Service Level AgreementService Level Agreement

Technical Support

If you have chosen dedicated hosting, and have opted to skip releases, please take note that we will only provide technical support for the current Feature Release, and the two Feature Releases immediately preceding the current Feature Release (“Supported Releases”). If you are not running one of the Supported Releases, we reserve the right not to perform technical support on your Pure solution until you update to one of the Supported Releases.

Section 1: Help Desk Services

You will have access to the Pure help desk (“Help Desk”) for the term of the your Pure agreement (”Agreement”). The Help Desk will answer short precise questions regarding your Pure solution, undertake simple problem diagnosis and provide general guidance on your Pure solution, including whether an observed condition appears to be due to a defect in your Pure solution, which should be reported in accordance with Annex 2, Error Reporting, of this Service Level Agreement.

The Help Desk can be reached by the following means;

You may appoint two of your staff who will have access to the Help Desk and all requests for support will be made by such staff. It is possible for you to add other staff as needed by arrangement with us (e.g. in connection with your internal organizational changes).

Questions about your Pure solution that are raised in our tracking system will be processed as soon as possible.

Section 2: Error Reporting

If you observe suspected defects in your Pure solution , these must be reported to our issue and feature request system, following which we will render assistance in diagnosing and remedying any reported defects. Your report must at least contain the following information:

•    Pure version number; 
•    Description of (suspected) defect, including action taken and subsequent response;
•    Steps to reproduce (suspected) defect;
•    Severity of (suspected) defect;
•    Possible annexes for clarification of the defects (e.g. screen prints);
•    Time of observing the (suspected) defect; and 
•    Your relevant contact person.

Defects will be finally categorized by us in accordance with this Annex 2 Error Reporting, and taking in to account input from you, provided that both parties will act reasonably and in good faith in making such categorization.

Categorization of Defects

Categorization of defects will be consistent with the descriptions in the table below.

Remediation times in relation to error reporting

Our support team monitors and triages all incoming issues in its issue tracking system. The triage process involves:
•    Asserting the type of issue: bug, improvement, question, etc.;
•    Establish steps-to-reproduce, in dialogue with you. We recommend that you should provide details sufficient to allow us to reproduce the issue, in order to speed up the triage process; and
•    Asserting the actual error categorization – note that the triage process may result in a re-categorization of an error, compared to the categorization input by you.

You acknowledge that we may require access to your Pure solution as installed for you, for the purpose of error diagnostics. For this purpose you will create a support-user account for use by us within your installation of your Pure solution. We may not be bound by the Service Levels if such support user account is not created, and this access is required to properly diagnose an error. It is not required that this support user account is active at all times, but it must be activated without undue delay at our reasonable request.

The following table outlines our service goals relative to issues raised that are categorized as defects in the Pure solution. “Help Desk Hours” in this regard will be the hours set out in Annex 1 of this Schedule, “Elsevier Denmark Work Hours” will mean all Elsevier Denmark working days from 0900 to 1600 CET, and “Work Days” will mean all Elsevier working days. The “First response from support team” time is measured during Help Desk Hours only and the “remediation begun” only applies if triaging results in asserting the error categories as listed in the table.

Escalation of errors

If we have not responded in respect of any error in line with the service goals stated above, you will be entitled to request escalation of the error, in accordance with the escalation hierarchy.

Section 3: Pure Cloud Hosting

These service levels do not cover access from our IT environment to your own systems (e.g. HR and finance system) – it is solely your responsibility to make these connections available and ensure the performance of these connections. We support HTTPS and SSL based connections to your systems.

We will host and maintain your Pure solution and make it available to you online in accordance with your Agreement.

Installation and Update Services
We will maintain your installation of your Pure solution within our IT environment on the following basis:

• We reserve up to 4 hours out of every week to perform Installation and Update Service on the agreed installation(s) of the Pure solution (“Service Window”). These hours will be:
  1.  if you are located in APAC: Wednesdays 12:00 – 16:00 CET; 
  2. if you are located in EMEA+NE: Wednesdays 20:00 to 24:00 CET; 
  3. if you are located in NOAM+LA: Thursdays 8:00 – 12:00 CET.

• If you have subscribed to Pure Cloud Hosting – Dedicated, we will not perform Installation and Update Services without prior request from you, except in the event of critical security patches. You can request installation in a certain week by reaching out to us, and the update will then be performed within the relevant service window in that week, unless otherwise specifically agreed between you and us. Note, however, that the Pure solution must always be updated to at least one of the 3 latest Feature Releases made released, unless agreed specifically between the parties.

Operational and availability guarantees 

We will use reasonable efforts to provide your Pure solution with a quality of service consistent with industry standards, including to provide continuous access to the Pure solution with an average of 99.5% up-time per year (“Availability”). In the event your Pure solution does not meet the warranted Availability, and this is not due to SLA Exclusions (as defined herein) you will be eligible to receive a Service Credit as described below.

The Availability warranty does not apply to any unavailability, suspension or termination of service or Pure solution performance issues: (i) that result from a downtime permitted by this Service Level Agreement; (ii) caused by factors outside of our reasonable control, including any force majeure event or your Internet access or that of any third party; (iv) that result from your equipment, software or other technology and/or third party equipment, software or other technology (other than third party equipment within our direct control); (v) that result from any maintenance as provided for pursuant to the Agreement; or (vi) arising from our suspension and termination of your right to use  your Pure solution in accordance with the Agreement (collectively, the “SLA Exclusions”). If Availability is impacted by factors other than those listed above, then we will issue a Service Credit in accordance with the below, considering such factors.

Service Credit

If your Pure solution do not meet the Availability warranties set out herein you will be entitled to receive a service credit calculated as follows:

Entitlement to service credits is your sole and exclusive remedy for any breach by us of the Availability warranties and we will not otherwise be liable to you for any direct or indirect loss or costs arising from the Pure solution being unavailable for any reason.

Security, Disaster Recovery, Storage, Backup and Monitoring

Please see the page on Hosting and Installation for details on security, disaster recovery, storage, backup procedures and monitoring, as well as further details available related to the hosting and installation of your Pure solution.

Section 4: Pure Portal

If you have subscribed to Pure Portal, the following will apply. 
The Pure Portal will be hosted by us, in our IT environment.

Set up of the Pure Portal.
When you first subscribe to the Pure Portal, you will provide us with your Pure Portal configuration details—selected from the menu in the configuration document provided by us to you — indicating what elements to include in the display on the Pure Portal, for our review and approval. Please return the configuration document to us within twenty (20) days of receipt of the document from us, or as otherwise agreed between parties. Further you will mark the relevant content types within your Pure solution to indicate which content type data should be made visible on the Pure Portal.

The following services will then be performed by us in relation to the set up:

• installation and setup of the Pure Portal on our IT environment, and;
• establishment of monitoring, and;
• initial testing to ensure the Pure Portal is working as expected.

Delivery of the Pure Portal.

We will make the Pure Portal available to you and your Authorized Users from the Go Live date and for the duration of the Agreement.

Updates to the Pure Portal.

The Pure Portal will be continuously updated when new releases are made available.

Setup of the Pure Web Service

You will ensure that a dedicated user is created for us, within the Pure Web Services included in your Pure solution, for purposes of harvesting data for the Pure Portal.  

Operational and availability guarantees 

We will use reasonable efforts to provide the Pure Portal with a quality of service consistent with industry standards, including to provide continuous access to the Pure Portal with an average of 99.5% up-time per year (“Quality of Service”). If, due to causes within our reasonable control, we are unable to provide you with access to the service for a period exceeding two (2) consecutive days or 5 days total within a contract year, and this is not due to SLA Exclusions (as defined herein), then we will refund to you a portion of the Pure Portal Fees calculated by dividing the number of days of downtime by 365 and multiplied by the amount of the Pure Portal Fees for the then current year.

The Quality of Service does not apply to any unavailability, suspension or termination of access or Pure Portal performance issues (i) that result from a downtime permitted by this Service Level Agreement; (ii) caused by factors outside of our reasonable control, including any force majeure event or your Internet access; (iii) that result from any actions or inactions by you or any third party, (iv) that result from your equipment, software or other technology and/or third party equipment, software or other technology (other than third party equipment within our direct control); (v) that result from any maintenance as provided for pursuant to the Agreement; or (vi) arising from our suspension and termination of your right to use your Pure solution in accordance with the Agreement (collectively, the “SLA Exclusions”).

Elsevier Hosting Environment Maintenance Windows

Maintenance of the Elsevier Hosting Environment will follow the provisions set out in Section 3 of this Service Level Agreement.

Monitoring

We will monitor the Pure Portal to ensure that it is available and able to contact your installation of your Pure solution.