Service Level Management for Enterprise Networks

After Service Level Agreements (SLA) are made between IT providers and consumers, expectations and services to be rendered vary widely and standardization is often fragmented. This first-of-its-kind, comprehensive examination of IT Service Level Management provides a much-needed framework for implementing and evaluating Service Level Agreements and helps you avoid common pitfalls.

"...helps to bridge the gap between what corporate network managers provide and what corporate network users expect... shows how to structure service level agreements (SLAs), discusses service level management (SLM), and more."

After Service Level Agreements (SLA) are made between IT providers and consumers, expectations and services to be rendered vary widely and standardization is often fragmented. This first-of-its-kind, comprehensive examination of IT Service Level Management provides a much-needed framework for implementing and evaluating Service Level Agreements and helps you avoid common pitfalls.

Service Level Management of Enterprise Networks not only delivers new methodology and techniques to improve SLAs, through discussion of SLM processes and architecture, but also serves as a baseline against which to measure existing and future SLM programs. With a general knowledge of business processes, information management and technology, and networking equipment, IT professionals and clients will learn more about the challenging issues of SLM and the viable, real-world solutions available.

Examining research challenges, using real-world case studies, and discussing current tools and applications, this up-to-the-minute book is essential for suppliers and consumers of IT in large organizations and suppliers serving multiple clients, vendors building tools to support SLM, and university professors interested in the application of SLAs.

Booknews

Describes state-of-the-art service level management (SLM) methods for business enterprises, telcos, and service providers. Discusses concepts and definitions, then describes the SLM engineering process, starting with requirements and proceeding to architecture, design, implementation, testing, and deployment. Considers the space of possible SLM architectures, and examines SLM technical challenges and solutions. Considers the special case of SLM and electronic commerce, and looks at SLM in relation to the broader picture of modern business and quality of life. Includes chapter summaries, exercises, and discussion questions. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

Lundy Lewis is Director of Advanced Research at Cabletron Systems in Merrimack, New Hampshire, where he designs and develops commercial products for the networking community. He holds an M.S. in Computer Science from Renssalear Polytechnic Institute in Troy, New York, a Ph.D. in Philosophy from the University of Georgia and is a member of AAAI, IEEE, and ACM.

Mr. Lewis is an adjunct lecturer at the University of New Hampshire and New Hampshire College, and the author of Managing Computer Networks: A Case-Based Reasoning Approach (1995), also from Artech House Publishers.