Internet Service Providers (ISPs) can no longer get away with providing an average service if they are to support the critical business needs of corporate SA.
That`s the opinion of Stuart Hardy, General Manager, Networks division IS (Internet Solutions) the e-business infrastructure subsidiary of Dimension Data Holdings, who questions the value of traditional service level agreements (SLAs) between ISPs and their corporate customers.
"The average uptime committed to by SA service providers in their SLAs is 99,2%. Although this sounds impressive, it`s not," he says and explains that 99,2% uptime translates into five hours and forty-five minutes downtime per month.
"But because traditional SLAs provide for downtime allowances over three months, ISPs can spread their risk and give the perception of providing an `aggressive` service.
"The result is that the customer can suffer as much as 17 hours downtime before the ISP breaches its SLA and incurs penalties. However, because of the way most SLA penalty clauses are structured - 5% of the month`s billing increasing in increments of 0,1% to a maximum of 30% - the financial risk to the service provider is minimal.
"Another problem is that downtime is also only measured according to availability. This may totally disregard the customer`s acceptable latency and/or packet loss measurements for them to remain competitive and profitable in their industry," he adds.
"Yet as the reliance on the Internet as a business portal grows, so too does the need for robust and consistent infrastructure on which to run such services. For example, banks rely on shared Internet infrastructures to process several million transactions per month. Any interruption of these services has a large and costly impact on them and/or their customers."
In a move aimed at overcoming the discrepancies between perceived and actual service delivery, IS has introduced strict service level indicators and SLAs. These are aimed at improving clients` confidence in pushing their network further, from a redundancy and service level point of view.
IS has also introduced advanced statistical measurement devices that not only evaluate network availability, but also packet loss, latency and jitter. These are measured over IS` local and international core backbone, as well as the client`s access circuit.
"We have several hundred local and international clients that are reliant on some or all of our measurement services to help them run their networks and businesses effectively, world wide" Hardy explains.
To meet these requirements, IS has created SLAs for every local and international service it provides. From an availability perspective, IS is able to commit to availability levels as high as 99,95% uptime per month - the equivalent of only 22 minutes downtime. In addition, the company may commit to certain low averages with regards to latency, packet loss and jitter, which are also measured over a one month period.
"When there is an additional telecommunications provider in South Africa, ISP`s will be able to offer their clients greater commitments in their SLA. This will enable ISP`s to install redundant links to a second Telco provider, and ensure a much higher level of uptime. It will be a long time before SA will be able to get to the five nines (99.999) seen in the States, but in the meantime IS is putting its money where its mouth is," Hardy concludes.
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