By Martin Hodgson, Director Northern Europe at Paessler
This article originally appeared in the October 24 magazine issue of IoT Insider.
The number of IoT devices worldwide is forecast to nearly double, from 15.9 billion in 2023 to over 32.1 billion in 2030. That means IT managers are dealing with more data, systems, and higher levels of complexity than ever before.
With yet another spate of high-profile cyber attacks taking place in recent months – one of which saw sensitive data stolen from an NHS blood test provider – it’s becoming increasingly clear that businesses and institutions alike have no choice but to secure their systems.
To reduce the impact such events, IT managers need to stay one step ahead of criminals and identify breaches to their infrastructure at speed. If they fail to do so, they risk both financial and reputational damage.
However, it’s difficult take a proactive approach to issue resolution without having a clear picture of what ‘normal’ looks like for your IT landscape. This is where Service Level Agreements (SLAs) come in. An SLA defines expected levels of service between a given service provider and a customer. This enables IT managers to clearly communicate to their customers how service standards are being upheld.
A closer look at SLA monitoring
Gartner outlines an SLA as an agreement that sets out the expectations between a service provider and their customer, describing the products or services to be delivered. It should clearly outline the point of contact for any end user issues, as well as clear metrics for success. In short, an SLA ensures that IT admins deliver promised services.
For example, if a given business is looking to deliver exceptionally high uptime across its devices, the service level objective would be set to 99.999%. 100% availability isn’t usually feasible as system updates need to be rolled out, unforeseen outages can occur, and ongoing maintenance work is often required. However, one key benefit of SLA monitoring is that it makes issue resolution laser-focused, so any downtime is kept to a minimum.
Let’s look at this process in practice. When an IT admin connects their IT infrastructure to SLA software, automated responses are defined based on a given value. This is useful because different components will have different levels of importance, so an IT admin needs to know which component they should jump to first when there’s an issue. IT admins can assign different components their own ‘tags’, to keep them informed on unwanted changes or potential risks.
Helping IT teams to prioritise
IT teams are often faced with several issues all at once. From missing files to Wi-Fi outages to hardware failures, they need to be able to think clearly amid the chaos and know which issue to ‘firefight’ first.
SLAs can help to diagnose and manage the most critical issues. IT managers can colour code components that affect the SLA agreement with the customer in green. For example, if an issue with a sensor is short-lived, not breaching the SLA, it can be added to a database called ‘Components Impacting SLA’. This facilitates a more proactive approach to issue resolution because IT managers can add notes to routine issues and predict whether the problem is likely to worsen in future.
However, when green sensors go down and no action is taken, the SLA percentage value, shown via a dashboard, will decrease. Once the Service Level Objective (SLO) value has been reached, the value shifts to red to indicate an SLA breach. This ‘traffic light’ system means that managers can understand which issues are most likely to affect the customers at any given moment and react to those first.
Today’s IT teams are often stretched to breaking point and valuable time can be wasted when trying to assess which problem to address first. Defined filters help to cut through the noise and ensure that the most important information is prioritised, making it easier to find a resolution.
SLAs also provide strong return on investment (ROI) when it comes to customer service. After all, customers are always happier when they are kept informed. SLA software makes it easy for IT teams to draw data into weekly, quarterly or monthly reports. Customers can look at the standard of service levels via pie charts, screengrabs of dashboards and other visual elements. It’s an easy way to showcase to a customer that they are receiving the high-level of service that they are paying for.
Taking visibility to the next level
IT monitoring tools enable businesses to achieve full visibility across their OT and IoT environments via one unified screen. When these tools are matched with SLAs it enables an organisation’s data to reach new heights. Exporting insights from your monitoring software and connecting them with an SLA tool gives your data direction and purpose.
Consolidating all critical information under one umbrella and bringing it together in one unified dashboard paints a clear and succinct picture of an organisation’s digital landscape. It saves valuable time for IT teams because they no longer need to manually sort through hundreds of notifications to get to the root of a problem.
IT teams will increasingly need to be able to demonstrate that money has been well spent and customers’ investments are paying off. SLAs make it easy to showcase ROI by first defining ideal levels of service, and then providing full transparency on whether standards were met or not. Moving forward, SLAs will be key to creating more honest – and therefore long lasting – relationships between vendors and customers.
