Toward a New Toward a New Perspective on SLAsPerspective on SLAs

Justin G. CastilloLevine Blaszak Block & Boothby LLP

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Topics

Why We Need SLAs Why We Hate SLAs Breaking the SLA Mold Decrements in the Real World An Action Plan for SLAs

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We need SLAs (or something like them)

Many applications need performance metrics

Customer experience can be impacted

Internal stakeholder issues

Getting what you pay for

Get carrier to put skin in the game 3

But we also hate SLAs

The network is the network

Stock SLAs are a joke

Inverse credit/performance relationship

Carve-outs/restrictions

The need to jump through hoops for paltry recoveries

The vendor doesn’t feel your pain4

So what do we do?

Give up

Get redundant vendors for everything

Improve SLAs on the margins

Change the paradigm

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Changing the SLA paradigm: performance decrements

Goal: forget the small stuff; focus on the BIG problems

Move past pure credits and find other ways to incent performance

What about bonuses for exceeding numbers?

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Challenges of decrements

Contract integration

Selling it to the vendor – you need a certain size of spend/complexity

Pricing considerations

Achieving the right mix of • points,

• penalties &

• pain 7

Operationalizing decrements

Tracking decrements (reporting)

Following through

Modifying/refining the model

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Decrement case study

What happened

What worked

What needed refinement

Lessons learned

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Can we port any of these lessons to non-decrement

SLAs? Yes (to some extent)

• Reporting

• Account team support/escalation

• Periodic SLA reviews

Breaking the rigidity that comes with focus on the network alone

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