ABSTRACT
This chapter describes how data center managers must focus on maintaining a high level of integrity between the end user and the computer operations department. The data center’s ability to monitor and gauge its performance against customer expectations is a critical part of ensuring customer satisfaction. Data centers should establish what is generally referred to as service-level agreements. The data center manager can best determine user requirements by analyzing and understanding the user’s obligation to the organization. Regardless of the customer’s organizational structure, information processing is vital to the continued operations of the following functional areas: finance, manufacturing, marketing, materials, and human resources. To ensure that the data center is successfully meeting the information processing requirements of the customer, the data center must establish operational performance objectives, as well as a method or process by which these operational performance objectives can be measured and reported.
