* MCI guarantees increased uptime
Managed services have been talked about for years, and the service providers have offered what appear to be – in our opinion – some very attractive options. Nevertheless, these offerings still tend to take a back seat to DIY networking in many cases. The exact reasons have never been clear, but we suspect that there’s at least a hint of concern about job security if you start using the O-word.
Managed services have been talked about for years, and the service providers have offered what appear to be – in our opinion – some very attractive options. Nevertheless, these offerings still tend to take a back seat to DIY networking in many cases. The exact reasons have never been clear, but we suspect that there’s at least a hint of concern about job security if you start using the O-word.
In spite of these historical reasons not to use managed services, one of the strongest arguments for using managed services was highlighted in last week’s announcement by MCI of even tighter service-level agreements (SLA) for managed services.
The reason is simple. If you’re using a managed service, then the service provider takes responsibility for the end-to-end uptime for the network. Otherwise, you – the end-user – are responsible for coordinating the repair efforts between on-site equipment and network equipment. And, depending on how you’re buying your services, this responsibility may include coordinating repair efforts between your long-haul and local access service providers.
In the newly announced SLAs, MCI will guarantee as a part of its managed service SLA, a 3.5-hour time-to-repair (TTR) in the U.S., provided that MCI is also the transport service provider. This replaces a previous SLA of a 3.5-hour mean-time-to-repair (MTTR).
MCI also announced the availability of a standard SLA across third-party providers with a four-hour TTR in the U.S. (Previously, there was no SLA when a third-party provider was involved.) This difference between an average and a guaranteed maximum is quite significant. Similar tightening was also announced for international services. The key to this enhanced TTR is an automated network management system that detects problems and even generates automated LEC trouble tickets.
The announcement also included tighter availability SLAs. The most significant portion of the availability SLA is that when coupled with the managed services option, the SLA becomes a site-to-site SLA as opposed to simply an SLA for problems within the network.
So what are your thoughts? Do you currently employ SLAs? Why or why not? In particular, does this enhancement pique your interest sufficiently to entice you to make a move to a managed service?
