An SLA (Service Level Agreement) is a contractual commitment that defines the quality of service expected between a provider and its customer. It sets measurable targets — availability rate, response time, resolution time — backed by tracking metrics and, often, penalties in the event of non-compliance.
In IT support, the SLA is frequently expressed by priority level: a critical incident, for example, must be acknowledged within fifteen minutes and resolved within four hours, whereas a minor request is given a wider window. These thresholds make it possible to prioritize work and to objectively measure support performance.
The SLA is often accompanied by metrics such as MTTR (mean time to repair) or the commitment compliance rate. It differs from the OLA (an internal agreement between teams within the same organization) and from the underlying contract signed with a third-party supplier. When well defined, it aligns the expectations of both parties and prevents disputes.
In eyeot's IT service management, tickets can be linked to response-time and resolution-time targets, at the heart of an ITSM approach. See the IT Service module.