Forget me not

Are SLAs for real? Or just a nice topic for discussion that one comes across

at seminars and hears at 5-star conferences. I got a rude shock recently. My CIO

was under pressure to enhance server uptime, bandwidth throughput, mail

filtering and what have you. Our reporters and writers kept saying that they

hear every CIO talking of SLAs and zero downtime, so why don't we also

consider this level of quality for our internal users.

I got a frantic call from my CIO saying that he has spoken to some of his

peers in other organizations, and everyone said that no vendor or service

provider today gives SLA guarantees. And, therefore, these CIOs do not offer any

SLAs to their internal users. According to them most vendors and service

providers during first level discussions promise that they will give SLAs, but

when it comes to actual signing of the contract the terminology, SLA, is not

even mentioned anywhere. The vendors or service providers say “Do not worry.

We will give you an SLA, but we cannot put it down on paper”. Or the refrain

is, “You will not be able to afford it. It's too costly, and only large MNCs

go for SLAs”. Or the same old story! “I am sorry. I cannot give SLAs. Things

beyond a point are not in my control.” I thought these were things of the

past. These were issues that CIOs were facing about two years ago, not anymore.

Without getting into the argument whether my CIO met the right people or not,

or was his sample size too small, I must stress here on one thing. There is no

stopping the CIOs' internal users namely the chief of marketing and sales,

chief of finance and accounts, chief of HR, chief of production, and so on,

asking for SLAs. As we see globalisation happening, and competition building up,

we will see CXOs coming under increasing pressure to deliver.

The vendors and service providers must realize that by selling more and more

IT, networking and telecom services to enterprises, they have significantly

increased their dependence on information technology to run their business.

Today it is their lifeline, in a sense. How can then vendors say that SLAs is

something beyond their control, and they will not be able to offer guaranteed

service level agreement. Or charge an unreasonable premium for it. 

Our organization is a typical SMB. If the vendors think that the SMBs are too

small to afford SLAs they are mistaken. SMBs are small, but today they are the

biggest market drivers. And many of them work along with large enterprises as

suppliers and partners. For instance, today it is a big anomaly because in many

instances there are inconsistencies in the quality of service that stock brokers

and sub brokers get, and the quality of service that NSE gets. It is a big

harassment for retails traders, and a big embarrassment for the brokers.

I must also add here that just as vendors are getting latest technologies to

Indian users, the Indian users are also now exposed to latest global IT usage

trends and they keep hearing of QoS and SLAs being an integral part of IT

purchase. Therefore they will get more and more demanding-especially the SMB

types who want to leverage every penny spent on IT.

It is therefore time that vendors, whether they deal in hardware, software,

structured cabling or power supply solutions, and the telecom service providers,

come together and see what they can do together so that some form of SLAs can be

worked out and offered to the customers. Right now nothing seems to be happening

in this regard, and often the victim is the poor CIO, who has to bear the brunt

of internal users.

I have even heard some CIOs say that they would recommend a moratorium on IT

spending if they do not get support from vendors on this. I am sure no vendor is

looking forward to a slowdown of this booming industry.