Patent ID: 7555408

Claim:
A method for managing at least one service level of a service provided by a service provider to a customer of the service provider under a service level agreement, said service level agreement being a contract between the service provider and the customer, said method comprising: adjudicating measurement data to correct the measurement data in accordance with at least one adjudication element that provides information relating to how to correct the measurement data, said information in each adjudication element identifying which data of the measurement data is to be changed by said each adjudication element; transforming the adjudicated measurement data into operational data by reorganizing the adjudicated measurement data into one or more groups of data; evaluating the operational data by applying a formula to the operational data, said evaluating resulting in the operational data being configured for being subsequently qualified, said formula being expressed as a tree comprising nodes, said evaluating comprising traversing the tree from leaf nodes of the tree to a root node of the tree, said evaluating comprising populating the nodes of the tree with the evaluated operational data as the tree is traversed from the leaf nodes to the root node, said evaluated operational data at the root node denoted as a top result, said evaluated operational data at the nodes other than the root node denoted as intermediate results; and qualifying the top result and the intermediate results after said evaluating, said qualifying the top result comparing the evaluated operational data at the root node of the tree with specified service level targets for at least one service level period during which the service has been performed, said qualifying the intermediate results comprising comparing the intermediate results with generated new service level targets, wherein said adjudicating, transforming, evaluating, and qualifying are performed by software modules of an execution engine.