* More thoughts on high-speed access into data centers
Last time, we discussed an issue raised by some user organizations about providing dual high-speed access into their data centers. Today, we’ll continue this conversation.
Last time, we discussed an issue raised by some user organizations about providing dual high-speed access into their data centers. Today, we’ll continue this conversation.
There was a wide range of opinions relative to the value of service-level agreements (SLA). The majority of IT organizations that we talked to place little if any value in SLAs, feeling that the penalties that are included in an SLA are not big enough to make a difference. A couple of organizations stated that they tend to negotiate SLAs as hard as possible and then forget about them. One organization stated that, “SLAs are important. However, if you are pulling them out on a regular basis, you are in trouble.”
Most of the organizations that didn’t see much value in SLAs did see value in establishing a meaningful escalation process so that executives in the carrier organization would get contacted soon after a major outage. Virtually every organization has an escalation process but it is another to have such a process that actually works in a timely fashion.
Few organizations felt comfortable with having a contract for high-speed access circuits that was longer than three years in duration. In addition, many of the users we spoke with stated that they include in their negotiations with their carriers a way to get out of the contract if the carrier continually fails to meet their SLAs.
The users were in agreement about the importance of the carrier’s account team. The general feeling was that if a carrier swapped out account teams your ability to get information from the carrier or make changes to your service could change dramatically.
For now, this is the last in our series of newsletters on data center access. We are beginning to explore proactive network management in general, and WAN application optimization in particular. We would appreciate it if you could take a few minutes and fill out the survey. We’re sure that this is a topic that we’ll be discussing in this newsletter in the not-too-distant future.
