Abstract
M.B.A.
Electronic Data Systems (EDS) Africa is part of EDS International, one
of the largest outsourcing companies in the world. EDS's clients expect
EDS to have the required knowledge and decision-making skills to
ensure that their Wide area NETWORK (WAN) redundancy is in line
with the business requirement. This is a careful balance between
spending money on redundancy compared with the cost of WAN
downtime to the business.
This implies that EDS's management must realise when the WAN
design is not optimal. A decision must then be made to change the
design to incorporate the correct redundancy.
EDS Africa incurs substantial costs related to services supplied by
Telkom (the only Telecommunication company allowed to rent WAN
data lines to customers in South Africa at this point in time. They are
owned by the government.). At present EDS is unable to measure
Telkom's up-times using proper historical data, and using applied
business statistics. (Tony Webster, 1998). Telkom does not provide
EDS with any service level guarantees.
When a company out-sources business to EDS, the two parties usually
sign a Service Level Agreement (SLA). This agreement will state the
network up-time and conditions of conducting business between the
two parties. EDS generally excludes Telkom problems from the SLA,
as they cannot be held responsible for problems that are outside of
their control...