One of the discussions I have with clients is how to identify the right SLA metrics.  My advice is that the best SLA metrics look at end-to-end services, and measure how they are delivered.  The idea is to consider the service as a ‘black box’ – look at the business outcomes and then how the business outcomes should be measured.  So instead of measuring components of the service – servers, applications, internal processes, we measure the service which the customer receives.

In my experience the real challenge in implementing these end-to-end metrics is measuring them.  There is no point in agreeing a service level that cannot be measured – and there is are often no simple way of measuring end-to-end services.

But as always, where there is a will, there is a way.  It is often possible to agree a formula – or grouping of more easily metrics which is a good approximation of the end-to-end service.   For this reason, reporting on end-to-end metrics is usually manual – and using an SLA management tool can really help in streamlining that process.

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