Avanade Integrators criticise ‘pointless’ SLAs
Consultants at Avanade, a technology integrator for Microsoft enterprise solutions, believe that many SLAs are misaligned, under or over-engineered or just plain “pointless”.
Service level agreements (SLAs) were once seen as the ultimate tool for aligning IT with business needs, but many have out-lived their usefulness. According to them the organisations should review their SLAs because IT and business changes so quickly, commented Paul Southall, community lead for messaging and communication at Avanade.
“It’s becoming all too common that the IT team works with the business to set meaningful agreements, but overlooks the SLA review process.
“With today’s rate of technology development, the service levels will be unrepresentative within six months.”
Vivid Changes in different business process and increased demand for services are not considered in the SLA. At the most basic level, service levels are inaccurate because a system was never built with the needs of the business in mind.This problem is potentially wasting time, money and resources, meaning that the business and users are not able to fully realise the benefits of IT investments.
Organisations should educate users on the importance of SLAs, determining what they are and why they should be realistic and reflective of business requirements.
