Outsourcing sells service level management short

Too many outsource agreements have service level agreements (SLAs) that focus purely on 99,9 percent uptime. This barely covers the surface in terms of harnessing the potential of the IT infrastructure towards meeting the particular needs of the business itself. This is the view of Lynda Odendaal, Director of Network Support Services (NSS), leading infrastructure management specialists.

"Far too many IT departments have abrogated their responsibility towards service management of the IT infrastructure, content instead with 99,9 percent up time guarantees," she says."SLA`s are but a small part of overall availability management. What is required is the adoption of a holistic approach that assesses the role of the IT infrastructure in terms of the overall business and analyses each component in terms of its relationship to the particular process," she says.

"This approach encompasses measurement and analysis of the entire infrastructure, the outcome of which can assist the Host Company to plan its future IT spend, as well as better amortise its investment returns Odendaal believes that service measurement should be ongoing, with the particular aim of seeing the technology provide a return on investment. For example, if the outsourced company standardised on new equipment, one would expect a reduction in support costs. Likewise, costs need to be adjusted if asset sweating is required from older components.

Part of the reason for this is that many of the measurement tools operate in isolation, and are not easily integrated to other technology components within the business.

Odendaal believes that the implementation of a holistic availability approach will provide the following advantages:

• .         Quicker resolution in terms of problem identification

• .         Improved capacity planning

• .         Improved service and a reduction of calls to the help desk

• .         Improved planning of IT spend.

Odendaal says there is a role for a third party service level manager who can take an objective measured assessment of every component of the IT infrastructure.

"This would address a key problem of a general lack of sufficient skills available to adequately assess the performance requirements of a particular system, as well as the measurement tools that can assist him or her in this process," says Odendaal.