agreement (WSLA) language specification, Ludwig, H., Keller, A., Dan, A., On maximizing service-level-agreement profits, Liu, Z., Squillante, M. S., & Wolf, J. L. (2001, October). In Proceedings of the 3rd ACM conference on Electronic Commerce (pp. 213-223). ACM.Analysis on service level agreement of web services, Jin, L. J., Machiraju, V., & Sahai, A. (2002). HP June, 19.Service level agreement and provisioning in optical networks, Fawaz, W., Daheb, B., Audouin, O., Du-Pond, M., & Pujolle, G. (2004). IEEE Communications Magazine, 42(1), 36-43.Autonomous service level agreement negotiation for service composition provision, Yan, J., Kowalczyk, R., Lin, J., Chhetri, M. B., Goh, S. K., & Zhang, J. (2007). Future Generation Computer Systems, 23(6), 748-759.Service level agreement (SLA) in utility computing systems, Wu, L., & Buyya, R. (2012). In Grid and Cloud Computing: Concepts, Methodologies, Tools and Applications (pp. 286-310). IGI Global.Service level agreement monitor (SALMon), Ameller, D., & Franch Gutirrez, J. (2008). In ICCBSS 2008 proceedings: Seventh International Conference on Composition-Based Software Systems: 25-29 February 2008, Madrid, Spain (pp. 224-227). Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE).Service level agreement based allocation of cluster resources: Handling penalty to enhance utility, Yeo, C. S., & Buyya, R. (2005, September). In Cluster Computing, 2005. IEEE International (pp. 1-10). IEEE.A multi-agent infrastructure and a service level agreement negotiation protocol for robust scheduling in grid computing, Ouelhadj, D., Garibaldi, J., MacLaren, J., Sakellariou, R., & Krishnakumar, K. (2005, February). In European Grid Conference (pp. 651-660). Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg.Towards service level agreement based scheduling on the grid, MacLaren, J., Sakellariou, R., Krishnakumar, K. T., Garibaldi, J., & Ouelhadj, D. (2004, June). In Workshop on Planning and Scheduling for Web and Grid Services (pp. 3-7).Adaptive and attribute-based trust model for service level agreement guarantee in cloud computing, Li, X., & Du, J. (2013). IET Information Security, 7(1), 39-50.

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