NETWORK WORLD NEWSLETTER: MARK EHR ON OUTSOURCING 09/08/04 Today's focus: End-to-end SLAs require cascading
Dear [EMAIL PROTECTED], In this issue: * Cascading SLAs needed to stretch agreements across net * Links related to Outsourcing * Featured reader resource _______________________________________________________________ This newsletter is sponsored by Xerox Want to learn the key steps to building a document output strategy that will enhance productivity and reduce costs for your organization? Start by downloading Xerox's white paper, Optimizing Document Output ROI. See how Xerox's solutions can help you manage devices, reduce costs and even boost productivity. http://www.fattail.com/redir/redirect.asp?CID=80880 _______________________________________________________________ DOWNLOAD THE LATEST SPECIAL REPORTS FROM NETWORK WORLD Focused reports on compelling industry topics, Network World Special Reports are available online at Network World Fusion. Network World Special Reports on IP Telephony Security, the State of Wireless LANs, trends in the networked world and more are currently available. Download any or all of our Special Reports at: http://www.fattail.com/redir/redirect.asp?CID=79645 _______________________________________________________________ Today's focus: End-to-end SLAs require cascading By Mark Ehr Last week, I wrote about raising the bar on service-level management by creating service-level agreements that guarantee more than specific, elemental performance and availability - SLAs based on end-user quality of experience, or QoE. A number of you wrote back with comments that ranged from "I don't see how the carriers could ever do that" to "What a great idea - but how do you do that?" One reader wrote: "I read your article on raising the bar on SLM, and while I agree in theory with you, practically I don't see how any single vendor can offer such guarantees. There are so many varied components from the end user's brain to the application on a distant server, one would be hard pressed to find a single vendor willing to commit to the performance level of every component." Clearly, one of the greatest challenges in providing QoE SLAs is that no single service provider has control over all aspects of the infrastructure - especially in today's distributed, Internet-enabled environment. Even in our case, where our provider not only hosts our servers and applications in its data center but also serves as our ISP, they do not have control over the "last mile"; many of our users are not physically located in our headquarters building and access our infrastructure over the Internet, which is clearly outside the scope of what any provider could guarantee (and QoE SLAs must be explicit about not covering last-mile issues). That said, I think that the concept of "cascading SLAs" is one way to help provide QoE-based SLAs. In this scenario, a "primary service provider" (like our hosted Citrix provider) depends on downstream providers (like ISPs and carriers), and it should have separate SLAs with those providers. That way, if an outage occurs that causes the primary provider to suffer a penalty that is outside of its control (e.g., a link goes down that is provided by a carrier), then the penalties that the provider would pay to the end consumer would be, theoretically, mitigated by remunerations received from the downstream provider. Another key issue is that of monitoring end-user QoE so that the service provider knows when it is potentially in breach of an SLA. This must be done in baby steps - for instance, the first step for our provider is to start monitoring more than simple server up/down status from inside a firewall. For example, this morning I could not access our Citrix server from the Internet. I could get to it through a VPN connection, so the server was up, but the help desk had no idea that there was a problem (because you could still ping the server from inside of the firewall). Adding outside-of-the-firewall availability monitoring is the first step that must be taken, and a number of vendors can provide this functionality today, including Keynote Systems and AlertSite. These vendors provide server monitoring from outside of the firewall from a number of points of presence around the world, which are great tools for 1) making sure your service is available from outside of the firewall, and 2) eliminating last-mile questions from the equation. I plan to continue covering this subject in subsequent articles, and as always I welcome your ideas, suggestions and comments on the subject of outsourcing; my e-mail address is below. RELATED EDITORIAL LINKS Raise the bar on service-level management Network World Outsourcing Newsletter, 09/01/04 http://www.nwfusion.com/newsletters/asp/2004/0830out1.html _______________________________________________________________ To contact: Mark Ehr Mark Ehr is a Research Director with Enterprise Management Associates in Boulder, Colo., a leading market research firm focusing exclusively on all aspects of enterprise management software and services. Mark has more than 20 years of experience working with distributed systems, applications and networks. His current focuses at EMA are applications and systems management, mobile and wireless, enterprise application integration, security, and Web services. He can be reached via e-mail at <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> _______________________________________________________________ This newsletter is sponsored by Xerox Want to learn the key steps to building a document output strategy that will enhance productivity and reduce costs for your organization? Start by downloading Xerox's white paper, Optimizing Document Output ROI. See how Xerox's solutions can help you manage devices, reduce costs and even boost productivity. http://www.fattail.com/redir/redirect.asp?CID=80880 _______________________________________________________________ ARCHIVE LINKS Archive of the Outsourcing newsletter: http://www.nwfusion.com/newsletters/asp/index.html Breaking outsourcing news and resource links: http://www.nwfusion.com/topics/outsourcing.html _______________________________________________________________ FEATURED READER RESOURCE CHECK OUT NW FUSION'S NEW WHITE PAPER LIBRARY NW Fusion's White Paper Library was recently re-launched with new features and improved capabilities! Sort NW Fusion's library of white papers by Date and Vendor, view white papers by TECHNCIAL CATEGORY, mouse over white paper descriptions and take advantage of our IMPROVED white paper search engine. 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