IT enabled investments and third part service levels are running into billions of dollars – In today’s corporate world. Where Enterprises have put appropriate IT governance frameworks in place – The billions in dollars have been used for sustainable competitive advantages. Where they… have been poorly managed they have become heavy CAPEX or OPEX leading to loses and in some cases winding up of businesses.

More and more organizations have outsourced their critical services, to leverage on external expertise and concentrate on their core businesses. A number of organizations are using IT enabled investments to achieve their organizational strategies and objectives. Despite all these developments a few organizations have put up governance frameworks – structures, policies, processes and procedures to govern their IT investments and services levels.

Often there are no IT service level agreements between the business departments and IT – Operating Level Agreements (OLAs). The drafting of the service level agreements (SLAs) – agreements between IT and third parties is relegated to the Head of IT or the IT Manager (Applications, Infrastructure or Security). Business, legal and other critical enterprise stakeholders are not involved in the drafting of the SLAs. This is despite the impact these service have on business critical objectives such service availability, image of the enterprise, the bottom line and other sustainable competitive advantages.