A framework for service quality assurance using event correlation techniques

Due to the increasing use of service level agreements for the provisioning of IT services, providers have to ensure that the guarantees for the quality of their offered services, expressed by quality of service parameters, are met. These guarantees are endangered by resource malfunctions in the provider´s infrastructure or quality degradations of services which are supplied by subproviders. To optimize the resolution of customer reports about service quality degradations affecting the quality guarantees we propose to apply event correlation techniques. In this paper we present a framework for this new kind of event correlation which is called service-oriented event correlation. The framework bridges the gap between the management of the infrastructure and the offer of services for the customers with respect to the service fault diagnosis. The application of event correlation approaches in the framework is examined in detail.