MTBF (mean time between faults) and MTTR (mean time to recovery) are important measurements that usually factor into the creation of SLAs (service level agreements). Another important measurement within IT groups when it comes to their management tools should be MTTI, or the mean time to innocence. When there is a problem, this is the idea that it’s important to know if the problem is your fault, or lies elsewhere. It’s easier to enforce SLAs when you can cut through finger pointing early in the event.
Wikipedia tells us that Mean time between failures (MTBF) is the predicted (average) time between failures of a system during operation. Mean time to repair (MTTR) represents the average time required to repair a failed component. A tool like Local Management from Uplogix can lower MTBF by automating routine network management tasks, which removes opportunities for human error. Detailed monitoring combined with rules and alerts can notify administrators of a potential problem, letting them intervene and potentially avoid a failure.
If the carrier violates the terms of the SLA, its biggest penalty is that it will owe you a portion of your monthly bill back. The more “generous” SLAs will say that if the outage lasts for too long a period of time, they’ll refund your entire month’s bill. The problem, of course, is that you don’t want a free month’s service – you want to avoid the very high cost of downtime to your enterprise. But no carrier will give you an SLA where they commit to compensate you for what that lost connectivity time is worth to you and your firm.
