Question 1

Is there any fixed format for SLA in the context of Outsourcing? If not, how do we make SLAs?

Answer

There is no fixed format for SLA. It all depends in what business we are. Example given below:

1. Suppose I am in a business of Telephones / Mobiles, then every second is very critical and I expect my Vendor / Technical partner to maintain my network uptime at 99.99% always.


2. Suppose my business is different from above then I can opt for an uptime of 97%.


3. Even the above 97% is dangerous sometimes because if you take 30 days in a month and if the network is down on the last working day with which my monthly financial closure is delayed and decision making is delayed. Vendor has maintained 97% uptime and we can not hold him responsible for this delay. Therefore to avoid this kind of a situation, we can put a SLA by keeping last 2 working days and first 2 working days at 99.99% and rest of the days at 95%.

Question 2

If you outsource entire IT, do you really need a CIO. If so, then what can be the role of a CIO?

Answer

The role of a CIO moves from technology services provider to business enabler. I would say he has to manage business processes and systems. Typically, his role is to assimilate the new technologies that can help create new business offerings, improve performance and optimize costs.

Today the expectation from CIO is to meet the business requirements by looking into a solution and tie them together to get the desired end result. Therefore to keep pace with others and keeping in the mind the end result, it is better to outsource than retaining the same. As complexity of the business increases, as the dependency increases more and more, CIO will be under severe pressure to meet because it is impossible for a single CIO / organization to cope up. Therefore it is prudent to outsource in the context of complicated business processes.