Multi-level SLA management for service-oriented infrastructures

Abstract

The ongoing transformation of a product-oriented economy towards a service-oriented economy has come to a critical point. In order to have services as tradable goods, the conditions of their provisioning need to be exactly specified and managed. Service Level Agreements (SLAs) have become a common means for specifying these conditions at a singular level. However, realistic service provisioning scenarios involve multiple stakeholders and layers of a business/IT stack. This paper presents an approach for multi-level SLA management, where SLAs are consistently specified and managed within a service-oriented infrastructure (SOI). We present the general approach of an SLA management framework, a conceptual architecture and some insights into industrial practice in various domains. © 2008 Springer Berlin Heidelberg.