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About the Authors.<br /> <br /> PART ONE: THE PROBLEM.<br /> <br /> What Are Service Level Agreements?<br /> <br /> The True Intent of Service Level Agreements.<br /> <br /> The Long Ascent to True Service Level Agreement Delivery.<br /> <br /> The Operations Support System.<br /> <br /> Service Level Agreement Models.<br /> <br /> PART II: THE SOLUTION.<br /> <br /> The Integrated Service Level Agreement Model.<br /> <br /> Integration Techniques.<br /> <br /> Work-Flow Automation.<br /> <br /> Organizational Issues.<br /> <br /> Contractual Commitments and Penalties.<br /> <br /> Operational Process, Work-Flow, Notification, and Alerts.<br /> <br /> Metrics and Performance Reporting.<br /> <br /> Service Level Agreement Portals: A Unified Presentation Layer.<br /> <br /> Notification, Mobile Computing, and Wireless Access.<br /> <br /> Service Marketplaces and Bandwidth Exchanges.<br /> <br /> Applying the Model to Other Industries.<br /> <br /> Apendix: Acronyms.<br /> <br /> Bibliography.<br /> <br /> Index.

JOHN J. LEE is Vice President of Strategy and Business Solutions at ViryaNet, a company that provides wireless workforce solutions. He is an expert in the development of operation and business support systems and a frequent contributor to industry publications.<br /> RON BEN-NATAN is CTO at ViryaNet and has been building distributed systems and applications at companies like Intel, Merrill Lynch, J.P. Morgan, and AT&T Bell Labs for the past twenty years. He has authored several successful books on distributed systems and the application of advanced technologies in business environments.

Uncover a revolutionary approach to SLAs that will help you gain a competitive advantage in the field<br /> <br /> The use of Service Level Agreements (SLAs) will soon become the prevailing business model for delivering a large number of products and services. SLAs offer service providers the ability to distinguish themselves from the competition in today's volatile market while providing a measure of security for their clients. Following an innovative approach, this book will clearly show you how to implement SLAs as part of an operation support solution (OSS). The authors address the issues you should know about and show you how to integrate data from applications available at all layers of the telecommunications management network (TMN) model. By combining network management, service management, field service activities, entitlement, and rating with dynamic workflow automation and leading-edge collaboration capabilities, the authors' revolutionary approach provides you with a complete view of the SLA environment. This hands-on guide will also help you take full advantage of current community collaboration, data interface, process automation, and Internet-based distribution and reporting technologies when developing an SLA delivery strategy.<br /> <br /> Covering everything you need to know about drafting and utilizing SLAs, Lee and Ben-Natan include discussions on:<br /> * The roles, objectives, and life cycle of SLAs<br /> * The complexities in the SLA environment<br /> * Lessons learned from the CLEC telecom bubble<br /> * SLAs in a customer-centric approach<br /> * Business-level SLAs as well as device-level SLAs<br /> * The integrated SLA (ISLA) model<br /> * Integration techniques<br /> * Organizational issues, including the various management layers<br /> * Operational processes, workflows, notifications, and alerts<br /> * Metrics and performance reporting<br /> * Notification, mobile computing, and wireless access

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