Service Level Agreements

Mobile edge computing (MEC) is a new computing paradigm that brings cloud services to the network edge. Despite its great need in terms of computational services in daily life, service users may have several concerns while selecting a suitable service provider to fulfil their computational requirements. Such concerns are: with whom they are dealing with, where will their private data migrate to, service provider processing performance quality. Therefore, this paper presents a trust evaluation scheme that evaluates the processing performance of a service provider in the MEC environment. Processing performance of service providers is evaluated in terms of average processing success rate and processing throughput, thus allocating a service provider in a relevant trust status. Service provider processing incompliance and user termination ratio are also computed during provider’s interactions with users. This is in an attempt to help future service users to be acknowledged of service provider’s past interactions prior dealing with it. Thus, eliminating the probability of existing compromised service providers and raising the security and success of future interactions between service providers and users. Simulations results show service providers processing performance degree, processing incompliance and user termination ratio. A service provider is allocated to a trust status according to the evaluated processing performance trust degree.

The most controversial and the most recently discussed matter between the country’s professionals and the government of Sri Lanka is the ETCA agreement, which will be signed with INDIA. As per the government sources the framework of this agreement will be signed in the December, 2016. Amidst the situation that a proper draft has not been issued to the public, many do concern about the conditions and the sentences which may include in the agreement.

High energy consumption of cloud data centers is a matter of great concern. Dynamic consolidation of Virtual Machines (VMs) presents a significant opportunity to save energy in data centers. A VM consolidation approach uses live migration of VMs so that some of the under-loaded Physical Machines (PMs) can be switched-off or put into a low-power mode. On the other hand, achieving the desired level of Quality of Service (QoS) between cloud providers and their users is critical. Therefore, the main challenge is to reduce energy consumption of data centers while satisfying QoS requirements. In this paper, we present a distributed system architecture to perform dynamic VM consolidation to reduce energy consumption of cloud data centers while maintaining the desired QoS. Since the VM consolidation problem is strictly NP-hard, we use an online optimization metaheuristic algorithm called Ant Colony System (ACS). The proposed ACS-based VM Consolidation (ACSVMC) approach finds a near-optimal ...

Cloud can be defined as a new computing paradigm
that provides scalable, on-demand, and virtualized resources for
users. In this style of computing, users can access a shared
pool of computing resources which are provisioned with minimal
management efforts of users. Yet there are some obstacles and
concerns about the use of clouds. Guaranteeing quality of service
(QoS) by service providers can be regarded as one of the main
concerns for companies tending to use it. Service provisioning
in clouds is based on service level agreements representing a
contract negotiated between users and providers. According to
this contract, if a provider cannot satisfy its agreed application
requirements, it should pay penalties as compensation. In this
paper, we intend to carry out a comprehensive survey on the
models proposed in literature with respect to the implementation
principles to address the QoS guarantee issue.

Cloud Service Provider(CSP) and Cloud Service Consumer(CSC) work on the terms agreed in the Service Level Agreements(SLA). SLA is a written agreement which serves as the basis for the expected level of service the CSP must provide. As the CSP are enterprises that are profit driven it is beneficial for the CSP to cheat on the SLA. Hence CSP do not provide the facility of auditing the SLA. As such the CSC must be equipped to ensure that the services promised by the CSP are provided by it so that in case of breach of service, the CSC has sufficient evidences to claim for penalty. Moreover virtual machines are prone to attacks by malicious cloud actors. To aid the investigation process sufficient evidences are needed. Hence, a framework based on the concept of Third Party Auditor (TPA) is proposed in this paper. This TPA will be placed between the Cloud Service Provider (CSP) and the Cloud Service Consumer (CSC) to closely monitor terms and conditions of SLA and ensure that CSP satisfies all the conditions mentioned in the SLA. If it is violated then the framework detects and stores it in a database maintained for this purpose. The TPA will also monitor attempts by malicious cloud actors and maintain log of all such attempts. Snapshots of clients' virtual machines will also be stored at a regular interval.

Tingkat layanan (service level) pada call center dihitung berdasarkan jumlah panggilan yang dijawab dalam interval waktu tertentu berbanding jumlah total panggilan yang diterima. Pengukuran tingkat layanan pada operator call center dimulai sejak pemanggil menekan menu berbicara dengan operator pada pilihan menu di interactive voice response (IVR), dan dinyatakan dalam persentase (misal: 90% dalam 30 detik). Semakin tinggi persentase yang diharapkan akan semakin banyak kebutuhan operator dalam layanan tersebut. Regulasi di Indonesia menetapkan tingkat layanan pada call center Jasa Teleponi Dasar adalah sebesar lebih dari atau sama dengan 90% dalam 30 detik. Penulis menggunakan pendekatan bisnis penyelenggaraan operasional call center untuk menganalisis data perundang-undangan yang ada. Melalui metode komparatif antara occupancy operator dan biaya yang dibutuhkan untuk penyelenggaraan operasional call center dengan bantuan kurva supply and demand maka nilai tingkat layanan optimum pada call center Jasa Teleponi Dasar dapat diketahui, yaitu sebesar 85% dalam 25 detik.

Kata kunci: service level, call center, regulation

Service Level Agreement is legal contract between services supplier and customer which exactly specifying terms and conditions and all standards of services. Although agreement defined set of terms and conditions, scope of services, Service level monitoring, Complaint mechanism, support activities, tool and technologies Service level plan, violation and penalties and support services etc, but could not manage and gain values.

Cloud Computing (CC) is emerging as a new technological buzzword that proposes itself as an paradigm shift where IT is changing from a purchased product, that implies an investment, to a service over the Internet that is pay-per-use. Furthermore, Cloud Computing can offer better performances through an improved utilization of virtually unlimited resources. Although CC is at its early stage, most enterprises are beginning to adopt it. In this context Service Level Agreements (SLA) between customers and providers emerge as an issue, because, due to the dynamic characteristics of CC, a new, powerful Service Level Management (SLM) is necessary. Furthermore, the necessity to monitor real-time performance and the huge amount of variables involved makes this task really complex. This research intends to provide an accurate snapshot of the state of the art of CC, from an academic point of view, by a Systematic Literature Review (SLR), and, also, from a corporate point of view, by a worldwide survey. Afterwards, we consider the current frameworks for Service Level Management, and we address their effectiveness in cloud environments. As a result of this analysis we propose some best practices that extend the functionality of ESLAM (Extended Service Level Management Analysis Method), a framework for the quality of service management developed in the Services Engineering Laboratory, that met interest from the scientific community.
Finally, the research presents a test on a private cloud platform stating the management issues and highlighting the limits that service providers and load balancers have in the assurance of quality of service.

La forma attualmente più conosciuta di archiviazione e gestione da remoto di dati informatici prende il nome di «cloud computing» o più semplicemente cloud. Premessa, dunque, una compiuta analisi dei servizi di cloud computing anche attraverso una classificazione degli stessi, si passa alla disamina degli elementi del contratto indispensabile per addivenirne alla qualificazione giuridica. La ricerca prendendo le mosse dalla ricostruzione dottrinaria della categoria della somministrazione di servizi dimostra la fondatezza di una diversa qualificazione giuridica del contratto in esame, che consente di delineare un quadro normativo differente da quello attualmente ricavabile dalla qualificazione dello stesso come appalto di servizi ed in grado di delineare una cornice di riferimento nell’ambito della quale le parti siano messe in condizione di meglio conoscere i diritti e i doveri cui si vincolano e, quindi, di porre maggiore fiducia nel ricorso a questa tecnologia con le ovvie conseguenze in termini di beneficio per lo sviluppo del mercato.

La ricerca - presentata nella “Giornata di Studio Interdisciplinare sul commercio elettronico”, tenutasi presso l’Università di Siena il 7 maggio 2015 - si incentra sul processo di standardizzazione delle clausole contrattuali in materia di cloud in atto in Europa e sulle Cloud Service Level Agreement Guidelines Standardisation pubblicate nel 2013 dalla Commissione Europea.
La standardizzazione delle clausole contrattuali non è un fenomeno nuovo per il diritto europeo. Già nelle direttive sulla tutela del consumatore sono rinvenibili, ad esempio, disposizioni che nel recare l’elenco delle clausole presuntivamente vessatorie di fatto si preoccupano di standardizzare le condizioni contrattuali, ancorché si tratti di quella da non applicare.

A classic information processing has been replaced by cloud computing in more studies where cloud computing becomes more popular and growing than other computing models. Cloud computing works for providing on-demand services for users. Reliability and energy consumption are two hot challenges and tradeoffs problem in the cloud computing environment that requires accurate attention and research. This paper proposes an Auto Resource Management (ARM) scheme to enhance reliability by reducing the Service Level Agreement (SLA) violation and reduce energy consumed by cloud computing servers. In this context, the ARM consists of three compounds, they are static/dynamic threshold, virtual machine selection policy, and short prediction resource utilization method. The Minimum Utilization Non-Negative (MUN) virtual machine selection policy and Rate of Change (RoC) dynamic threshold present in this paper. Also, a method of choosing a value as the static threshold is proposed. To improve ARM performance, the paper proposes a Short Prediction Resource Utilization (SPRU) that aims to improve the process of decision making by including the resources utilization of future time and the current time. The output results show that SPRU enhanced the decision-making process for managing cloud computing resources and reduced energy consumption and the SLA violation. The proposed scheme tested under real workload data over the CloudSim simulator.

Abordando as decisões de "Fazer ou Comprar" e "Aquisições" de acordo com o PMI (Project Management Institute).

"Serviços e Contratos em TI" aborda os elementos e ativos de um serviço em TI, bem como as questões que dizem respeito aos acordos de serviços (SLA - Service Level Agreement) e os tipos de prestadores de serviços de TI.

Information and Communication Technology (ICT) is being provided to the variety of end-users demands, thereby providing a better and improved management of services is crucial. Therefore, Service Level Agreements (SLAs) are essential and play a key role to manage the provided services among the network entities. This survey identifies the state of the art covering concepts, approaches and open problems of the SLAs establishment, deployment and management. This paper is organised in a way that the reader can access a variety of proposed SLA methods and models addressed and provides an overview of the SLA actors and elements. It also describes SLAs' characteristics and objectives. SLAs' existing methodologies are explained and categorised followed by the Service Quality Categories (SQD) and Quality-Based Service Descriptions (QSD). SLA modelling and architectures are discussed, and open research problems and future research directions are introduced. The establishment of a reliable, safe and QoE-aware computer networking needs a group of services that goes beyond pure networking services. Therefore, within the paper this broader set of services are taken into consideration and for each Service Level Objective (SLO) the related services domains will be indicated. The purpose of this survey is to identify existing research gaps in utilising SLA elements to develop a generic methodology, considering all quality parameters beyond the Quality of Service (QoS) and what must or can be taken into account to define, establish and deploy an SLA. This study is still an active research on how to specify and develop an SLA to achieve the win-win agreements among all actors.

As cloud computing is increasingly transforming the information technology landscape, organizations and businesses are exhibiting strong interest in Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) offerings that can help them increase business agility and reduce their operational costs. They increasingly demand services that can meet their functional and non-functional requirements. Given the plethora and the variety of SaaS offerings, we propose, in this paper, a framework for SaaS provisioning, which relies on brokered Service Level agreements (SLAs), between service consumers and SaaS providers. The Cloud Service Broker (CSB) helps service consumers find the right SaaS providers that can fulfil their functional and non-functional requirements. The proposed selection algorithm ranks potential SaaS providers by matching their offerings against the requirements of the service consumer using an aggregate utility function. Furthermore, the CSB is in charge of conducting SLA negotiation with selected SaaS providers, on behalf of service consumers, and performing SLA compliance monitoring.

The popularity of cloud computing has been growing where the cloud became an attractive alternative rather than classic information processing system. The distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack is one of the famous attacks to cloud computing. This paper proposes a Multiple Layer Defense (MLD) scheme to detect and mitigate DDoS attacks which due to resource depletion. The MLD consists of two layers. The first layer has an alarm system send alarms to cloud management when DDoS attacks start. The second layer includes an anomaly detection system detects VM is infected by DDoS attacks. Also,MLD tested with a different DDoS attack ratio to show scheme stability. MLD evaluated by The energy consumption and the overall SLA violations. The results show the great effect of the MLD to reduce the energy consumption and the overall SLA violation for all datasets. Also, the MLD shows acceptable stability and reactivity with different DDoS attack ratio.

A Service Level Agreement (SLA) between a service provider and its customers is an assurance to customers in fulfills the best services. Customers can get the service they pay for which obligates the service provider to achieve its service promises. Failing to meet SLAs could result in serious financial consequences for a provider and lost customers trust. This paper presents an analysis on performance of Quality of Service (QoS) SLA on a User Provider Edge –Metro Ethernet (UPE-ME) network. A QoS SLA tested method called RFC 2544 is performed on four customers in one industrial area. Actual data on four of QoS parameters which are throughput, jitter, latency and frame loss are tested by using test gear VeEX Vepal MX-120. The customers are focus to the User Provider Edge (UPE) customer. A few measurement and techniques are presented on the tested method. Analysis result on the tested throughput, jitter, latency and frame loss performance are presented based on growth of bytes. Network performance tested is identified that it is qualify as a perform network link. Performance presented results on growth of throughput with growth of frame length and latency increased with growth of frame length. Analyzed on frames loss presented that there are no errors thus this proved good quality network. Some jitters presented that they are in a low value which means that less jitter presents system with a better operation. Identifications on parameter value are presented based on an analyzed QoS using Minitab 16. The produce result shows the implemented of SLA QOS UPE-ME follow the QoS and this result is a better proved for customer satisfaction and good services from the service provider.

Cloud Computing is one of the rapidly adopted technology in the field of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) in which resources (like processor and storage devices) can be rented out and released by the Cloud customer by using the Internet in on-demand basis. Information Security issues in Cloud Computing hold vital importance as the global economy depends upon the secure flow of information within the organization and exchange of information with other organization (private and public Cloud).
To measure security in Cloud Computing at each level, Information Security metrics are better tools that help the organization to take good decisions on the base of qualitative and quantitative analysis,performance reports, efficiency and effectiveness of the implemented standard or certification security controls.
SLA metrics are mostly used to evaluate performance of the service object but not to measure Information Security risks. These service objects can be further categorized as Hardware, Software, Network, Storage and Help Desk / Service Desk. Each object has its own quality metrics and can be combined to form a complex and compound service. COBIT is IT Governance framework which is widely used in IT industry. It covers several areas of IT Governance. Information Security is the part of this framework and the same part can be used to build SLA based Information Security Metrics in Cloud Computing. To obtain Information Security Metrics particularly for Cloud Computing, a criteria have been developed and Information Security Metrics are developed accordingly to facilitate both Cloud Customers and Cloud Service Providers.

While allocating the cloud's resources the most crucial task for any service provider is the fulfilment of SLA obligations, since, non-meeting of these obligations results in penalty cost that would ultimately increase the providers' cost and will also affect their customer's satisfaction level. This might further have an impact on the software services and may increase the administrative and resource management cost. The admission control mechanism can play a pivotal role in resolving this problem by acting as a guide for resource provisioning. Thus, one must make efforts for the establishment of a better admission control mechanism between SaaS and IaaS provider. The model and algorithm proposed in this paper is an effort to show the significance of admission control mechanism for a service provider during the process of resource allocation, so as to minimize SLA violation and it's after-effects. Findings of the simulation study show that the proposed model helps in the successful admission of tasks in Cloud, meeting QoS constraints defined in SLA.

Eclat is one of the best data mining algorithms in practice. The basic Eclat algorithm has some limitations and an improved version of Eclat was introduced in the name of Eclat-Growth to overcome some of the limitations. Cloud Optimized Eclat Growth (COEG) method is proposed in this work in which a new Eclat based data mining approach is introduced that overcomes the disadvantages of existing methods to work well with real-time cloud environments. New concepts of localized cloud Eclat data processing by cloud offloading method introduced in this work. The localized cloud data processing procedure reduces the process of repeated global database scanning to improve processing speed and to reduce the memory consumption in a single machine. Fuzzy logic based multidimensional quantitative itemsets table is used to improve the accuracy. Since the proposed method uses localized cloud data processing, multidimensional liked lists are used which improves the item, transaction and pattern-based search capabilities. COEG is prepared with the intension to maximize the accuracy, precision, recall, intra-cluster density and to minimize the processing time and memory utilization.

Abstract. The present emergence of loosely-coupled, inter-enterprise collaboration, i.e., virtual organizations calls for new kind of middleware: generic, common facilities for managing contract-governed collaborations and the autonomous business services between which those collaborations are formed. While further work is still needed on the functional governance of the collaborations and services, even more work is awaiting on the management of non-functional aspects of the virtual enterprises and their members. In this paper, languages and architectures for service level agreement between Web Services are discussed and the maturity of the service level management solutions is reflected against the needs of federated virtual organizations.

Grid computing is defined as a hardware and software infrastructure that enables coordinated resource sharing within dynamic organizations. In grid computing, the probability of a failure is much greater than in traditional parallel computing. Therefore, the fault tolerance is an important property in order to achieve reliability, availability and QOS. In this paper, we give a survey on various fault
tolerance techniques, fault management in different systems and related issues. A fault tolerance service deals with various types of resource failures, which include process failure, processor failure and network failures. This survey provides the related research results about fault tolerance in distinct functional areas of grid infrastructure and also gave the future directions about fault tolerance techniques, and it is a good
reference for researcher.

For any retail company, managing inventory is of prime importance. Every store should have enough items so that it can fulfill the demand. To achieve this, the stores must be restocked before those items become out of stock. For restocking, the items must arrive from a fulfillment center which distributes the items to various stores, also called distribution centers. Since, distribution center and fulfillment centers are generally far from each other, there is a delay between request for restock and the time it takes for the item to reach from fulfillment centers to distribution centers. To prevent out of stock conditions, the request should be made by considering the time it takes for an item to arrive from fulfillment center. The quantity of item also determines the request time as only few quantities of large items can be sent at once and need multiple transits to restock to the required numbers. Along with these, there are other conditions like general traffic, seasonal climate variations, etc. that can affect the transit time of items. All of these conditions must be taken care while deciding when the item is requested. The proposed system decides the request time and quantity of items along with different variations by training from years of data. This allows the system to work more efficiently and prevent the out of stock conditions to increase sales of the company.

A Service Level Agreement (SLA) between a service provider and its customers is an assurance to customers in fulfills the best services. Customers can get the service they pay for which obligates the service provider to achieve its service promises. Failing to meet SLAs could result in serious financial consequences for a provider and lost customers trust. This paper presents an analysis on performance of Quality of Service (QoS) SLA on a User Provider Edge –Metro Ethernet (UPE-ME) network. A QoS SLA tested method called RFC 2544 is performed on four customers in one industrial area. Actual data on four of QoS parameters which are throughput, jitter, latency and frame loss are tested by using test gear VeEX Vepal MX-120. The customers are focus to the User Provider Edge (UPE) customer. A few measurement and techniques are presented on the tested method. Analysis result on the tested throughput, jitter, latency and frame loss performance are presented based on growth of bytes. Networ...

—Network slicing is considered to be one of the key enablers to Fifth Generation (5G) communication system. Legacy telecommunication networks have been providing various services to all kinds of customers through a single network infrastructure. In contrast, with the deployment of network slicing, operators are now able to partition entire network into different slices, each with its own configuration and Quality of Service (QoS) requirements. There are many applications across industry, each needs an independent slice with its own functions and features. All these applications open new business opportunities, which require new business models and therefore every single slice needs an individual Service Level Agreement (SLA). In this paper, we proposed a comprehensive end-to-end structure of SLA between tenant and service provider of slice-based 5G network, which balances the interests of both sides. The proposed SLA is expected to define reliability, availability, and performance of delivered telecommunication services in order to ensure that right information gets to the right destination at right time, safely and securely. We also discussed the metrics of slice-based network SLA such as throughput, penalty, cost, revenue, profit, and QoS related metrics, which we think are very critical to be considered during the agreement.

A question that tends to arise in multiple regression models (with p variables), and that has not been totally satisfactory solved, is to determine the best subset or subsets of q q<=p) predictors which will establish the model or models with the best discrimination capacity. This problem is particularly important where p is high and/or where there are mutually redundant predictors. With this work, we present a new approach to this problem, where we will try to predict a new emission episode of S O2, but focusing our attention in the importance to know the best combinations of time instants to obtain the best prediction. The proposed method is a new forward stepwise-based selection procedure that selects a model containing a subset of variables (or time instants) according to an optimal criteria (determination coefficient or Akaike Information Criterion) and taking into account the computational cost. Additionally, bootstrap resampling techniques are used to implement tests capable of detecting whether significant effects of the unselected variables are present in the model.

Abstract Operational expenses represent a growing portion of costs for telecommunications services. Chronologically, the first service process is the Service Delivery, which starts after the Order Entry and leads to the entry into service. A model of the Service Delivery process is proposed that decomposes it into six phases. A statistical analysis is performed for the completion times of each phase, collected over a period of six months on an OLO (Other Licensed Operator). The Installation and the Number Portability phase appear as the most ...

Cloud computing is an emerging computing paradigm in which “Everything is as a Service”, including the provision of virtualized computing infrastructures (known as Infrastructure-as-a-Service modality) hosted on the physical infrastructure, owned by an infrastructure provider. The goal of this infrastructure provider is to maximize its profit by minimizing the amount of violations of Quality-of-Service (QoS) levels agreed with its customers and, at the same time, by lowering infrastructure costs among which energy consumption plays a major role. In this paper, we propose a framework able to automatically manage resources of cloud infrastructures in order to simultaneously achieve suitable QoS levels and to reduce as much as possible the amount of energy used for providing services. We show, through simulation, that our approach is able to dynamically adapt to time-varying workloads (without any prior knowledge) and to significantly reduce QoS violations and energy consumption with respect to traditional static approaches.

Cloud computing is growing in popularity among computing paradigms for its appealing property of considering "Everything as a Service". The goal of a Cloud infrastructure provider is to maximize its profit by minimizing the amount of violations of Quality-of-Service (QoS) levels agreed with service providers, and, at the same time, by lowering infrastructure costs. Among these costs, the energy consumption induced by the Cloud infrastructure, for running Cloud services, plays a primary role. Unfortunately, the minimization of QoS violations and, at the same time, the reduction of energy consumption is a conflicting and challenging problem. In this paper, we propose a framework to automatically manage computing resources of Cloud infrastructures in order to simultaneously achieve suitable QoS levels and to reduce as much as possible the amount of energy used for providing services. We show, through simulation, that our approach is able to dynamically adapt to time-varying workloads (without any prior knowledge) and to significantly reduce QoS violations and energy consumption with respect to traditional static approaches.

A key component of ensuring that services are available on the cloud at the right time in the right manner is adequate cloud management. This makes it possible to provide services that meets user demands. The purpose of this research is to carry out a systematic study of management and monitoring on the cloud. Three facets were applied in conducting the categorization. These are the contribution, research, and topic facets. The purpose was to determine the level of work so far carried out in the field of cloud management. This enabled the creation of a pictorial representation of the research coverage. The result of the study showed that there are no opinion research on cloud management. Generally, articles on experience research, philosophical research and metric are the lowest at 6.62%, 4.41% and 1.90% respectively, while articles on models, solution research and evaluation research are the highest with 52.38%, 46.32% and 31.62% respectively. The outcome of this study will stimulate further research in the area cloud management and systematic studies.

While allocating the cloud’s resources the most crucial task for any service provider is the fulfilment of SLA obligations, since, non-meeting of these obligations results in penalty cost that would ultimately increase the providers’ cost and will also affect their customer’s satisfaction level. This might further have an impact on the software services and may increase the administrative and resource management cost. The admission control mechanism can play a pivotal role in resolving this problem by acting as a guide for resource provisioning. Thus, one must make efforts for the establishment of a better admission control mechanism between SaaS and IaaS provider. The model and algorithm proposed in this paper is an effort to show the significance of admission control mechanism for a service provider during the process of resource allocation, so as to minimize SLA violation and it’s after-effects. Findings of the simulation study show that the proposed model helps in the successful...

The appearance of infinite computing resources that available on demand and fast enough to adapt with load surges makes Cloud computing favourable service infrastructure in IT market. Core feature in Cloud service infrastructures is Service Level Agreement (SLA) that led seamless service at high quality of service to client. One of the challenges in Cloud is providing heterogeneous computing services for the clients. With the increasing number of clients/tenants in the Cloud, unsatisfied agreement is becoming a critical factor. In this paper, we present an adaptive resource allocation policy which attempts to improve accountable in Cloud SLA while aiming for enhancing system performance. Specifically, our allocation incorporates dynamic matching SLA rules to deal with diverse processing requirements from tenants.Explicitly, it reduces processing overheadswhile achieving better service agreement. Simulation experiments proved the efficacy of our allocation policy in order to satisfy the tenants; and helps improve reliable computing.

Abstract To distribute risk in Grid, the design of service level agreements (SLAs) plays an important role, since these contracts determine the price for a service at an agreed quality level as well as the penalties in case of SLA violation. This paper proposes a price function over the quality of service (QoS) on the basis of the agreements negotiated upon price and quality objective. This function defines fair prices for every possible quality of a service, which are in line with the business of the customer and incentivize the provider to supply ...

Despite not decisive, our findings foster reasonable doubts related to the effectiveness and efficiency of the quantitative decision-making approach when it is applied to the typology of projects in scope for the research. As per hypotheses, the consequent lack in terms of competitive advantage (due also to a debatable role assigned to the ICT) impacts strategies and viability of the organization.
Results could be reasonably extended in order to justify further research belonging to fields of knowledge and/or dualisms like “holism, complexity, customization, quality, differentiation, localization, loyalty, ...” as opposite to “reductionism, standardization, quantity, globalization, independency, ...”.