Business Oriented Service Level Management (BOSELM): Perspectives on business-IT linkage, technology and organization issues

With the growing pervasiveness of information technology (IT), the quality of the information services is crucial for companies. The effectiveness of the IT department is in fact a function of the "quality of service" (QoS), expressed as availability, response time, and similar variables. The ultimate quality of service, that is in fact the business operations result (business outcome) perceived by the business user, is linked to IT QoS by a cause-effect chain. Our research proposes a comprehensive methodology for the Service Level Management (SLM), which includes an architectural model of and the steps necessary to implement it within enterprises. The main purpose is to provide a method for managing the relationship between business-IT performances, by considering: (a) business-IT linkage model, (b) technology architecture, (c) organization.