A discussion during the meeting today surrounded a third party maintenance organization, "the SLA vendor," that would accept payment from "Behemoth, Inc." to fulfill Behemoth's SLA (24x7 support, MTTR, etc...).
It is established, and I agree that the SLA relationship occurs exclusively between Behemoth and the SLA vendor, and that Behemoth has no higher precedence on the exchange than anyone else. Behemoth is just another port on the switch.
However, the SLA vendor would require management access to the IXP equipment to support its SLA, and that is where my concern is. If the SLA vendor is under contract to make Behemoth happy, they may choose to make configuration changes that prioritize their SLA agreement without consideration for the other members in the exchange.
e.g., "What if I shut these other ports down to see if it fixes Behemoth's problem?" or, "We just brought on a new MICE member today. Maybe they screwed something up. I'll shut their session down just to see if it affected Behemoth..."
We need to thoroughly trust the SLA vendor. What about rights and responsibilities? What penalties will the SLA vendor face if they mangle something for the sake of their contract with Behemoth, Inc., regardless if it nefarious or not?
The meeting moved on to change management, an appropriate segue.
Jamison Masters
Partner / CIO
VERUS Corporation
763-354-2204
jamison(a)veruscorp.com
