Report Reveals E-Commerce SLA Dissatisfaction

A recent International Data Corp. report, focused on Service Level Agreement (SLA) issues, found dissatisfaction among 59% of the IT professionals who responded.

The report — “Service Level Agreement Use Trends Among Global 200 Companies” — pointed to the need for end-user based application monitoring systems for mission critical legacy, e-commerce and Internet applications.

Issues cited in the IDC survey include degraded applications service, which is measured in non-productive time per end-user, and “lost business and tarnished reputation,” the fruit of Internet-centric business serving up poor application performance and subsequent customer frustration.

A majority of the respondents have implemented SLAs, and areas of coverage include applications, desktop environments, networks, projects, servers and telecom systems.

EnView

“It is disconcerting that a large percentage of global organizations are dissatisfied with existing service level management programs,” commented Linda Wink, general manager and vice president for Amdahl’s Software Group. Amdahl and its EnView Global Solutions product, according to the IDC, is an apt answer for IT professionals looking to efficiently monitor end-to-end response.

“We are very pleased with EnView’s validation as a reliable solution for the dissatisfied end-users whose concerns about current Service Level Agreements were identified in the IDC report,” continued Wink.

EnView offers continuous measurement of end-user response times, and a proactive approach to service level and availability management through reporting with real-time visual displays, audible alarms and historical and trend reporting.

Millennium Servers

Amdahl this week also announced the availability of its Millennium 2000 Family of System/390 CMOS processors. Offering its Multiple Server Feature (MSF) as a strong point, the “family” of “future-ready” products claims to be designed for “today’s volatile business climate of rapid-fire acquisitions, explosive growth in e-business, and competition from unexpected quarters.”

“Designed into the servers are features that can support the transformation that is occurring today in business because of the Internet,” stated Dr. Gene Amdahl, founder of Amdahl Corp. The Millennium 2000 series — 2000A, 2000C & 2000E — features capabilities for “rapid-response, non-disruptive upgrades.”

“Many Amdahl customers put high priority on granularity — that is, more models in smaller-capacity increments, with an extended upgrade path,” said David West, vice president of Systems Marketing for Amdahl. “They want to manage more precisely how they add capacity to their server complexes and more closely match server capacity to the requirements of business applications, being driven by the explosion in e-commerce.”