Service-level management is the monitoring and management of the (QoS) quality of service of an entity's (KPIs) key performance indicators. The key performance indicators range from coarse-grained availability and usage statistics to fine-grained entity-contained per-interaction indicators. Service level management involves comparing actual performance with pre-defined expectations, determining appropriate actions, and producing meaningful reports.
A service-level agreement enables an organization to be assured of a defined amount of stability, reliability, and performance for the provided IT infrastructure. A service-level agreement may complement or be part of policy-based service-level management. Service-level management means that potential problems can be identified (such as gradual performance degradation) and alerts can be created, thereby minimizing the risk of downtime.
Network Management enables the configuration and tuning of networks; ensures that systems are operating at their optimal level, and allows for both analysis at the time of failure and network security. Systems Management enables hardware, OS and storage configuration; addresses tuning and error-detection; and some also provide for system security. Applications management works with application servers to provide insight about performance, deployment, and security.
Service-level management allows buyers of hosted solutions or internal IT buyers to monitor networks, systems, and applications performance.