[June 08, 2004] Today's Service Level Agreements Are All Bark, No Bite; Broad SLA Adoption Is Overshadowed by Ineffective Service Level Management MCLEAN, Va. --(Business Wire)-- June 8, 2004 -- Managed Objects, the Business Service Management Company, released the results of an independent study conducted by Stratagem Research revealing that over half of the Service Level Agreements (SLA's) in-place today are ineffectively managed and carry little or no penalties for SLA non-compliance. The survey showed that while over 75 percent of IT directors employ SLA's to measure and report on the IT service they deliver, almost 60 percent of these same IT directors were less than confident in their ability to provide accurate measurements and reports against their SLA's. Not a problem though - less than a third of today's SLA's carry monetary charge-back policies which effectively renders most of today's SLA's powerless. "Conducting meaningful service level management of any company's services is vital to having a true picture of the business performance," says Thomas Mendel, senior analyst, Forrester Research. "Organizations have to allow for service quality measurement and reporting, while mapping business process to the underlying IT infrastructure." The recent SLA study results show that broad SLA adoption does not always translate into effective SLA management or better IT service. Without effective technology, companies today are struggling to maintain SLA compliance within their organizations -- almost 40 percent of companies reported 'lack of proper tools' as the leading reason behind inadequate SLA compliance measurement. Over one-third of IT organizations had significant out-of-compliance issues in the past twelve months - over 20 percent simply couldn't measure how many times their company breached an SLA. Lacking proper tools, companies today are filling the SLA technology gaps with human capital. "IT organizations spend altogether too much time and resource in monitoring and managing their SLA's," said Siki Giunta, CEO of Managed Objects. "Over 40 percent of today's companies use three or more full-time knowledge workers to collect and assemble SLA reports each month. Giving IT organizations access to better tools for service level management is essential to lowering today's high cost of SLA monitoring and reporting." Study results show that when companies are asked about which capabilities are necessary for more effective SLA management, they overwhelmingly point to four key capabilities necessary to help them automate the service level management process - these include: real-time monitoring, historical trending, predictive early-warning, and the ability to integrate business and IT metrics. "Managed Objects' BSLM product allows companies to monitor networks, systems, and applications in real-time," said Ross Judson, Chief Technology Officer for Managed Objects. "If a service breach should occur, BSLM's historical trending and root cause analysis lets IT organizations find and remediate problems fast. Even more importantly, with its built-in early-warning capabilities, operations staff can use BSLM to proactively find potential problems before they actually occur." Complete SLA survey results may be obtained by visiting www.managedobjects.com/reg/secure/surveyResults.com. About the Research Stratagem Research conducted its global online survey on SLA practices in April, 2004. Over 150 responses were received from all levels of IT management representing industries such as: insurance, finance, manufacturing and healthcare. About Stratagem Research Stratagem Research is a unit of Stratagem Marketing, a business-to-business marketing firm that works exclusively with technology companies to gain insight and understanding into key marketplace issues. Stratagem Research employs both qualitative and quantitative research techniques to assist organizations in acquiring a better sense of market conditions and drivers for various technology products. For more information, please visit us at: www.stratageminc.com. About Managed Objects Managed Objects is the Business Service Management company. Consistently acknowledged by the analyst community as best in class, our methodology and suite of software built on the Formula(R) platform relates networks, systems, end users, applications, and even business metrics to the services that IT delivers. We have implemented Business Service Management more than any other company, helping our customers to monitor, manage and report on the availability and performance of services like online trading, customer relationship management and corporate e-mail. That is why CSC, DISA, Fidelity Investments, Progress Energy, Reuters, Telenor, TIAA-CREF, T-Systems and others rely on Managed Objects. For more information, visit www.managedobjects.com. [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ]