Page 520 - Handbook of Modern Telecommunications

Network Organization and Governance 4-51

and consumer groups), private sector sources (such as competitors, suppliers, distributors, customers),
or media (journals, wire services, newspapers, and financial reports).
The challenge with CI is not lack of information; it is the ability to differentiate useful CI from chatter
or even disinformation. Of course, once you start practicing competitive intelligence, the next stage is
to introduce countermeasures to make the CI task about you more difficult for other firms. The game
of measure, countermeasure, and counter-countermeasure, and so on to counter to the nth measure is
played in industry just as it is in politics and in international competition.

Acronyms

ALM Application Life Management
CRM Customer Relationship Management
DW Data Warehouse
ERP Enterprise Resource Planning
FTTH Fiber to the Home
IRR Internal Rate of Return

4.4 Service-Level Management

Christian Voigt and Kornel Terplan

4.4.1 Introduction

Service-Level Agreements determine the service and its security requirements in a legal sense. Using
legal contracts, such as a Service-Level Agreement, disagreements between contracting parties can be
avoided. Disagreements may include the type of service, limits of a service, quality of a service, and
compensation for a service. In order to inform the customer about the actual quality of services, support
interfaces are recommended between the service provider and the customer.
Service-Level Agreements can be signed between service providers and customers representing a
usual legal contract between businesses or between various departments of a corporation. External
Service-Level Agreements are always considered as legal business contracts by both contracting parties,
but this is not always the case with internal contracts. The result is that for the internal service provider
or operator, the limits of such contracts underestimate or do not deliver satisfactory service quality.
Service-Level Agreements have to be signed with all relevant suppliers of services and equipment;
they must be provided in written form. Service-Level Agreements must describe and quantify the avail-
able service level, and all responsible persons must be identified in the contract.

4.4.2 Principal Terms and Metrics
Service-l evel Agreements are written agreements about the service and its quality of service (QoS)
metrics between contracting parties.
Service-l evel Management is the process of determining QoS metrics, preparation and maintenance
of Service-Level Agreements, continuous collection and distribution of information about QoS metrics,
and supervising whether the conditions of Service-Level Agreements are met.
The Service-Level Agreement is more than just a list of service metrics; it lays out the ongoing moni-
toring, reporting, and response process. The Service-Level Agreement should clearly define the respon-
sibilities of both parties. For each function that is defined, the person responsible for controlling that
function needs to be identified by position.