The concept of the Service Level Agreement (SLA) originated in the IT industry. In the 1980s, when IT began playing an increasingly dominant role at companies, the need arose to professionalize internal IT management. The SLA was developed to identify user requirements in respect of the availability and reliability of IT systems and to manage them accordingly. The success of SLA's in the IT sector made other industries curious. Today, the SLA is a frequently used instrument in various service related industries, like the public sector, the energy industry and the telecommunications industry. The maintenance market has now also discovered the strength of the SLA. For maintenance, the strength of an SLA stems from three factors:

• clarity of mutual obligations;
• supported objectives;
• embedding of maintenance program and budget.

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Tip provided by Remco Jonker, Partner, Mainnovation