This Service Level Agreement (“SLA”) forms part of the Software as a Service agreement between Customer and Advantage CSP (“Agreement”). In the event this document is translated into any other languages, the English version shall be authoritative. Advantage CSP encourages Customer to review the online SLA periodically.
Introduction
This SLA describes the levels of Product availability and support that Customer can expect to receive from Advantage CSP for the duration of the Agreement.
Definitions
As used in this SLA, the following terms shall have the meanings specified below. Any capitalized terms not defined herein shall have the meaning attributed to them in the Agreement. In this SLA the singular includes the plural and vice versa; the words "month", "year", and "quarter" mean calendar month, calendar year, and calendar quarter, unless otherwise stated; and the word "including" (or any analogous word or phrase) means “including without limitation”.
Business Day
- 09:00 to 18:00, local time for the contracting Advantage CSP entity, not including Saturday, Sunday or public holidays.
Degraded Performance
- a lower quality of service as described in this SLA (e.g. temporarily broken or temporarily unavailable core CSP functionality).
Downtime
- he period of time during which the Product is wholly unavailable to Customer, including maintenance occurring outside of Maintenance Hours for which less than 24 hours’ notice was provided to affected Customers. However, downtime shall not include:
1. Scheduled Maintenance;
2. Degraded Performance;
3. Factors outside of Advantage CSP’s control, including any Force Majeure Events;
4. Failures, acts or omissions of Advantage CSP’s upstream providers;
5. Failures of the internet;
6. Acts or omissions of Customer and its Users; and
7. Enforcement of Regulations.
8. Custom or clients side code
Knowledge Base
- Advantage CSP help portal located on the Advantage CSP website (Advantage CSP Support Portal) that publishes information on how to perform tasks in the Product and responds to frequently asked questions.
Maintenance Hours
- Monday to Friday from 00:00 – 04:00 EST, all day Saturday, and Sunday from 13:00 – 04:00 EST.
Resolution Time
- the time that elapses from the Response Time until the alert is resolved.
Response Time
- measures the time that elapses between the receiving of an alert and the time of responding to an issue.
Scheduled Maintenance
- planned outages, either suspending service in full or in part, which Advantage CSP will endeavor to announce at least 5 days in advance, and in any case will announce no later than 24 hours in advance, which will not exceed a reasonable period of time for the maintenance required and which, where possible, shall take place during Maintenance Hours.
SLA Effective Date
- the Subscription Start Date stated in the Agreement or applicable Statement of Work and the date this SLA enters into force.
Ticket
- an electronic request sent to Advantage CSP by Customer (e.g. requesting a solution to an incident).
Uptime
- as calculated in accordance with this SLA.
Scope of the Service Level Agreement
This SLA applies only to the Product and Professional Services described in the Agreement or applicable Statement of Work. This SLA does not apply to any software, equipment, services, or other parts of an information technology system that are not purchased from or managed by Advantage CSP.
Advantage CSP will rectify material issues with the Product, except where:
1. The issue has been caused by Customer’s use of the Product in a manner that is contrary to Advantage CSP Training, Knowledge Base, or any other instruction issued by Advantage CSP;
2. Customer has made unauthorized changes to the configuration or set-up of the affected Product;
3. Customer has prevented Advantage CSP from performing maintenance on the Product;
4. The issue has been caused by Third Party Products; or
5. The issue has been caused by User(s), including by modifying part of the software or by adding, deleting, or assigning improper rights to Users.
SLA Effective Date and Term
This SLA will be effective from the Subscription Start Date and will terminate without further notice and without right to compensation or restitution upon the expiry or termination of the Agreement or applicable Statement of Work.
Responsibilities
Advantage CSP responsibilities:
1. ensure the relevant Product and Professional Services are available to Customer in accordance with the Uptime guarantee;
2. respond to support requests within the timescales listed below;
3. take steps to escalate, diagnose, and resolve issues in an appropriate and timely manner, including the allocation of a sufficient number of skilled staff and the collection of necessary information; and
4. maintain clear and timely communication with Customer at all times.
Customer responsibilities:
1. use the Product as intended under the Agreement;
2. notify Advantage CSP of issues or problems in a timely manner and as thoroughly as is possible;
3. cooperate with Advantage CSP in its efforts to escalate, diagnose, and resolve issues by providing timely and accurate responses to requests for information;
4. in case of an A-Priority Alert, ensure the availability of a sufficient number of skilled Customer employees to cooperate with Advantage CSP;
5. provide Advantage CSP with access to equipment, software, and services for the purposes of maintenance, updates, and fault prevention; and
6. maintain staff with adequate information technology knowledge to fulfil these responsibilities.
Availability
Advantage CSP guarantees 99.9% Uptime each month, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week (“Agreed Hours of Service”). Uptime is measured over the Agreed Hours of Service, rounded down to the nearest minute, and calculated as follows:
Step 1 — establish the Agreed Hours of Service
Agreed Hours of Service = (24 × days in the calendar month) − Maintenance
Up to two (2) hours of Scheduled Maintenance per calendar month is removed from the Agreed Hours of Service. This allowance may be used for infrastructure updates, security patches, platform maintenance and other preventative maintenance, and does not carry forward to a later month. Advantage CSP will provide reasonable advance notice where Scheduled Maintenance is expected to affect availability.
Maintenance required to address a critical security, infrastructure or service stability issue is likewise removed from the Agreed Hours of Service. Advantage CSP will make commercially reasonable efforts to minimize any resulting disruption.
As set out in the Definitions above, maintenance is not Downtime. It is removed from the measured period before Uptime is calculated, and is never counted against the Uptime guarantee.
Step 2 — calculate Uptime
Uptime is measured over the whole calendar month, with maintenance counted against it. Our 99.9% commitment allows for up to 120 minutes (2 hours) of Scheduled Maintenance a month, so the target starts at 99.9% of the month's minutes and then deducts the maintenance:
Effective Uptime Target % = ((Total Minutes × 99.9%) − Maintenance) / Total Minutes × 100%
Uptime % = (Total Minutes − Maintenance − Downtime) / Total Minutes × 100%
Maintenance is Scheduled Maintenance (up to 120 minutes a month) plus any emergency maintenance. Both figures are rounded to one decimal place for the purpose of determining the applicable Service Credit.
Worked example — a 30-day month
| Total minutes in the month (30 × 1,440) |
43,200.0 min |
| At the 99.9% commitment (43,200 × 99.9%) |
43,156.8 min |
| Less Scheduled Maintenance |
− 120.0 min |
| Minimum minutes available |
43,036.8 min |
| Effective Uptime Target (43,036.8 ÷ 43,200) |
99.6% |
In that same month, 120 minutes of Scheduled Maintenance plus 30 minutes of Downtime leaves 43,050 of 43,200 minutes available, an Uptime of 99.7%. That is above the 99.6% target, so no Service Credit is payable.
Effective Uptime Target by month length
| Calendar month |
Total minutes |
At 99.9% |
Less maintenance |
Effective Uptime Target |
| 28 days |
40,320.0 |
40,279.7 |
− 120.0 |
99.6% |
| 29 days |
41,760.0 |
41,718.2 |
− 120.0 |
99.6% |
| 30 days |
43,200.0 |
43,156.8 |
− 120.0 |
99.6% |
| 31 days |
44,640.0 |
44,595.4 |
− 120.0 |
99.6% |
Figures assume the full two-hour allowance is taken and no emergency maintenance occurred.
Service Credits
Should Uptime fall below the Effective Uptime Target in any calendar month, Advantage CSP will pay liquidated damages in the form of Service Credits as follows. Each tier is calculated in the same way as the target: the commitment level applied to the month's total minutes, less maintenance.
| Commitment level |
Uptime, 30-day month |
Service Credit |
| 99.9% met |
99.6% or greater |
0% |
| Below 99.9%, at or above 99.0% |
98.7% to less than 99.6% |
10% |
| Below 99.0%, at or above 95.0% |
94.7% to less than 98.7% |
25% |
| Below 95.0% |
less than 94.7% |
50% |
Service Credits are calculated against the monthly Subscription Fee for the affected Product, to a maximum of 50% of that month’s Subscription Fee. Only one credit tier applies in any calendar month; the applicable tier is determined by the month’s total Downtime, and credits do not stack across separate incidents.
To apply for a Service Credit under this SLA, Customer must submit a request to https://support.buildwithadvantage.net within 30 days of the end of the applicable month with the subject line “SLA Service Credit”. The request must include the dates and times of the Downtime for which the Service Credit is being requested, and any additional documentation that demonstrates the claimed Downtime.
Service Credits are the exclusive remedy for Advantage CSP’s failure to meet its Uptime guarantee, and no other or additional types of damages can be claimed, including breach of warranty.
Check a month
The calculator below applies the calculation above to any month. It is provided for illustration only and does not form part of this SLA; in the event of any discrepancy, the calculation set out in this SLA governs.
The matching tier is highlighted in the Service Credits table above as you change the figures.