Service Level Agreement
1. PURPOSE. To establish the level of cloud services to be provided by The Service Provider
to the Client Agreement. This Service Level Agreement (“SLA”) between “ABC Cloud, LLC”),
and the user IT Forensics, Inc.(“Customer”) of ABC Cloud’s services (“Services”) sets forth the
2. SCOPE. The type and scope of the services covered by this Service Level Agreement
(SLA) include:
• Areas to be serviced
• Summary of services
• Boundaries or exclusions
The service to be provided is the provision of Help Desk for the information technology
infrastructure of “The client”. The areas to be serviced are:
• The main facility, located in Seattle, Washington.
The timeframe will be from January 1, 2015, to December 31, 2018, unless otherwise extended
or terminated by agreement.
The complete description of all the services (currently in use or predicted) is listed in the
referenced document Complete Description of Targets.
Service will not include:
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3. DEFINITIONS, ACRONYMS and ABBREVIATIONS
This section provides the definitions of terms, acronyms, and abbreviations required to
understand and implement this agreement.
Term
Definition
Access
The process responsible for allowing users to make use of system, network or
Escalation
An activity that engages additional resources when needed to meet service level
targets.
Event Management
The process for managing events throughout their lifecycle.
Failure
Loss of ability to operate to specification or to deliver the required service.
The first level in the hierarchy of support groups involved in the resolution of
incidents.
Escalation
escalation.
A measure of the effect of an incident, problem or change on business operations
or processes.
An unplanned or unscheduled interruption to service or reduction in the quality of
service.
Incident
Management
The process responsible for managing the lifecycle of incidents.
Management
cloud services, data or other assets.
Services (“TOS”), Service Level Agreement, any other documents referenced
(collectively known as the “Agreement”).
Availability
Ability of the cloud service to perform its agreed function when required.
Data Retention
system daily and retain each such daily backup copy for fourteen (14) days. ABC
Cloud Services retains copies of log files for at least ninety (90) days.
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Incident Record
A record containing the details of an incident.
Mean Time
Between Service
The mean time from when a system or IT service fails, until it next fails.
Priority
A category used to identify the relative importance to the client of an incident,
problem or change.
Process
A structured set of activities designed to accomplish a specific objective.
Request Fulfillment
The process responsible for managing the lifecycle of all service requests.
Resolution
Action taken to repair the root cause of an incident or problem, or to implement a
workaround.
incident.
Role
A set of responsibilities, activities and authorities assigned to a person or team.
goal can be achieved.
ABC Cloud Services goal is to provide Service Availability twenty-four hours per
Service Availability
ABC Cloud Services shall use reasonable efforts to achieve the target Service
Availability Goal of 99.99% network uptime except during scheduled Service
Maintenance (“Service Commitment”). Notwithstanding the foregoing, Customer
recognizes that the Internet is comprised of an unknown number of autonomous
Major Incident
The highest category of impact for an incident, resulting in significant disruption
to the client’s business.
Between Failures
(MTBF)
agreed function without interruption.
proactively monitors network uptime and the results of these monitoring systems
shall provide the exclusive determination of cloud services uptime.
Service Hours
An agreed time period when a particular IT service should be available.
service level targets.
Requirement (SLR)
customer.
4. OVERVIEW. This subsection describes what the rest of the Agreement contains and
explains how the document is organized.
5. PARTICIPANTS. Document the key participants and their responsibilities in the process of
negotiating and managing this Service Level Agreement. These participants may include:
6. SIGNATORIES. Persons signing and approving this document and their position.
The following persons have negotiated this document and agree it will be used as the formal
Service Level Agreement (SLA) for the provision of the Service.
H. William Nelson
President, IT Forensics, Inc.
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7. CONTACTS. This Service Level Agreement (“SLA”) between ABC Cloud Services LLC
8. REMEDIES. This SLA defines the terms of Customer’s responsibility with respect to the
Services that ABC Cloud Services provides and Customer’s remedies in the event that ABC
Cloud Services fails to meet these Service Commitments. This SLA and the SLA Credits set
forth herein represent ABC Cloud Services sole obligation and Customer’s sole remedy for
failure to meet such Service Commitments. This SLA does not apply to the availability of Third
Party Services which are subject to the Third Party Services Agreements. The SLA is binding
only on the Customer and ABC Cloud Services and does apply to any Third Parties, including
Customer end users.
rvice MaintoursHour
Monday to Friday
8pm to 5am (Prevailing Pacific Time)
Sunday
12pm to 12 am (Prevailing Pacific Time)
9. DISCLAIMER OF ACTIONS CAUSED BY THIRD PARTIES. ABC Cloud Services does
not and cannot control the flow of data to or from ABC Cloud Services network and other
internet locations. Such flows depend to a large measure on the performance of internet services
provided or controlled by third parties. Actions or inactions of third parties may impair or disrupt
10. LIMITATIONS. ABC Cloud Services cannot assume responsibility and shall not be liable
for any impacts on service availability due to (i) any requests for non-standard environment or
11. FINANCIAL PENALTIES FOR SLA VIOLATIONS. In the event that ABC Cloud Services
fails to meet the guarantee stated above (excluding Service Availability during the windows described
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All SLA claims should be communicated via the ABC Cloud Services Dashboard or email to
customer support within seven (7) days of the incident. The notice must include all relevant
Total cumulative SLA Credits during any given month shall not exceed the Customer monthly
fee for those Services affected.
12. CLOUD SUPPORT POLICY. Primary incident-reporting is done via our
Customer Ticketing System. Through this system you have access to all tickets on your account,
both open and completed, both current information and historical. We prioritize tickets by
severity, so for example issues where a site is completely unavailable will be processed before
tickets where a site is slow, and those before general questions about our service or general
advice covering the software offered inside ABC Cloud Services. Shown below is a guide to the
ABC Cloud Services Severity Levels:
Severity
Levels
Explanation
Ticket Response Goals
Level 1 –
Emergency
Production Cloud is down,
business operations severely
impacted with no workaround; or a
security issue.
Within 30 minutes during our Business Hours,
and except as otherwise provided herein, we
guarantee response within 8 business
hours. *These guidelines specify the time to
begin investigation of a problem not the length
of time within which a problem will be
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Severity
Levels
Explanation
Ticket Response Goals
Medium
Production or Development Cloud
guarantee response within 8 business hours.
13. SUPPORT TEAM STRUCTURE-GOALS. Internally, our support team consists utilizes
Tiers, in which some groups respond more swiftly and handle more common questions and
problems, and other groups handle issues which more complex or less common and generally take
more time or effort or expertise to solve. We also have a Developer Operations group which have
daily responsibilities outside of support, but are available to assist in especially difficult cases or
14. SERVICES OBJECTIVES.
Service Hours
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Service must be available from 6:30 AM to 11:00 PM, Monday through Friday, except when the
Customer facilities are closed due to holidays, administrative closings, or inclement weather. A
Service Availability
For the provision of the Service covered by this Service Level Agreement, availability is
determined by the percent of the time components of the Service are available to users.
“The Service Provider” will seek 100 % availability during working hours for all the interfaces
combined (telephone, e-mail or Web) to report or request, that means client will always have at
least one mean available to report and Incident or request a service at working times. Availability
of each interface alone is provided below:
Interface
Availability
Hours to Measure
Telephone
99 %
During Work Hours
Service Reliability
As part of the quality of service, “The Service Provider” has designed the service to be resilient;
enhancing in that way reliability.
The commitments in this SLA are as follows:
Scheduled Processing
All Incidents will be managed according the Incident Management Process that was designed
along with the design of the Service itself. For details like workflows, roles and responsibilities,
work products, escalation and control procedures.
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All the service requests made by users will be managed according the Request Fulfillment
Management Process that was designed along with the design of the Service itself. For details
like workflows, roles and responsibilities, work products, escalation and control procedures.
The first-line support is the entry point defined for both process. Users can request service or
report an Incident by using one of the following:
Exceptional Processing
Special procedures are defined in the design of processes to address special circumstances like:
• Major Incidents.
• Change of Urgency.
Service Performance
The target resolution time for each Incident or Service Request depends on its Priority. The
agreed targets are as follows:
Priority
Description
Target Resolution Time
1
Critical
2 hours
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5
Planning-Scheduled
Planned-Scheduled
Priority is determined by the Urgency and Impact of the Incident or Service Request:
Impact
High
Medium
Low
High
1
2
3
Capacity
To address the work at all times, the personnel for delivering the service is organized into 2 (two)
shifts:
• Shift 1: from 6:00 a.m. to 3:00 p.m.
Service Objectives Ratings
These are special types of SLAM (Service Level Agreement Monitoring) charts. Two days
before each Service Level Review, the Service Level Analyst will distribute the charts with the
source reports to all the participants.
Percent of Incidents and service requests meeting target (P).
Target Breached
P ≤ 95%
Target Threatened
95% > P > 97%
Urgency
Medium
2
3
4
Low
3
4
5
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When the Rating is “Target breached”, a penalty may be applied upon “The Service Provider”,
unless demonstrated fault lies on the side of “The Client”. The penalty can also be waived if both
parties reach an agreement to do so. If applied, Penalty will be:
P$ = V$ x (95% – P); where
15. MEASUREMENT DETAILS. Event management will provide the environment for all
the measurement and reporting required for monitoring the components, the processes and the
service itself. The primary source for monitoring the targets in this SLA is the information
Measurement Reporting
Reports will show collected measurements relevant to the targets defined in this Service Level
Agreement. They are of three types:
• Operational reports: to help the outgoing monitoring of Service against the targets.
Additional Considerations
The parties agree to try resolving their differences internally in good faith. In case a difference
persists, they will submit their complaints to the arbitrator. The decision of the arbitrator will be
considered final and must be accepted by both parties.
16. DATA PROTECTION. To further data protection, customer data is stored on at least two
17. SOFTWARE. ABC Cloud Services, LLC will provide you with access to certain software
products as part of the Cloud Services. ABC Cloud Services, LLC MAKE NO
REPRESENTATIONS OR WARRANTY REGARDING ANY SOFTWARE PRODUCT OR
RELATED SUPPORT SERVICES THAT ARE PROVIDE AND, AS BETWEEN CLIENT
AND ABC CLOUD SERVICES, SUCH PRODUCTS AND RELATED SUPPORT SERVICES
ARE PROVIDED “AS IS.” You are not granted any title or intellectual property rights in or to
any software provided as part of the Cloud Services, and you may only use that software in
connection with the Cloud Services as permitted under this Agreement. Your acceptance or use
of software provided as part of the Cloud Services is deemed to be an acceptance by you of the
license or other agreement that governs the use of that software. You shall not (i) copy software;
18. MAINTENANCE; SERVICE MODIFICATIONS AND DISCONTINUANCE. In addition
to our right to suspend or terminate the Cloud Services, we may suspend all or part of the Cloud
19. SUPPORT. The Cloud Services will be provided without live support. Technical support will
be limited to the online resources we make available to you on the Cloud Services Website. You
20. HIGH RISK USE. You may not use the Cloud Services for any application where a failure of
those Cloud Services could result in death, serious injury, environmental damage or property
21. GOVERNING LAW; VENUE; JURISDICTION; WAIVER OF JURY TRIAL. The laws of
the State of Washington, without reference to its choice of law principles, govern this Agreement
and any claims arising out of or relating to this Agreement or our relationship. All disputes and
22. INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY. Except for the rights provided in this Section 26, this
Agreement does not convey to either of us any ownership right or license to use, sell, exploit,
copy or further develop the other party’s Confidential Information (as defined in Section 34) or
intellectual property, including patents, copyrights, trademarks, trade names and trade secrets.
We have the exclusive right and title to any intellectual property developed by us during and in
connection with providing the Cloud Services to you. (a) The Cloud Services may include utility
23. GOVERNMENT RIGHTS. With respect to the procurement of any Cloud Services by or for
the U.S. Government, any software provided in connection with the Cloud Services is to be
deemed “commercial computer software” as defined in the FAR and DFARS. The Government
24. RELATIONSHIP OF THE PARTIES. ABC Cloud Services, LLC on one hand, and you on
the other, are each independent parties. This Agreement and transaction under it does not create
25. IP ADDRESSES. Any public or private IP address allocated for you to use as a part of the
Cloud Services will remain allocated to you until (i) you release the IP address using the Cloud
26. NOTICES. (a) From Us. Except as otherwise provided herein, notices we send to you under
this Agreement must be sent by email to the email address included in your Cloud Services
profile at the time we send our notice. You are responsible for keeping your email address
current and accurate at all times. Any notice we send to the then-current email address in your
27. REPRESENTATIONS. You represent and warrant to us that (i) the information you provide
in connection with your registration for Cloud Services is accurate and complete; (ii) no content
on the Cloud Servers is illegal, defamatory, malicious, harmful; (iii) you accurately and
adequately disclose how you collect and treat data collected from visitors to any website or users
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28. NEUTRAL INTERPRETATION. This Agreement will be construed and interpreted in a
29. CONFIDENTIALITY. If the parties have entered into a separate agreement that includes
restrictions on the use or disclosure of confidential information, such as a separate Master
Service Agreement for managed services, and one of confidentiality provisions conflicts with a
confidentiality provision in this Agreement, the provision that affords a greater level of
protection to the disclosing party will control and be enforced to the maximum extent permitted
by law. (a) CONFIDENTIAL INFORMATION. As used in this Agreement, “Confidential
Information” means (i) with respect to us, server configurations, software configurations,
proprietary information, proprietary technology, proprietary software, audit reports, information
30. EXPORT CONTROL. You shall comply with all applicable import, export and re-export
control laws and regulations, including the U.S. Export Administration Regulations, the
31. MISCELLANEOUS. The headings in this Agreement are solely for convenience of reference
and will not affect its interpretation. This Agreement does not create any third-party rights. If any
term, provision, covenant, or condition of this Agreement is held invalid or unenforceable in a
32. SCOPE OF AGREEMENT; ENTIRE AGREEMENT. This Agreement constitutes the final
and entire agreement between the parties regarding its subject matter, and it supersedes all other
oral or written agreements relating thereto. If there is a conflict between or among any of the
parts of this Agreement, they will govern in the following order: an addendum signed by both
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H. William Nelson Joe Doe Smith
President, IT Forensics, Inc. CIO, ABC Cloud Services, LLC