Service level objective

About: Service level objective is a research topic. Over the lifetime, 7894 publications have been published within this topic receiving 218701 citations.

Positioning services along the volume‐variety diagonal

Abstract: Draws on the service management literature to enhance understanding of the key operational differences in managing professional services, at one extreme, and mass services, at the other. Contributions are drawn together, developed and integrated into the service process model. This yields an understanding of the contingencies which render the design, control and improvement of different service processes appropriate. Strategic implications of the service process model are considered. It is contended that cost effective services will be positioned along the volume‐variety diagonal. It is proposed that the service process model can be used as a strategic tool in three ways. First, it can be used to evaluate possible strategic moves along the volume‐variety diagonal. Second, it can be used to analyse a competitive area and evaluate a service offering relative to the competition. Third, it can be used to analyse internal organisational processes with a view to identifying processes which have different volume‐variety characteristics and which should therefore perhaps be managed separately.

Contact center system and method for specifying different service specific behavior and offering range of corresponding customer services

Abstract: A contact center uses a service system to establish communication over a data network, such as the internet, between customer endpoint systems and the endpoint systems of customer service representatives, CSRs, of the contact center. The service system establishes communication between endpoint systems by joining them to an appropriate communication session with an associated transport mechanism that allows the exchange of data across the network between the joined endpoint systems. For each communication session, a respective service instance and session instance are created. The service instance provides service specific behaviour while the session instance provides generic operations for adding and removing endpoint systems to the communication session. By specifying different service-specific behaviors, a range of corresponding customer services can be offered.

Service operations strategy, flexibility and performance in engineering consulting firms

Abstract: In this paper, the relationship between operations strategy and performance through flexibility as a moderating variable is analysed within the service setting of engineering consulting firms in Spain. A framework for service strategy dimensions is suggested while manufacturing flexibility dimensions are applied to service operations considering necessary adaptations. A path analysis model is applied in order to enhance the understanding of interactions. This research proves that service operations strategy has a significant positive and direct effect on service delivery performance. The fact that is especially relevant is that flexibility plays a more intense moderating role for efficiency performance measures than for customer satisfaction performance measures.

Systems and methods for adaptively deriving storage policy and configuration rules

Abstract: In one embodiment, the invention relates to an adaptive engine for creating provisioning policies and rules for network storage provisioning, which can be driven by service level objectives. The service level objectives can be defined for a given quality of service (“QoS”) for one or more users or user groups, file systems, databases, or applications, or classes of file systems, databases, or applications. In addition, the service level objectives can define the cost, availability, time to provision, recoverability, performance and accessibility objectives for the file system, database or application.

Adaptive entitlement control of resource containers on shared servers

Abstract: In this paper, we describe the design of online feedback control algorithms to dynamically adjust entitlement values for a resource container on a server shared by multiple applications. The goal is to determine the minimum level of entitlement for the container such that its hosted application achieves desired performance levels. Classic control theory is used for both model identification and controller design. Specific implementation issues that affect the closed-loop system performance are discussed. A self-tuning adaptive controller is also presented to handle limited variations in the workload. The controllers were implemented and evaluated on a testbed using the HP-UX PRM as the resource container and the Apache Web server as the hosted application in the container. In all experiments, our controller was able to quickly converge to the proper level of CPU entitlement for the Web server to track its performance target. By using our entitlement control system, shared servers can potentially reach much higher resource utilization while meeting service level objectives for the hosted applications under changing operating conditions.