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 based on the monthly average of availability, rounded down to the nearest minute, and calculated as follows:
Uptime % = ((Agreed Hours of Service - Hours of Downtime) / Agreed Hours of Service )) x 100%
Service Credits
Should uptime fall below 99.9% in any calendar month, Advantage CSP will pay liquidated damages in the form of Service Credits, which are calculated as follows:
Uptime < 99.0%
- 100% of monthly Subscription Fee
Uptime ≥ 99.0% and less than 99.9%
- ((99.9% - Uptime %) / 0.9%) x monthly Subscription Fee x 75%
Uptime ≥ 99.0%
- 0% of monthly Subscription Fee
To apply for a Service Credit under this SLA, Customer must submit a request to https://support.advantagecsp.com, 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 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. In the event there are no new invoices to be issued, Advantage CSP will pay out the Service Credit to Customer directly.
Response Time and Resolution Time
In the event of an alert, Advantage CSP is deemed to have responded when it has replied to Customer’s initial request. This may be in the form of an email or telephone call, to acknowledge receipt of Customer’s request, provide a solution, or request further information.
The Response Time and Resolution Time will depend on the priority of the item(s) affected and the severity of the alert, as set out in the following schedule:
Advantage CSP’s Storage & Infrastructure
Advantage CSP uses Microsoft Cloud Services (Azure) to provide its Product. For Advantage CSP offers Enterprise Premium Hosting Customer the option to host Customer Data globally. Customer will be required to select its data hosting location in the applicable Statement of Work.
Problem Management
Advantage CSP Support regularly analyses all Customer Tickets in order to identify trends and bottle necks. Based on these findings, Support updates the Knowledge Base with information explaining the solution to “known errors”.
In order to respond to FAQs and help Customers to resolve common problems without needing direct assistance from Support, Advantage CSP maintains the Knowledge Base on the Advantage CSP website (help.Advantage CSP.com). Advantage CSP Support has defined four general types of FAQs:
- Technical issues are related to a particular bug, security or backup failures, or any other type of non-functioning of the Product. Example: "The Site Manager is not loading”
- User questions arise from instances when the system fails to be self-explanatory. Advantage CSP works hard to prevent these questions and reduce them to an absolute minimum. Example: "How do I upload an image?"
- Requests are requests to change the Product, features or settings. Example: "Add a new client-side plugin"
- Content questions are related to the contents of Customer Data itself. Customer is the creator and controller of its Customer Data and is therefore tasked with providing User support for these questions. Example: "My site image is not loading within a banner area."
Help Desk
If your question is not resolved via the Knowledge Base, the Advantage CSP help desk can be contacted by email anytime via our Help Centre ticking system as well as support@advantagecsp.com, or by telephone during applicable office hours:
09:00 to 18:00 (Toronto local time): 1 844 901 8951
Security
Advantage CSP provides its Product and Professional Services in accordance with IEC/ISO 27001:2013 and has an Information Security Policy, which is available upon request.
Backups
The Advantage CSP team secures backups of all data and code in the following manner:
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Back Up Retention Policy is as follows:
- Daily for 15 days
- Weekly for 6 Weeks
- Monthly for 3 months
- Yearly for 1 year
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Backups of the file database (monthly, on separate Barracuda servers).
In the (unlikely) event of damage or outage at Advantage CSP’s Azure locations, Advantage CSP will restore Customer’s data from the most recent backup. This will be treated as an A-Priority Alert.
At Customer’s request, a backup or a part of a backup can be restored within 48 hours for a fee negotiated in the Agreement or charged on a time and material basis.
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Release Policy
Advantage CSP releases the Product via Continuous Integration and Continuous Delivery.
Urgent bug fixes that impact availability and critical features are applied immediately on production servers in accordance with the Resolution Time schedule.
Third party components in use by Advantage CSP (e.g. .NET, Windows, IIS etc.) are updated automatically every night (in the UTC time zone), whenever critical updates become available via the "unattended upgrades" mechanism provided by Microsoft
- Software Improvements
Advantage CSP will make available to Customer new versions, releases, and updates to the Product to solve defects and/or errors, keep the Product up-to-date with market developments, or otherwise improve (the operation or functionality of) the Product. These improvements may include bug fixes. Advantage CSP will only support the most recent full version of the Product within our Cloud infrastructure.
New versions, releases, or updates will contain at least the level of functionality as set out in this SLA and as contained in the version or release of the Product previously used by Customer, and will not otherwise negatively impact Customer’s use of the Product. Advantage CSP shall make reasonable efforts to ensure that when performing such actions, the impact on Customer and its User(s) is limited.
- Updates to the SLA
This SLA may be updated at Advantage CSP’s discretion, but only after providing thirty (30) days’ notice, after which it shall be effective (“SLA Effective Date”). Such notice will be sufficient if provided to a User designated as an administrator of Customer’s Product account either: (a) as a note on the screen presented immediately after completion of the log-in authentication credentials at the log in screen, or (b) by email with read receipt to the email address provided for the administrator(s) for Customer’s account. If Customer objects to any such changes, Customer's sole recourse shall be to terminate the Agreement. Continued use of the Product following the SLA Effective Date of any update shall indicate Customer's acknowledgement of such update and agreement to be bound by the updated SLA. When Advantage CSP changes this SLA, the "Updated" date below will be changed to reflect the publication date of the most recent version.
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This SLA was last updated on: 11 November 2020