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26 of 26 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Foundations of Service Level Management, May 14, 2000
This review is from: Foundations of Service Level Management (Paperback)
The recent book on "Service Level Management " by Rick Sturm et al, is an important addition to the very limited number of books available in this subject area. The state of the art in Service Level Management has been clearly brought out in the book. It offers sound and practical advice on building service level management discipline within organizations. The topics in the book have been logically arranged, very lucidly presented and are highly readable. The "Tips, Caution and Notes" interspersed with the text serve to highlight important aspects of discussion, which really bring out the mature experience of the authors in this area in a concise form. Part IV dealing with the currently available products and vendors for SLM products will be very useful for corporations looking to acquire SLM products . A review of the current opinion of the research groups like META Group, Forrester Research etc. provides interesting points of view. The topic on standardization efforts currently being undertaken by DMTF and IETF serves to show where further research in this area is headed towards. On the whole a very useful, timely and sound book on Service Level Management
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28 of 29 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Among the best on the subject, June 19, 2001
This review is from: Foundations of Service Level Management (Paperback)
This book is important for two reasons: (1) it's written by experienced practitioners who have specialized in service level management for a large part of their careers, and (2) it covers all of the key points of creating, implementing and managing an effective service level management initiative. The five chapters of Part I thoroughly covers principles. One of the strongest chapters in this part is 2, which addresses factors and issues that other books (and articles and white papers) seem to sidestep. Among them are the effect of batch processing and workload on your ability to meet service level objectives, security, recovery management and costs/affordability. Lest you think that batch processing is a thing of the past, consider what it takes to refresh data warehouses and data marts, which depend on batch processing. Workload management, especially the balancing act of squeezing in batch jobs, back-ups and other tasks that need to occur in maintenance windows that are shrinking because the demands of e-commerce and supply chain management practically demand 24x7, is highlighted in this book as well. Other chapters in Part I that contained gems include: the report card summary in chapter 3 (service level reporting), the plethora of tips in chapter 4 (service level agreements) and the excellent collection of resources cited in chapter 5 (standards efforts). Part II of the book is weak. It consists of a chapter on service level management practices for a selection of U.S. companies, and a chapter on service level management products. In my opinion this entire part of the book can be dispensed with because the authors have a web site that augments this book that provides a more up-to-date survey of practices in the U.S. and an additional survey that is global. The chapter on products was obsolete before the book was published. Again, the web site (URL is provided in the book) provides up-to-date information. Part III is superb. It is a roadmap to developing, implementing and managing service levels, starting with chapter 8 that leads you through developing a business case. Chapter 9, implementing service level management, was a little light because the task is much larger than what the authors squeezed into the 14 pages allocated to this topic. Chapter 10 is devoted to data and metrics, which are essential to a viable service level management initiative. The remaining two chapters are a wrap-up; however, each is worth a thorough reading because there are gems of information and advice sprinkled throughout. The appendices are forms and templates, which can also be obtained in soft copy from the authors' web site. Each of these artifacts are valuable and will save you a significant amount of time if you're starting from scratch. I'm tempted to subtract a star for Part II's deficiencies, but I won't because this book still stands as the best I've read. Moreover, the authors make available updated information on their web page, which is something you cannot do with a paper book, and also provide a wealth of additional material that adds significantly to this book's value. My hope is the authors will trade the page count consumed by Part II for a more in-depth treatment of implementation in chapter 9.
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30 of 32 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Much-needed book on a neglected topic, December 27, 2000
This review is from: Foundations of Service Level Management (Paperback)
There is a real dearth of books that deal with service level management from an IT pespective, which makes this a "must-have" for consultants, production services managers and others in IT whose job involves service delivery. The book is straightforward and puts service level management into perspective. It addresses all key process areas for establishing, implementing and managing service delivery. Also provided are artifacts from the authors' web site that are invaluable to anyone who is in the process of implementing SLM. I especially like the business case approach taken to quantify the value of a sound service delivery program, and also thought that treament of how to negotiate a service level agreement was a highlight of this book. Why 4 stars instead of 5? Some of the URLs provided in the book either were dead or led to sites that did not provide valuable content. If service delivery is your business I strongly recommend this book. There are two companion books that should also be on your book shelf: IT Services Costs, Metrics, Benchmarking and Marketing (the material complements this book) and Mission Critical Systems Managemet (also complements this book, but also has an excellent SLA template and addresses SLM in a comprehensive manner).
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