Enterprise Application Hosting

The Service Level Agreement (SLA) 
March 2008
Dear Michele,
march 2
Welcome to the third installment of CedarCrestone's Hosting eNewsletter intended to educate the PeopleSoft community on all the facets of Hosting your enterprise applications. This month's objective is to provide you with an introduction of the Service Level Agreement (or SLA) which supports CedarCrestone's Hosting operation.
 
If you need hosting RESULTS that are backed by an
SLA with real teeth,
 
...we should be talking.
 
In This Issue
Interview with Kevin Bryant, VP of Managed Services
First Hand Look at CedarCrestone's SLA
Client Testimonials
Upcoming Events
Interview with Kevin Bryant, VP of Managed Services
Kevin Bryant 
 
The CedarCrestone Channel recently interviewed Kevin Bryant, Vice President of CedarCrestone Managed Servies, to provide an in-depth look into CedarCrestone's SLA. He has spent the last twelve years developing and delivering ERP consulting and managed service solutions. The video begins with a description of Kevin's team and their different service offerings, followed by an in-depth look into CedarCrestone's SLA and ends with valuable advice for those who are researching the option to Host and who will be evaluating SLAs.
 
First Hand Look at CedarCrestone's SLA
A service level agreement (commonly known as a SLA) is a contract between an outsourcer and customer that specifies, in measurable terms, the services that will be furnished.
 
The SLA is especially important when it comes to CedarCrestone's hosting operation. With hosting there is a transfer of responsibility from a customer to CedarCrestone. In this case, the transfer is a data system which is home to extremely valuable information necessary for the continuity of the client's business. A transaction such as this is taken extremely seriously by CedarCrestone and it is of the utmost importance to detail the exact services a customer will receive and also any consequences that will be made if those are not met. That is where the SLA comes into play, while most SLAs are similar in the types of services being defined, CedarCrestone's differs from the rest because it is centered around delivering enterprise class results.
 
On the same level an SLA is a necessity for those customers who choose to engage in a hosting contract. It is the chance for them to evaluate and negotiate the terms and level of service they require.
 
The same SLA is offered to all appropriate clients regardless of their size and complexity.  It is with confidence that CedarCrestone can say that their SLA is best in the marketplace. You may be asking yourself exactly what could be expected if a decision is made to utilize CedarCrestone's seasoned experts to host your PeopleSoft applications? The SLA guarantees:
  • Port-Back Guarantee: If CedarCrestone fails to perform to terms of your contract, we will port back your systems to the location of your choosing, costs are paid by CedarCrestone
  • System Availability: Availability will be at 99.8% or higher; if lower than 99.5%, then your next month's hosting fee is free
  • Security: If a security breach occurs due to CedarCrestone failure to follow published procedures and best practices, then your next month's hosting fee is free
  • Disaster Recovery: If Production operations are not recovered and restored within 2 hours, then your next month's hosting fee is free
  • Performance: CedarCrestone will commit to a 10% improvement over your current performance levels
  • Issue Response Time: Any issue or trouble ticket will be responded to within 15 minutes or less; if not, then you receive increasing percentage credits
  • Issue Resolution Time: Tickets and issues will be resolved within 4 hours for high priority Production issues; if not, then you receive increasing percentage credits
Gartner Speaks on SLAs
"Enterprises continually see the value of offloading the hosting and management of the application infrastructure to a provider that has both scale and scope of managed and value-added services. Service-level agreements, disaster recovery capability and back-end integration continue to be the key attributes of application-hosting services."
 
Gartner Inc., "The Gartner Enterprise Application Service Provider Guide" by Twiggy Lo, Michael von Uechtritz, Yuko Adachi, Matthew Goldman, Ted Chamberlin, March 20, 2008
Client Testimonials 
"Hosting of our PeopleSoft applications by CedarCrestone has delivered as promised to reduce our cost of ownership, provide a high degree of availability with strong performance metrics, and free up resources for other value-added opportunities.  We value the relationship very highly and have not been disappointed."

 

Randy Gschwind

Chief Information Officer

City of Milwaukee

 
"William's Lea has been very happy with CedarCrestone's Hosting capabilities. It is reassuring to know that our applications are being hosted by a dependable company like CedarCrestone. The end result of our partnership is increased profitability and efficiency in our business processes."
 
Lance Caranante
Sr. Director of Financial Systems
Williams Lea
 

"Out-hosting provides three key benefits to Northeastern. First, out-hosting gives us a less complex technical infrastructure and allows our PeopleSoft team to focus on service delivery and improvement. Second, the service levels offered by CMSC cannot be duplicated in house. And third, clearly, we cannot provide disaster recovery capabilities like CMSC."

 

Robert P. "Bob" Weir

Vice President of Information Services

Northeastern University
Upcoming Events
 
April 2008
13-17 Quest Collaborate '08 Come see CedarCrestone at Booth #817 in Denver Colorado at the 2008 Quest Collaborate Conference!  For more information on CedarCrestone's participation in Collaborate '08, click HERE.
20-22 CSU FOA Annual Conference (California State University Financial Officer's Association) San Diego, CA  This year's conference, themed "All Hand On Deck" is being held at the Sheraton San Diego Hotel and Marina.  For more information about this conference, you can read the conference announcement HERE.
24 CedarCrestone "Tour de HCM - Team Talent Management" Webinar Series Stage 8 Join Oracle's Deb Garcia and Joel Gremillion (both on Oracle's BI team) and CedarCrestone's Director of Strategy & Analytics, Lexy Martin as they present "Analyze:  Business Intelligence Solutions using PeopleSoft's Workforce Scorecard and HRMS Warehouse"  For more information and to register for this informative webinar at 1PM Eastern, click HERE.
27 20th Annual PRISM Conference - Public Retirement Information Systems Management Miami, FL - Join CedarCrestone and Oracle as we sponsor the 20th Annual PRISM Conference in Miami, Florida.  For more information on this conference, click HERE.
May 2008
16 Southern New England PeopleSoft User Group Meeting Framingham, CT  CedarCrestone is proud to be a Gold Sponsor of the Annual Spring meeting of the Southern New England PeopleSoft User Group!  Be sure to stop by the CedarCrestone table in the vendor fair to speak with a CedarCrestone representative!
28 Northwest Regional PeopleSoft User Group Meeting Portland, OR  CedarCrestone is proud to sponsor the May meeting of the Northwest Regional PeopleSoft User Group.  Please stop by the vendor fair to speak with a CedarCrestone representative!
June 2008
1-4 HIUG (Healthcare Industry User Group) Annual Conference Orlando, FL  Come visit CedarCrestone at Booth #118 in the vendor hall!  For more information about this conference, click HERE.
9-12 Oracle's North American Sales Kickoff Meeting Las Vegas, NV - Mandalay Bay Hotel and Casino
23-25 OHUG (Oracle HCM User Group) Annual Conference CedarCrestone is a proud sponsor and vendor at the Annual OHUG Conference in Las Vegas, Nevada.  The Oracle HCM Users Group holds an annual conference to provide a venue for Oracle E-Business Suite and Enterprise clients to interact with other clients, vendors, and Oracle thought leaders.  For more information on this conference, click HERE.
Next month we will be discussing how Hosting can help you realign your valuable internal resources towards the core initiatives for your business and mission.