Lot of client organisations I speak to still see SLA Management as primarily an activity driven by Service Providers.  Let me be very very clear.  This may be the case – there are many reasons why it evolved that way – but there are more and more reasons why it needs to change.  As a client you need to own your SLA Management process.  You need to own to make sure that you dictate what is being measured, that you own the data on service performance and so you have a solution which can store all your SLAs in one place.

This is a topic which is close to my heart so I have written in more detail on it at Will multisourcing drive adoption of client side SLA and Performance Management tools?  do have a look :>)