The data center should deliver services to the customer with a defined and acceptable level of quality. In the definition of this standard, a customer is anybody using the service of the data center, whether internal, such as bespoke or enterprise data centers, or external customers, such as those using cloud services or colocation sites.
Data centers may have many customers; each with their own services requirements and service levels. The expectations of these customers should be defined and managed appropriately through well-defined Service Level Agreements (SLAs) and be governed by the Service Level Management processes.
The illustration below provides a high-level representation of the steps involved of the service management process.
