Service Level Agreement

Definition: a Service Level Agreement is an agreement or addendum to a services contract between two (or more) parties that defines the type, value and conditions of services to be provided by a service provider to a customer.
An SLA is normally legally binding, but can also be informal (within an organization).
Typically, SLAs deal with the quality of service conditions, such as response time, availability, speed and billing, as well as multiple levels of the services, guarantees, warranties and penalties.
In businesses, SLAs are used frequently to define the actities and payment for Shared Services Centers, often in combination with outsourcing.

More on service level agreements. More on outsourcing: Business Outsourcing, Co-sourcing, Insourcing, Shared Services Center.