The Five Principles for Selecting Service Level Agreements Metrics - Coursework Example

NETWORK MANAGEMENT Name Name of Professor: Course: Institution: Date of Submission: Part 3: WAN Applications for Internet Business An application profile would help document the flow of traffic and the service level agreements between the Adelaide and Perth offices. The offices use a variety of business applications such as electronic mail (e-mail), file transfer applications and web browser as well as system applications such as backups, network management and software updates. The profile describes the name of business and system applications, type of application, and importance to the business, protocols, user bandwidth requirements, location and number of users, file transfer needs, impact on network outage and delay requirements. Table 1 Application Profile for the Organisation Application name Microsoft Exchange 2013 Google Chrome Office 365 E1 Microsoft Outlook 2013 Windows Defender Server Windows Backup manager Windows Server Update Type Business Business Business Business System System System New? No No Yes No No No No Importance High Med Med High High High High Availability High High High High High High High Protocol and ports TCP 143 TCP 80 TCP 443 TCP 80 HTTP 80 HTTPS 443 HTTP 80 HTTPS 443 User bandwidth 185MB - - - N/A N/A N/A Users - - 10,000 No limit - - - File transfer requirements 11GB for 10,00 0 users SQL server Windows O/S 500MB Less than 2TB Minimum 30GB Network outage impact High impact High impact Medium impact High impact Low impact Low impact High impact Delay, jitter and availability requirement No delay High availability No delay High availability No delay High Med delay Med Low availability Low availability Medium availability, Part 4: Vendor Management 1) Comparison of 3 Service Providers Three service providers that can meet the company’s requirements are Dragnet Technology and Consulting, NewSat and BigAir. Dragnet provides WAN services such as voice over IP telephony (VOIP), videoconferencing, electronic mail, Intranet management, document management, cloud computing, hardware virtualisation, firewall security and content filtering (Dragnet Technology and Consulting 2014). NewSat provides business broadband Internet services over satellite connection such as VOIP, email, Internet, video conferencing and 24-hour support. Service costs are customized to the firm’s needs and include the cost of a satellite dish (NewSat 2014). BigAir provides fixed wireless broadband solutions across Australia including private data links across a WAN, high speed Internet and remote connectivity via the virtual private network (VPN) (BigAir Group Limited 2013). BigAir charges are upwards of AUS $159.95 for 1 month of 1TB data and speeds of 100mbps (down) and 10mbps (up). 2) Article Review The article discussed ways that organizations could evaluate and select vendors of IT outsourcing decisions. Jivan and Karamouzis (2012) describe the best practices for CIOs and managers to select vendors for outsourcing services. These best practices are to include organisational stakeholders in the process, use standardised methodologies and tools, using face-to-face proposal presentations to guide the decision, verify the claims from the vendors and performing due diligence. The analysis shows that these steps simplify the vendor assessment process and provide a framework for sourcing vendors in the future. The article encourages CIOs to have a sourcing plan so that their actions are guided by their organisational needs and outsourcing requirements (Jivan & Karamouzis 2012). 3) Pros and Cons of Internet VPNs and IP WAN VPN benefits are lower operational costs, scalability, reduced connection costs especially for the remote user, enhanced security using encryption and password protection; and ability to work with equipment from different manufacturers (Edwards 2014). The disadvantages are difficulty in controlling performance and availability; slower speeds compared to traditional connections and inability to work well with other VPN technologies (Shih 2008, p.422). Private IP WAN benefits are better data security, lower IT costs, remote access, better productivity, centrally managed networks, backup services at off site or head office facility, and telecommuting support. It also supports multi-site business without Internet connection and consolidates business applications in a single network infrastructure. 4) Vendor rating table Criteria Weight Dragnet NewSat BigAir Speed : Upload Download 5 1 1 1 Availability 5 2 1 1 Security 5 3 2 1 Price 3 2 4 2 Service area: Perth Adelaide 4 2 1 1 Support: Email Telephone VOIP Backup 5 1 2 1 Responsiveness 5 2 3 1 Professionalism 5 2 2 1 Relationship quality 4 2 3 2 Total 41 77 83 48 The weights were based on the priorities for each criterion. A range of 1-5 was produced with 1 being the lowest priority and 5 being the highest priority. A score for each criterion was provided with the range 1-4 where 1 represented the firm’s ability to provide the service and 4 represented inability to provide the metric. The most ideal service provider is BigAir because the score is closest to the total weighted amount. BigAir is recommended because it showed the greatest ability to meet the criteria. 5) Summary report on Gartner report The Gartner report is useful because the best practices by Jivan and Karamouzis (2012) are applicable to organisations in different industries. The report provides comprehensive metrics for making outsourcing decision for CIOs. The best practices are simple to understand and are relevant in IT outsourcing since most organisations may have similar concerns about their sourcing such as security of information and confidentiality of the vendor. Part 5: SLA Metrics The Five Principles for Selecting SLA metrics Hayes defined five principles to guide the selection of service level agreements (SLA). These principles were: to select metrics which motivated the right behaviour; to ensure that the metrics were reflected in the service provider’s agreement, ensure that the measurements can be collected and analyzed; to ensure that the metrics were short and simple; and to provide a baseline for achieving targets (Farris 2010, p.12). Organisations that do not comply with these principles often report failure of their SLAs. Reasons for the failure include setting lengthy or complex metrics, lack of commitment from management, inadequate resources, unrealistic objectives, undefined SLA objectives and lack of a service catalogue (Farris 2010, p.2). Hayes’ five principles can guide organisations to avoid such failures. Applying the Five Principles I. Select metrics that will motivate the correct behaviour It is important to motivate certain behaviour from the service providers because this behaviour defines the customer’s service expectations. In the case, the chief information officer (CIO) needs to ensure that the Internet Service Provider (ISP) understands the company’s Internet requirements. These requirements are 99 percent network availability, 5-day installation interval, network latency (35 milliseconds), 99.9 percent data delivery, 24-hour WAN connectivity, 24-hour backup service and service restoration (24 hours). II. Ensure that the metrics are reflected the service provider’s agreement The CIO should ensure that the metrics are within the control of the service provider. This ensures that the service provider can meet the targets and provides the firm with the metrics for measuring the provider’s quality of service. Metrics outside the service provider’s ability should be defined in the Exclusions Clause of the SLA such as power failure or domain name hosting. III. Select metrics that can be collected and analysed It is important to select measurable metrics. These measures should be easy to collect and analyze using manual or automated methods. For instance, down-time, up-time, frequency of disturbances, response times, backups, memory size and availability can be quantified into time, percentages or numbers. A metric like customer satisfaction has limited measurability using automated methods and can be difficult to analyze. IV. Keep metrics short and simple The metrics should be simple and not require large volumes of data for analysis. The firm can ensure simplicity by categorizing metrics for each service object such as hardware, software, network and storage. For instance, WAN hardware metrics include the number of workstations, processor time, failure frequency, availability and service time while network metrics include WAN service duration, availability (percentage) and latency time. V. Provide a baseline for performance evaluation A baseline gives the targets for WAN services. This could be the minimum or maximum service expectations from the firm such as a maximum of 24 hours for service restoration. Consequences for not meeting the baseline would be defined in the SLA. Failure to achieve the targets would then allow the company to terminate the relationship with the service provider. References BigAir Group Limited 2013, ‘Principal activities’, 2013 Annual Report, viewed 2 October 2014, . Dragnet Technology and Consulting 2014, Solutions: Technology solutions for small and medium business, viewed 2 October 2014, . Edwards, J 2014, ‘VPN: The pros and cons’, IT Security, viewed 2 October 2014, . Ferris, K 2010, ‘Why service level agreements fail: They do not. Service level management does’, Macanta Consulting Paper, viewed 2 October 2014, . Jivan, R & Karamouzis, F 2012, Outsourcing advisory: Best practices for evaluation and selection phase, Gartner Inc, viewed 1 October 2014, . NewSat 2014, ‘Satellite broadband’, VSAT products, viewed 1 October 2014, . Shih, TK 2008, ‘Advanced penetration testing methodology for VPN’, Journal of Security Engineering, vol.5, no. 5, pp.419-424. Read More