Service Level Agreement (“SLA”)

  1. Commitment

VIRGANET commits that the VIRGANET network and infrastructure supporting the Virtual Private Cloud and the Services will be available at all times excluding any Scheduled Maintenance periods.

Availability is monitored using VIRGANET’s monitoring platform.  Monitoring service reports will be provided to the Customer on a quarterly basis and shall be submitted with any invoice for the fees.

“Availability” of the network specifically excludes any public Internet Service Providers (ISPs) ability to provide consistent or stable network access from the Customer premise, to the VIRGANET network and/or to its infrastructure.

For Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) products e.g. Private Virtual Cloud, Desktop as a Service etc., “availability” refers to the percentage of a particular calendar month that the Service is available for access by the Customer, excluding any periods of Scheduled Maintenance.

  1. Permitted Unavailable Time

The table below sets out the maximum permitted amount of time during any calendar month during which the Virtual Private Cloud may be unavailable to the Customer, outside of the Scheduled Maintenance:

Tier 2 / Desktop as a Service (DaaS)
SLA Per Month
Hrs Min Sec
99% 7 18 17

Total unavailable time – permitted unavailable time = unpermitted available time

  1. Service Level Objectives

VIRGANET commits to make available the Virtual Private Cloud and the entirety of its network and infrastructure at all times, outside of the Scheduled Maintenance windows.

However, VIRGANET is not responsible for individual components of Customer that may fail or become unusable by their negligence or Errors, impacting the Customer’s ability to use those services.

Support Request Procedures.

VIRGANET will provide support during its normal business hours in response to telephone and email queries from the Customer’s Authorized Users.

The Customer shall nominate its Authorized User’s in writing to VIRGANET at the commencement of the Services Period and shall update or replace any Authorized User list from time to time by giving VIRGANET notice in writing of any changes.

Incident Resolution

Where the Customer’s Authorized User identifies an Incident, the Customer will report the Incident to VIRGANET upon discovery via telephone or email.

The Customer will provide all information which the Customer has reasonably available to it, and which is requested by VIRGANET and will give VIRGANET all reasonable assistance and co-operation to enable VIRGANET to properly identify the cause of the Incident and resolve it.

An “Incident” is any event where the Virtual Private Cloud is not available to the Customer or does not perform in accordance with the required functionality.

The Customer will assign a Priority level to the Incident and VIRGANET will work to resolve the reported issues in accordance with the stated Response Time and Resolution Time for that Priority level:

Category SLA Description
Priority 1

(Critical)

 Response Time – 15 minutes

Resolution Time – 1 hour

 An Incident that:

·         prevents access by the Customer to the Virtual Private Cloud;

·         results in the loss of critical functions; or

·         which prevents the Customer from conducting key business operations.

VIRGANET will give first priority to resolving Priority 1 issues.
Priority 2

(High)

 Response Time – 30 minutes

Resolution Time – 4 hours

 An Incident that:

·         prevents the use of one or more functions of the Virtual Private Cloud Services; or

·         Substantially impacts the Customer by preventing normal business operations.
Priority 3

(Medium):

 Response Time – 60 minutes

Resolution Time – 24 hours

 An Incident that:

·         impacts the use of one or more functions of the Virtual Private Cloud, but which does not prevent the Customer from conducting normal business operations.
Priority 4

(Low):

 Response Time – 120 minutes

Resolution Time – 48 hours

 An Incident that does not affect a Customer’s use of the Virtual Private Cloud.

  1. System Event Notification

VIRGANET will make available to the Customer through subscribed emails, at least two weeks in advance of any Scheduled Maintenance, the Scheduled Maintenance calendar. The Scheduled Maintenance calendar will include a brief description of the type of maintenance to be performed by VIRGANET, which if any of the Virtual Private Cloud services will be impacted, and VIRGANET’s expectations for the duration of the downtime.

In the event that any of the Virtual Private Cloud Services become unavailable outside of the times set out in the Scheduled Maintenance calendar, VIRGANET will notify the Customer immediately, through a subscribed email which sets out the type of Incident, the Virtual Private Cloud Services which are impacted, and the expected timeframe for restoration of the Virtual Private Cloud and or VIRGANET’s network and infrastructure.

Where the Customer receives a system event notification from VIRGANET notifying the Customer of such unplanned unavailability the Customer shall not be required to report the Incident to VIRGANET, other than to notify VIRGANET of what Priority the Customer has assigned the Incident, and relevant Response Time and Resolution Time as set out in this SLA above shall commence from the time the subscribed email was issued by VIRGANET.

  1. Scheduled and Emergency Maintenance

VIRGANET reserves the right to make or conduct routine maintenance (“Scheduled Maintenance”) during designated maintenance periods. Designated maintenance periods are limited to the time between 12:00 a.m. and 6:00 a.m. (Arabian Standard Time) wherein planned upgrades, patches, replacements, removals, and failover testing may be made to VIRGANET’s network or infrastructure.

In the event that the network or infrastructure becomes unavailable outside of the designated maintenance period (“Emergency Maintenance”), VIRGANET guarantees restoration or repair within the Resolution Time set out in the table above. The relevant Service Level times, Response Time and Resolution Time are each measured commencing from the time the Incident is reported (via email or telephone) to VIRGANET by the Customer or where VIRGANET notifies the Customer of the Incident by a systems event notification.

  1. Remedies

Where VIRGANET fails to achieve the targeted SLA availability for the Virtual Private Cloud and its infrastructure and network, or any of the Response Time and Resolution Times as set out in this SLA, the Customer shall be eligible for a service credit, which will be a percentage of the quarterly fees payable for the Services.

VIRGANET shall submit to the Customer a full and complete report as to the cause and resolution of each and every Incident, along with a copy of the complete VIRGANET network monitoring report (together the Reports), the Reports are to be submitted with each quarterly invoice. Any failure by VIRGANET to submit the Reports as required with the invoice will entitle the Customer to withhold all payments to VIRGANET until the Reports are received.

The Customer shall review the Reports and shall submit a claim for any service credit which may be owing within two weeks of receiving the Reports.

Services credits shall be calculated on the following basis, for each hour or part thereof, during which VIRGANET does not meet the Response Time, Resolution Time, or there is downtime in excess of the acceptable monthly permitted unavailable time, the Customer shall be entitled to a service credit equal to the amount of 20 KD/hour.

For remedy calculation purposes, all time frames start from the time that the Services’ unavailability is reported to VIRGANET by the Customer (or by VIRGANET to the Customer), and ends when Customer confirms full restoration of the Services.

  1. SLA Remedy Limitations.

Customer is not entitled to any service credits if the account is in breach of the terms of this Agreement. If failure occurred as a result of the Customer’s misuse, deliberate, or unintentional action outside of the Acceptable Usage, Customer is not entitled to service credits.

Notwithstanding anything in this Agreement to the contrary, the maximum total service credit for the quarterly billing period, including all guaranties, shall not exceed 25% of the quarterly fees for that billing period.

In circumstances where:

  • the maximum total cap for service credit charges (as set out above) are met in any calendar month; or
  • the total availability and uptime for the Virtual Private Cloud falls below 97% in any calendar month; or
  • VIRGANET fails to meet the Response Time and Resolution Time on more than two occasions in any calendar month,

then the Customer shall be entitled to terminate this Agreement for material breach by issuing written notice to VIRGANET.  Such termination notice shall specify the date upon which the termination becomes effective, no court order shall be required to give it effect to the termination.

Any expiry, or termination of this Agreement shall not affect any accrued rights or liabilities of either Party, nor shall it affect the coming into force or the continuance in force of any provision of this Agreement which is expressly or by implication intended to come into force or continue in force on or after expiry or termination of this Agreement.

The Customer shall have the right to deduct or set-off the amount of any service credits which are due to the Customer, from any invoice or monies due, or which may become due to VIRGANET, any under this Agreement.

Where any service credits accrue in the final quarter of the Services Period, then the Customer shall have the right to invoice VIRGANET for any service credit amounts and those amounts shall be a debt which is immediately due and owing to the Customer.

  1. Support Services Availability and SERVICE DELIVERY

All requests for service against this Agreement must be logged with the nominated Helpdesk as per the call logging channels authorized by VIRGANET in this Agreement.

Customer is requested to work with VIRGANET during problem determination and to perform those activities that VIRGANET may reasonably request. The problem determination aim is to identify whether the problem is with the Virtual Private Cloud or if the issue arises from an application or connectivity issues from the Customer side.

VIRGANET’s priority is to restore the functionality of the Virtual Private Cloud and VIRGANET may take any alternative part or solution approach to restore functionality.

  1. SERVICE LEVEL DESCRIPTION

HOURS OF SERVICE / Business Hours

VIRGANET operations staff, a centralized support desk to handle all Incidents and Change Management requests during defined business hours.

Business hours are currently defined as Sunday through Thursday, 8:00am until 5:00pm. All Incidents (other than Priority 1 Incidents), new customer provisioning, and change management requests are addressed during this time.

8 (Eight) hours a day, 5 (five) days a week (8 x 5):

On-Call Hours

Outside of Business Hours, VIRGANET Operations are available to answer incoming telephone calls for Priority 1 (Critical) Incidents.

Lower priority incidents, unscheduled Change Management requests, and incoming email messages may be deferred until normal business hours, at Operations management’s discretion.

Change Management requests may be scheduled outside of business hours at the request of the Customer, with Operations management approval, and are subject to a Change Request and/or Professional Services fee.

SERVICE CALL LOGGING AND REPORTING

Call Logging:

  • Customer agrees to log the service call with the following information.
  • Support agreement No:
  • Contact Telephone Number:
  • Service Level and Description:
  • Error Messages / Fault Details, Brief Description of Problem and logs if any

During Office Hours:

VIRGANET Office working hours are 8:00 AM to 5:00 PM Sunday to Thursday Excluding Public Holidays. During this time CUSTOMER may log their support calls by using

  • Email: helpdesk@virganet.com
  • Telephone: +965 22286780