Real-Time Data Needs Real-Time SLA Visibility

Open Platform: Real-Time Data Needs Real-Time Visibility

Inside Market Data | October 24, 2011 

Service-level agreements are the yardstick for measuring vendor performance. But low-latency data requirements mean firms must monitor providers much more frequently than before. Frank Wiener, vice president of marketing at Petaluma, Calif.-based networking, packet transport and SLA monitoring software provider Cyan, explains that it’s not just about getting the service you pay for—it’s about maximizing effectiveness.

Having a rock-solid service-level agreement is critical for establishing a clear expectation of service performance with service providers, and to assure that you get what you’re paying for, particularly in the financial community, where timely market data is essential to success. The historic monthly reports provided for many SLA-backed services are useful for trending and the occasional settlement, but are not very effective for helping IT managers make informed decisions when key applications are not performing as expected.

Microseconds of delay can translate to millions of dollars in lost profits daily for high-frequency traders. This has never been more obvious than with the wild stock market fluctuations in recent months. No IT manager wants to have to explain that “unidentified issues” degraded network performance on a day when the market rose or fell by 500 points.

Varying service performance can impact the performance of a range of applications and productivity across any enterprise, particularly in today’s cloud-centric world. But infinitely more valuable than reading reports about a historic 99.999 percent availability is having real-time visibility of specific service connections and associated applications when something goes wrong. Easy access to this type of information gives IT managers the data they need to make informed decisions and act quickly.

In fact, IT managers with real-time visibility into services and SLA performance are better equipped to more effectively: communicate and collaborate with service providers and internal clients when service-impacting conditions occur; isolate and resolve non-network-related issues faster by ruling out the network; monitor and track resource utilization for more accurate budget and service requirements planning; identify the most deterministic metrics of application performance and negotiate more meaningful SLAs; verify they’re getting the level of service they’re paying for.

In short, IT managers with effective real-time SLA performance visibility are better prepared to run their networks and contribute to the success of their business.

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