Integrating Service Level Agreements: Optimizing Your OSS for SLA Delivery [Paperback]

John Lee (Author), Ron Ben-Natan (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: July 15, 2002 | ISBN-10: 0471210129 | ISBN-13: 978-0471210122 | Edition: 1st

Service level agreements (SLAs) offer service providers a way to distinguish themselves from their competitors in today's volatile, hypercompetitive market. This book offers an innovative approach that takes full advantage of current interface, automation, and Internet-based distribution and reporting technologies.
* Addresses business-level SLAs, not just device-level SLAs
* Describes a revolutionary approach that combines network management, service management, field service activities, entitlement, and rating with workflow automation technologies

Editorial Reviews

From the Back Cover

Uncover a revolutionary approach to SLAs that will help you gain a competitive advantage in the field

The use of Service Level Agreements (SLAs) will soon become the prevailing business model for delivering a large number of products and services. SLAs offer service providers the ability to distinguish themselves from the competition in today's volatile market while providing a measure of security for their clients. Following an innovative approach, this book will clearly show you how to implement SLAs as part of an operation support solution (OSS). The authors address the issues you should know about and show you how to integrate data from applications available at all layers of the telecommunications management network (TMN) model. By combining network management, service management, field service activities, entitlement, and rating with dynamic workflow automation and leading-edge collaboration capabilities, the authors' revolutionary approach provides you with a complete view of the SLA environment. This hands-on guide will also help you take full advantage of current community collaboration, data interface, process automation, and Internet-based distribution and reporting technologies when developing an SLA delivery strategy.

Covering everything you need to know about drafting and utilizing SLAs, Lee and Ben-Natan include discussions on:
* The roles, objectives, and life cycle of SLAs
* The complexities in the SLA environment
* Lessons learned from the CLEC telecom bubble
* SLAs in a customer-centric approach
* Business-level SLAs as well as device-level SLAs
* The integrated SLA (ISLA) model
* Integration techniques
* Organizational issues, including the various management layers
* Operational processes, workflows, notifications, and alerts
* Metrics and performance reporting
* Notification, mobile computing, and wireless access

About the Author

JOHN J. LEE is Vice President of Strategy and Business Solutions at ViryaNet, a company that provides wireless workforce solutions. He is an expert in the development of operation and business support systems and a frequent contributor to industry publications.
RON BEN-NATAN is CTO at ViryaNet and has been building distributed systems and applications at companies like Intel, Merrill Lynch, J.P. Morgan, and AT&T Bell Labs for the past twenty years. He has authored several successful books on distributed systems and the application of advanced technologies in business environments.

Product Details

• Paperback: 352 pages
• Publisher: Wiley; 1st edition (July 15, 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0471210129
• ISBN-13: 978-0471210122
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 7.6 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.7 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,579,140 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

13 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Exceptionally well thought out and written, August 7, 2002

By 

Mike Tarrani "www.tarrani.com" (Deltona, FL USA) - See all my reviews
(COMMUNITY FORUM 04)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Integrating Service Level Agreements: Optimizing Your OSS for SLA Delivery (Paperback)

This book is among the most coherent and on target approaches to integrated service level management I've read. The most appropriate audience includes IT and switch engineering professionals in the wireless, LEC and CLEC industries, although those working for ISPs, manager service providers and ASPs will find the material closely aligned to their environments as well.

For the primary audience this book shows how to look beyond managing service levels and QoS at the infrastructure level. It looks at the much larger business picture with a focus on external customers. It does cover infrastructure, using TMN as the model, but the thrust is coordination of all customer-facing or service providing groups to provide a unified service delivery strategy.

I like the way the book starts by defining SLAs and showing how they are the foundation of service delivery. The models provided in Part I of the book were especially valuable. Part II ties together the preceding material to present an integrated model, which addresses both workflow and organizational factors. More importantly, this part of the book covers performance metrics (service level objectives), reporting and notification.

The approach and material in this book can be readily adapted to traditional IT service level management, and in particular the way the authors lead you through writing the SLAs and managing to them. What is missing in the book is a bigger view of how SLAs fit within a problem management framework, but this isn't an oversight given the scope of the book. For anyone who is interested in filling in this critical piece I recommend reading IT Problem Management by Gary S. Walker. Although that book is focused on IT, the approach will fit within the OSS environment, and the service level related information in that book is consistent with this one.