Compliance measurement is essential for any reseller who has purchased Web
hosting services under the rubric of a service level agreement.
Measurement ensures that higher-level service providers are offering the
quality of service agreed upon under the SLA arrangement. While many hosts
will provide their own online mechanisms to assist customers monitor SLA
compliance, many of these tools will only measure server availability or
uptime.
For resellers with their own demanding customer base, such narrow
measurement parameters will not suffice. Resellers should thus retain their
own independent and comprehensive modes of SLA compliance measurement,
especially if they service a large or sophisticated customer base.
Consumers of reseller services who are spending over $10K in hosting will
insist that all services be monitored constantly to ensure the highest
quality of service. Resellers who also deal in larger economies of scale,
or who, in other words, host several hundred customers will also want to
ensure that service levels are maintained. They can effectively monitor SLA
compliance by utilizing a new generation of hosted software services that
monitor all aspects of server and network performance.
New "policy-based" service level compliance platforms are emerging,
specifically designed to monitor hosted applications from the end-user
perspective. Providing both an inside-out and outside-in view of
transaction performance, such platforms enables users to define their SLA
policies and then monitor compliance, in real-time, across the multiple
network boundaries of an outsourced supply chain.
Utilizing policy-based SLA compliance measurement, resellers can monitor not
only server uptime, but also application performance and network latency.
These parameters are important because they enhance the evaluative scope of
service level performance.
As a reseller responsible for managing outsourced application or service
provider relationships, you will want to establish performance-based SLAs
with your service providers that reflect how you actually use your services,
rather than simply measure the availability and responsiveness of generic IT
components.
Policy-based SLA measurement will allow resellers to first set targets,
which hosting service providers will then be asked to fulfill. Obtaining
your own policy-based measurement system will allow you to independently
verify real-time SLA compliance so that you have first-hand knowledge of how
well all IT components from your service provider are performing.
SLA management should at a minimum provide: diagnosis and report the source
of application brownouts; report on application, database, server and
network transaction performance, with customized views of the individual
requirements of your customers; and provide verification of systems changes
and upgrades.
Policy-based SLA management is available from independent xSP vendors.
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