A service-level agreement, or SLA, is a contract between a service provider and a customer that specifies, in measurable terms, what services the service provider will furnish and to what performance expectations. In many cases an SLA is determined by a combination of business needs, budget and the capability of the underlying technologies. End-customers want their infrastructure to work as expected without failures. However, one commonality in the video surveillance world is the difficulty in providing meaningful SLAs when it comes to defining and negotiating services. Where we’ve seen this particularly impacting business is in retail. Not only is security video used for safety and security reasons, the security video network is an active element in operational workflows such as analytics for traffic analysis, SOA deployments for loss prevention, and defining staffing requirements and schedules.
