MCI Steps Up SLAs Worldwide

r

MCI Steps Up SLAs Worldwide
r

r

r

Rawlson O’Neil King, theWHIR.com
r

r

r

July 27, 2004 — (WEB HOST INDUSTRY REVIEW) — MCI (mci.com)
r

announced on Tuesday that it would raise the bar on its network
r

performance by enhancing its service level agreements around the world.
r

r

Effective immediately, for all new and
r

existing customers, MCI will up its current threshold for performance
r

and introduce new guarantees for traffic traveling between key global
r

business centers.
r

r

“If you were trying to build out a global
r

network but were hesitant to deploy in an international location in the
r

past because there were no guarantees, the new SLAs should address your
r

concerns,” states Ralph Montfort, MCI’s director of Internet access
r

services. “With our guarantees you can install a mission-critical
r

application on an international IP link with piece of mind.”
r

r

The new SLAs enforce more stringent
r

latency measurements for Internet connections in Latin America, Europe
r

and the Asia-Pacific region. Latency, the amount of time it takes for a
r

data packet to move across a network connection, drops substantially
r

under the new agreements.
r

r

Data packet round-trips between Europe
r

and North America drop from 95 milliseconds from 90. Round-trips within
r

Japan drop from 35 milliseconds to 30. Between Hong Kong and the US,
r

data is guaranteed to move at 230 milliseconds instead of 280
r

milliseconds.
r

r

The new slate of SLAs also introduces
r

guarantees for new geographical locations and data routes. MCI now
r

promises 99 percent availability for packet delivery between North
r

America and Brazil, Venezuela, South Africa, India, intra-Europe, Korea
r

and Taiwan.
r

r

The company also pledges 99 percent
r

availability between Hong Kong and Sydney as well as Singapore and
r

Tokyo. Korea will also have enhanced access to Hong Kong, Sydney,
r

Singapore and Tokyo, in addition to India. Taiwan and India will also
r

have guaranteed data delivery to most of the major cities within the
r

Pacific Rim.
r

r

Under the terms of the new SLAs, 100
r

percent availability is guaranteed to network services if the
r

connection is ordered and provisioned by MCI, right down to the local
r

loop. A one-day unconditional service credit is offered to customers
r

for every hour of outage. If latency or packet delivery guarantees are
r

violated, then a one-day service credit is also awarded.
r

r

MCI says the new SLAs provide for
r

proactive notification of any service interruption or service-level
r

guarantee deviation, within 15 minutes of detection. MCI Internet
r

customers can also monitor the performance of their connections
r

themselves through an online customer service portal.
r

r

“Our goal is to enhance our metrics,
r

offering new guarantees on latency and data delivery, while trying to
r

measure places that truly represent our customers’ traffic,” states
r

Montfort. “We understand that IT personnel require metrics on service
r

so that they can demonstrate to management that they will obtain a
r

guarantee for services rendered.”
r

r

To enhance the corporate end-user
r

experience, MCI will also be introducing an SLA for its global dial-up
r

Internet network in the fall. Using MCI’s dial analysis platform,
r

enterprise customers will be able to measure end-user performance
r

against new end-to-end SLAs.
r

r

Corporate users will now be guaranteed no
r

busy signals or unanswered calls, a call success rate equal to or
r

greater than 90 percent and an average initial connect speed equal to
r

or greater than 40 KBPS.
r

r

“With the dial-up SLA, you can guarantee
r

to senior executives who travel extensively that MCI is a tier-one
r

remote access provider whose service is available whenever they require
r

it,” says Montfort.
r

r

The new SLAs are part of MCI’s new
r

strategy. The firm, which recently emerged from a near-fatal bout of
r

bankruptcy, also plans to introduce a host of next-generation Ethernet
r

capabilities that extend corporate local area networks into IP-ready
r

wide area networks.
r

r

The new strategy comes as MCI recently
r

resumed trading on the Nasdaq and as telecommunication analysts
r

speculate on whether the firm will be subject to a takeover bid by
r

Sprint (sprint.com) or a Baby Bell.
r

r

r

r

r

r

No related posts.