The "Service Level Agreement" applies unless expressly agreed in writing and made part of the Licensee's contract in the Agreement. The following terms and conditions govern Mercury Media Technology's (MMT) post go-live support and maintenance obligations for the Service (hereinafter the "Software", the "Service" or the "MMT Suite"). This SLA does not apply to Licensee-specific modifications.
The following items are not within the scope of MMT's obligations under this SLA:
- Training of Licensee's employees
- Licensee-specific development, integration and implementation services
- Provision and maintenance of system requirements
- Consulting services for the Licensee in the use of the Service
- Processing of operating errors by users
- Participation in Licensee's security or PEN testing or other audits, and all related costs
1.1 The following support and maintenance conditions apply provided that Licensee meets the system requirements defined in the manual for the software and hardware infrastructure to be used by Licensee.
1.2 If the MMT system used by the Licensee contains Licensee-specific modifications which go beyond the mere configuration of the MMT standard software (e.g. process and system integrations), additional costs may be incurred in connection with support services relating to the MMT standard software and/or the Licensee-specific modifications which are not covered by this SLA. MMT provides the corresponding support and maintenance services on the basis of a separate agreement and against additional remuneration.
Errors and defects of the MMT Suite are to be reported to MMT in as much detail as possible, stating the error symptoms, the concrete application scenario, the error history, the estimated number of affected workstations as well as the system and hardware environment including the third-party software used (browser, virus scanner, etc.). The licensee has to use the form provided by MMT in the support ticket for this purpose. Each report has to be sent immediately after detection of the error.
A Change Request may require additional functionality or changes to the existing MMT Suite. Change Requests do not fall within the scope of this SLA.
Issues that cause the MMT Suite to not function substantially in accordance with its documentation are ranked according to the following priority levels:
- Error class 1 (Blocker) means a critical defect that causes the MMT Suite to crash, requires a restart of the MMT Suite or destroys unrecoverable data such as user data. Important functions are not functional for the vast majority of the users and there is no known workaround.
- Error Class 2 (Critical Defect) means a high priority defect that severely affects important functional aspects of the MMT suite, but does not prevent mission critical processing.
- Error Class 3 (Non-Critical Defect) means a defect that affects a non-critical aspect of the MMT Suite. Such Non-Critical Defect may be a minor issue with limited or no loss of functionality or impact on Licensee's activities, or issues that can be easily resolved or avoided.
As described in 2., these response times are only guaranteed for The SLA Premium.
The response, review and resolution times specified in 5. are considered as fulfilled if they are met within at least 90% of all support requests. Upon request, MMT will provide the licensee with a qualified report on support requests and compliance with the response, review and resolution times.
The following escalation procedure applies to support cases of errors class 1 and 2:
- Escalation level 1: In case of non-compliance with the response, review or resolution times, the MMT Support team leader may be notified. If the defect is checked but cannot be remedied within the agreed time, the licensee and MMT are entitled to forward the problem to escalation level 2.
- Escalation Level 2: The issue is escalated to MMT management as well as the licensee to determine the next course of action and a corrective action plan to be implemented by MMT in collaboration with the licensee.
MMT will continue to develop the modules of MMT Suite and provide new versions to the licensee automatically, since the software does not require installation. In addition to improvements and bug fixes, new versions may also contain functional enhancements (features) of the MMT Suite. Updates, security patches, etc. can be performed independently by MMT. MMT determines the timing of the introduction of the new features. Information about the updates will be communicated as follows:
- Release update function within the platform (SLA: Standard & Premium)
- Review meetings with licensees (SLA: Premium)
MMT will use its best efforts to maintain an availability of the live system of 99.8% per year. Excluded from this are failures due to reasons beyond MMT's control, e.g. force majeure or reasons set by the licensee or third parties. Availability is calculated in terms of hours of operation. Planned downtimes (see 9.) are not considered in the calculation of availability. MMT monitors the availability of the system with suitable technical means. The availability is determined at the output port from the MMT data center to the Internet. MMT provides the licensees annually with a qualified report on the actual system availability.
To perform updates, configuration changes, and certain maintenance tasks, it is necessary to take the system out of service for a period of time. These times are referred to as "Scheduled Downtimes". Scheduled Downtimes will be performed by MMT and communicated to Licensee's Key Users via email. Scheduled Downtimes are usually announced to the Licensee two weeks in advance. In urgent exceptional cases, it may be necessary to order a scheduled downtime at short notice. Downtimes for installations and updates are carried out during service hours.
MMT creates a daily backup on highly available data storage. The backup includes all MMT data, stored media files and configuration settings in accordance with MMT's backup policy as amended from time to time.
The licensee will support MMT in every aspect in the provision of the services specified in these conditions. In particular, in the interest of efficient defect removal and processing, the licensee will appoint employees and corresponding deputies with in-depth functional and technical knowledge of the modules as contact persons for MMT and inform MMT of their names and contact details. These employees (key user team) bundle and coordinate the reports and inquiries on the part of the licensee. They first check with their professional and technical knowledge how they can help the affected users before forwarding messages and requests. If they are not able to solve the problems that have occurred, they forward the messages and requests to MMT using the procedures described under point 2.
