* Infonet SLAs take into account end-to-end performance of key network apps
Six months ago, Infonet announced a suite of service-level agreements for its data services – including IP VPN Secure, Global Frame Relay, Global ATM and Dedicated Internet Service – that featured end-to-end performance guarantees. Now Infonet is looking beyond individual data services to create SLAs that take into account the end-to-end performance of key network applications.
Six months ago, Infonet announced a suite of service-level agreements for its data services – including IP VPN Secure, Global Frame Relay, Global ATM and Dedicated Internet Service – that featured end-to-end performance guarantees. Now Infonet is looking beyond individual data services to create SLAs that take into account the end-to-end performance of key network applications.
Infonet is developing application monitoring and optimization services that are focused on application performance. As a companion to these services, Infonet will offer an SLA that includes all the pieces of the corporate IT infrastructure that the ISP can monitor.
“Ultimately, where we’re going is to offer an SLA on those aspects of the service that we have visibility into or can touch directly,” says Bob DaGiau, vice president of enterprise management services for Infonet. “That’s the Holy Grail, in our opinion. That’s going to be disruptive in the business.”
DaGiau says Infonet has two customers testing its new application monitoring and optimization services, which will be announced in limited availability later this fall. These services will be available across any of Infonet’s data services.
“We’re not going to be operating the application on behalf of the customer,” DaGiau explains. “But we’re going to be able to understand the applications in the client environment. We’re going to be able to prioritize applications across the WAN in conjunction with the customer. And we’re also going to be able to set very strict policy controls over the performance that individual end users can experience.”
Infonet’s approach – which it has dubbed “application-defined networking” – is part of a trend towards ISPs rethinking how they deliver IP services and the performance they guarantee customers. We’re looking at Infonet’s SLA strategy in the latest installment of an ongoing series about the SLAs offered by top-tier ISPs. In previous issues, we’ve discussed SLAs from AT&T, MCI and Equant. To view the previous articles, please go to the ISP News Report online archives (https://www.nwfusion.com/newsletters/isp/index.html).
Infonet already offers a monitoring service it calls FirstWatch, which provides performance reporting for customer-owned network components including routers, hubs, switches, servers and security devices.
Due out next are FirstAlert and FirstAlert Premise, which offer real-time visibility into the performance of Infonet-provided network services such as IP VPN or frame relay. In addition, Infonet has said it will offer monitoring and performance reporting for more than 2,000 leading e-business applications.
“Now we have SLAs for FirstWatch, and we’ll have SLAs tied to our application monitoring and application optimization services,” DaGiau says. “Next, we’ll develop aggregated SLAs for customers that subscribe to all three services. We want to offer an overall SLA.”
DaGiau says the overall SLA will be available by December 2005. “We don’t want to craft the overall SLA until we have [experience with] customers for all three services,” he adds.
Infonet will continue to offer individual SLAs for all of its VPN and voice services. DaGaiu vows that Infonet will be competitive on the performance metrics – such as latency, packet loss and availability – that are the focus of competitors such as AT&T and MCI. However, Infonet’s focus will be on application-level performance guarantees.
“The only reason for buying a network service is to deliver applications to end users,” DaGaiu explains. “From the customer’s perspective…it’s about the performance of the application or the end user experience in total, including the performance of the applications and the servers and everything else. It’s not just the network plumbing. It’s all the systems and the infrastructure.”
Next week: Check out the SLAs offered by Sprint and Internap.
Key to the success of this series on SLAs is feedback from you. What do you care about most when evaluating SLAs? Which ISP is the easiest or most difficult to negotiate with on SLAs? Whose SLAs are the simplest or most difficult to understand? Please share your SLA stories with other network executives. Send us an e-mail today at mailto:cmarsan@nww.com
