I would like to know how availability fits into OLAs. Should availability of apps be incorporated into OLAs or should it be stored in a different area such as Availability Management. Who is responsible for monitoring it?

-- Naomei Cathcart (naomei.cathcart@fidelity.co.uk), March 11, 2005

Answers

OLAs are internal agreements between and among the various IS/IT groups who are responsible for assuring availability of the systems and applications in their own domains. The OLAs are driven by two factors: (1) the service level agreement (SLA) between the provider (typically IS/IT) and the receiver (typically the business) (2) operational capabilities to deliver the service levels in the service level agreement

Availability to the business should be in the SLA, and also addressed in the OLA.

Note that 99% availability from each group does not mean the business will recieve 99% availability, and that has to be factored in. Look at the screenshot of an availability table from a small SLA - http://www.tarrani.com/pix/availgoaltable.jpg - and you will see that two providers are giving 99% availability, yet when you examine the aggregate availability (see http://www.tarrani.com/pix/availcomputed.jpg ) the promised availability is 98.1%.

Monitoring responsibility depends on roles and responsibilities spelled out in the SLA, but typically the service desk or business systems analyst will monitor the availability.

-- Mike Tarrani (mike@tarrani.com), March 11, 2005.