You've heard the application service provider (ASP) hype, and you're finally getting around to considering using one of those outsourcing services. But you're well aware of the risks; you'll be ...

In this era of outsourcing, many organizations have realized significant cost reductions from disaster recovery (DR) infrastructure outsourcing. Often, this goal has been achieved at the expense of ...

Many IT administrators aren’t comfortable handing over control of the most critical security components of their infrastructure. But in recent years, security outsourcing has become a popular and ...

Q: Our agency has been selected to handle business travel for a major corporation in our area. The corporate travel manager has told us that the corporation wants a written contract with a "service ...

Before you sign on the dotted line and commit to an ASP, be sure you know exactly what kind of service you'll be guaranteed You've heard the application service provider (ASP) hype, and you're finally ...

This excerpt from the upcoming book, SQL Server 2008 Administration in Action, introduces the role of service-level agreements (SLAs) as part of a DBA's overall strategy to maintaining reliable ...

Over a career in information technology spanning multiple decades, I have observed that many IT organizations have focused process improvement and measurement almost exclusively on software ...

The cloud is an essential component of all e-commerce sites. Not all clouds, however, are created equal. The key thing here is reliability. Making sure that the cloud service and Service Level ...

Companies often have multiple internal groups that all provide support in some way. These groups work under a basic service-level agreement, or SLA, which describes the overall support goals and ...

You were quite critical of Service Level Agreements in your recent column, “ Run, IT run … but not as a business,” (Keep the Joint Running, 1/28/2008), describing them as formal contracts between IT ...