Managing eBusiness on demand SLA contracts in business terms using the cross-SLA execution manager SAM

It is imperative for a competitive e-business service provider to be positioned to manage the execution of its service level agreement (SLA) contracts in business terms (e.g., minimizing financial penalties for service-level violations, maximizing service-level measurement based customer satisfaction metrics). This paper briefly describes the design rationale of an integrated set of business-oriented service level management (SLM) technologies under development in the SAM project at IBM TJ Watson Research Center. The e-business SLA execution manager SAM, (1) enables the provider to deploy an effective means of capturing and managing contractual SLA data as well as provider-facing non-contractual SLM data; (2) assists service personnel to prioritize the processing of action-demanding quality management alerts as per the provider's SLM objectives; and (3) automates the prioritization and execution management Of approved SLM processes on behalf of the provider, including assigning SLM tasks to service personnel.