WHY DO WE THINK CLASSIFICATION OF TECHNICAL SERVICES IS IMPORTANT?

A Service is made of Business Services each if which underpinned by Technical Service. Each Technical Service is Classified as Platinum, Gold, Silver and Bronze. This representation is for ease of use. You can classify with any names.

The reason is: Read the quote below

So we want to measure these Technical Services to ensure that they are managed. The total of this classification of the Technical Services will help us to understand the Business Service.

And the total of these Business Services will help to understand the "Service Levels" of a Service which we are going to deliver to a Customer.

If the agreed Customer Levels are higher than or equal to Service Levels which we discussed above, then the Service is expected to achieve the required Service Levels Targets. In the next section, I will describe, how do we measure?

We will divide the measurement paraments into four broad categories.

1. Service Quality Requirements
2. KPI Measurement Requirements
3. Service Ownership Requirements
4. Support Process Requirements

Service Quality Requirements

We will measure the quality parameters such as Service Hours, Support Hours, Planned Outage Window, Service Availability(excluding planned downtime),Maximun Service Failure Level,Service Continuity, Diaster Recovery, Service Monitoring, Data Archival Requirements, Data Retrieval Requirements, Back-up and Re-storation Requirements, Capacity Management and Test/Reference Environment to provide a working represenation of live environment.

KPI Measurement Requirements

These include the standard KPI's along with any specific KPI's if required. The Technical Services can be measured against

Service Availability KPI, Success KPI's ( Describe your Success KPI based on transactions), Speed KPI's( Described the Speed KPI's to measure and report the user experience) and Tool Set's identified to measure these KPI's. I will discuss these KPI's in detail in another blog post soon.

Service Owner Requirements

These include Business Owners to the formally identified for the service/systems or Platforms, to act as an in-Life contact for Business Decisions. There should be a Technical/Operational Service Owner to be formally identified who act as an in-life contact for technical issues and queries. Also, there should be a Service Data Owner for the service/systems/platforms to act as an in-life contact for any queries related to security and integrity or storage of data particularly important for SOX considerations.

Support Process Requirements

We should have defined a Fault Management requirements that should be delivered against the service/systems/platforms. Also, Change Management Requirements for that to be fully delivered for the Service/System/Platform as well as other Service Management Processes as required.

CONCLUSION

Classification of Technical Components/Services/Systems/Platforms is significant from Service  SLA point of view as well from measuring and reporting point of view.