Whilst for some “standardisation” is a dull topic, the outcomes of these organisations should be seriously considered. Standards play a vital role for Optiva Managed Services and Support (MSS). These, along with things like Optiva’s membership in the Technology & Services Industry Association (TSIA), provide a valuable worldview “outside” of our company, drawing on the expertise of professionals in the field.
Recently, we have been investigating one such standard to see how to utilise it across Optiva MSS.
ISO-IEC-19086-1-2016
The ISO-IEC standard 19086-1-2016 establishes how service level agreements (SLAs) should be offered to customers within the cloud domain. When we recently launched Optiva BSS Hubs in the U.S. and New Zealand (with more to come), we realised that our customers needed a different way of measuring performance. Typically, with bare metal/on-premise solutions, SLAs were based on various flavours of pure “time-to-fix” KPIs. In the hosted public cloud domain, where the customer hands over the reins to the vendor, such SLAs are no longer sufficient. The customer is interested in understanding the outcomes that will be achieved by using the provided service.
SLIs and SLOs
Such outcomes are best measured with service level objectives (SLOs). SLOs came into vogue as “more” started being measured. So now, with this terminology, an SLA contains multiple SLOs.
An SLO is based on a service level indicator (SLI) that defines the specific parameter being measured. The SLO adds a target value to an SLI.
The first and most complex step is deciding which SLIs will interest telcos most. There are obvious ones, such as service availability and call success rate. But there are many more possibilities. Here, Optiva's 25 years of experience in the industry is a huge benefit to telcos.
The next step in reaching a model is to ensure the product can provide the metrics required to measure the SLIs and build dashboards to display them meaningfully.
Afterward come the testing and trial phases, where the achievable levels in the various scenarios (e.g., with zonal redundancy v. regional redundancy, levels of horizontal and vertical scaling, etc.) are evaluated. This turns the SLIs into SLOs as realistic targets for the multiple architectural options are set.
The final preparation step is to add the “menu” of SLOs to the customer’s contract templates.
SLI / SLO | Traditional bare metal / on-premise SLAs | ISO-IEC-19086-1-2016 cloud-based SLAs |
Trouble ticket response times / time-to-fix | ✅ | ✅ |
Business outcomes | ✅ | |
Service availability | ✅ | |
First time right | ✅ | |
TMF API success rates | ✅ |
Win-Win-Win
When introducing this to a new customer, the best approach is to include the top ten SLOs in contract negotiations, including associated service credits as a penalisation for not attaining them. For example, a niche MVNO would be more interested in the success rate of end-to-end provisioning. In contrast, a large MNO in India would be more inclined to understand the provisioning throughput. Initiating this at the contract negotiation phase accomplishes the following:
Forces the customer to consider which outcomes are important for using the Optiva product.
Helps Optiva MSS to establish a clear focus of what is a priority to the customer and establish a relationship of trust.
Ensures that the customer’s subscribers experience a positive journey.
Traditional SLAs remain but are extended with SLOs.
Living with SLOs
When customers go live on an Optiva hub, they have the "warm and fuzzy feeling" that Optiva is more than just a vendor. Optiva listens and takes the time to understand what is business critical for the customer, and they also have dashboards showing a real-time view of Optiva product’s success rate.
And in the rare event Optiva doesn’t perform, the customer gets their money back.
Optiva MSS team also has the same SLO dashboard view in the Optiva global Network Operation Centre (NOC). Therefore, as soon as the dashboard thresholds detect warning levels, the Optiva Support team is automatically deployed to rectify the situation before any real impact.
SLIs and SLOs are modern-day methodologies that enhance the benefits of cloud-based software. They introduce trust and assurance in the vendor-customer relationship, ease regular tracking and management, help clear customer priorities, and ensure an excellent experience for the end users.
By Andrew Rigby, Senior Director Service Account Managers,
Managed Services,
Optiva