Service Level Agreement
Last Update: 02/09/2023
Shelter Buddy is responsible for keeping the Hosted Product operational and providing timely customer support. This includes the monitoring of the Hosted Product’s transactional performance and availability.
1. Availability:
The Hosted Product must be available to Shelter Buddy’ customers no less than 99.95% of the time as measured 24x7x365. “Downtime” shall mean when the Hosted Product is unavailable to Shelter Buddy’ customers, provided that Downtime shall not include scheduled interruptions of which Shelter Buddy’ customers are notified at least 24 hours in advance or problems associated with Internet connectivity, cellular connectivity, or any other intermediary system.
For each period of cumulative Downtime in a calendar month for the Hosted Product, as Shelter Buddy’ customers’ sole remedy and Shelter Buddy’ sole liability for the unavailability of the Hosted Product, Shelter Buddy will credit customer as set forth in the table below. In order to receive service credits hereunder, Shelter Buddy’ customer must notify Shelter Buddy within ten (10) days after such Downtime Interruption occurs, subject to verification by Shelter Buddy. Downtime shall begin to accrue when either Shelter Buddy or the customer (with notice to Shelter Buddy) recognizes that such Downtime is occurring, and continues until the availability of the Hosted Product is restored.
If Shelter Buddy fails to deliver Hosted Product in accordance with this Exhibit for three consecutive months or for four months in any 6 consecutive month period the customer shall have the right, exercisable only within thirty days of such failure, to immediately terminate the Agreement or any applicable SOWs or Order Forms for cause.
2. Change and Release Management Policy
Shelter Buddy adheres to strict release management policies and procedures for any changes to the hosting infrastructure that may impact delivery of the Hosted Product service. Shelter Buddy tracks changes via Shelter Buddy Technical Change (TTCs) tickets. All TTCs shall be classified as Planned, Emergency, Expedited, or Standard and include notification, risk and impact assessment, and implementation planning. Shelter Buddy’ assessment of the TTCs risk, scope, and impact will be included.
All changes must have the following:
a. A back out plan: If a problem occurs, a plan outlining how you will back out the change.
b. A test plan: Clearly outlining the testing that was completed in the pre production environment.
c. Release validation: An executed validation plan that proves the installation was successful and the system is operating as anticipated after the change.
Shelter Buddy maintains records of the items listed above.
Low Risk Changes (Expedited or Standard changes) shall mean changes within the application that are made operationally, such as data updates, minor low risk production support fixes (X.Y.Z e.g. 2.3.1) etc. Low-risk changes can be done operationally during the day or evening and will never impact the application availability. If there is ever an instance where a low risk change does adversely impact application availability, performance or functionality in any way, then that change type will be moved to the medium to high risk process from that point forward.
Medium to High Risk changes (Planned Changes) shall mean changes that:
a. are complex in nature
b. require a business outage
c. non hot-fix application code releases (X.Y e.g. 2.3)
d. take down a highly available component of the architecture, not causing an outage, but leaving the application with single points of failure during the maintenance
e. are made to the architecture of shared service components that could cause impact to the application in question like authentication services, network devices, load balancing devices, databases, mainframes etc.
Publication of change notifications for releases, which include Medium to High Risk Changes, will normally be published at least 72 hours in advance of the change being implemented.
3. Incident and Problem Management:
Shelter Buddy is expected to perform root cause analysis (“RCA”) and develop a defect elimination plan (“DEP”) within the SLA requirements listed below. The purpose of RCA (Root Cause Analysis) is to investigate the underlying cause of an incident, and aim to prevent incidents of a similar nature from recurring. This also includes a DEP which details the exact actions being taken to prevent the incident from reoccurring.
Shelter Buddy Contact Information:
Shelter Buddy is responsible for providing its customer partner with a current list of contact information and escalation points. Shelter Buddy is responsible for keeping current the incident contact support resource information, which shall be updated on a quarterly basis. This information will be used to engage critical Shelter Buddy support resources during severity 1 and severity 2 incident responses.
Severity 1 & Severity 2 Incident Response:
Shelter Buddy will engage immediately upon detection of issues and work to resolve them as quickly as is reasonably possible without introducing unnecessary risk. Shelter Buddy will keep an accurate record of these incidents, which will include their severity, impact and duration. Shelter Buddy will make the previous six months of records available to its customers upon request.
Severity 1 and Severity 2 incidents and the standard Shelter Buddy procedures for management of those incidents are defined below.
a. Severity-1(Critical Urgency)
Full Production outage, loss of functionality or serious performance degradation
Impact: Customer has lost productivity
Expected Shelter Buddy Action: Critical issues are worked on continuously until service is restored.
Critical issues are immediately escalated to Shelter Buddy customer success staff.
A dedicated team comprising of software support staff, QA engineers, and/or developers as required, work to identify the source of the problem, and if necessary create a workaround or other resolution in order to restore mission-critical operations in the shortest time possible. At that point the severity level is downgraded.
Target Services Restoration: ASAP
Incident status updates during outage: Every 60 minutes
Initial Root Cause Analysis document: Within 24 hours
Signed off and Approved Root Cause analysis with Defect Elimination plan identified with owners and dates defined: Within 72 hours
b. Severity - 2(High Urgency)
Impaired functionality, less serious performance degradation
Impact: Operations can continue in a restricted fashion.
Expected Shelter Buddy Action: Technical Rep will engage during normal office hours with software support staff, QA engineers and/or developers as appropriate to identify the source of the problem, and if necessary create a workaround or other resolution in order to restore normal business operations as soon as possible.
Target Services Restoration: ASAP
Incident status updates during outage: Every 120 minutes
Signed off and Approved Root Cause analysis with Defect Elimination plan identified with owners and dates defined: Within 5 business days
c. Severity – 3 (Average/Low Urgency)
Partial, non-critical loss of functionality or general product usage question.
Impact: No business productivity or internal SLA impact. Cosmetic issues.
Expected Shelter Buddy Action: Shelter Buddy will use commercially reasonable efforts to provide an acceptable workaround and incorporate a solution to the problem in the earliest possible scheduled maintenance or product release. Contact software support to monitor status of any bug.
High Risk Known Issues/Critical Patches/Fixes: If Shelter Buddy discovers a high risk, known issue, security vulnerability or has developed critical patch/fix for the Hosted Products Shelter Buddy will patch issues as quickly as is deemed necessary.
4. Disaster Recovery:
Shelter Buddy will have a viable DR plan and practice in place. Shelter Buddy must run and complete a successful DR test every year.
Shelter Buddy’ recovery time objective is less than 24 hours
Shelter Buddy’ recovery point objective is less than 24 hours
5. Customer Support Shelter Buddy offers standard support from 9am to 5pm ET. Our product support is staffed by product specialists who coordinate with our system operations team and engineering team for seamless collaboration to ensure mission critical system function.
Shelter Buddy is responsible for keeping the Hosted Product operational and providing timely customer support. This includes the monitoring of the Hosted Product’s transactional performance and availability.
1. Availability:
The Hosted Product must be available to Shelter Buddy’ customers no less than 99.95% of the time as measured 24x7x365. “Downtime” shall mean when the Hosted Product is unavailable to Shelter Buddy’ customers, provided that Downtime shall not include scheduled interruptions of which Shelter Buddy’ customers are notified at least 24 hours in advance or problems associated with Internet connectivity, cellular connectivity, or any other intermediary system.
For each period of cumulative Downtime in a calendar month for the Hosted Product, as Shelter Buddy’ customers’ sole remedy and Shelter Buddy’ sole liability for the unavailability of the Hosted Product, Shelter Buddy will credit customer as set forth in the table below. In order to receive service credits hereunder, Shelter Buddy’ customer must notify Shelter Buddy within ten (10) days after such Downtime Interruption occurs, subject to verification by Shelter Buddy. Downtime shall begin to accrue when either Shelter Buddy or the customer (with notice to Shelter Buddy) recognizes that such Downtime is occurring, and continues until the availability of the Hosted Product is restored.
If Shelter Buddy fails to deliver Hosted Product in accordance with this Exhibit for three consecutive months or for four months in any 6 consecutive month period the customer shall have the right, exercisable only within thirty days of such failure, to immediately terminate the Agreement or any applicable SOWs or Order Forms for cause.
2. Change and Release Management Policy
Shelter Buddy adheres to strict release management policies and procedures for any changes to the hosting infrastructure that may impact delivery of the Hosted Product service. Shelter Buddy tracks changes via Shelter Buddy Technical Change (TTCs) tickets. All TTCs shall be classified as Planned, Emergency, Expedited, or Standard and include notification, risk and impact assessment, and implementation planning. Shelter Buddy’ assessment of the TTCs risk, scope, and impact will be included.
All changes must have the following:
a. A back out plan: If a problem occurs, a plan outlining how you will back out the change.
b. A test plan: Clearly outlining the testing that was completed in the pre production environment.
c. Release validation: An executed validation plan that proves the installation was successful and the system is operating as anticipated after the change.
Shelter Buddy maintains records of the items listed above.
Low Risk Changes (Expedited or Standard changes) shall mean changes within the application that are made operationally, such as data updates, minor low risk production support fixes (X.Y.Z e.g. 2.3.1) etc. Low-risk changes can be done operationally during the day or evening and will never impact the application availability. If there is ever an instance where a low risk change does adversely impact application availability, performance or functionality in any way, then that change type will be moved to the medium to high risk process from that point forward.
Medium to High Risk changes (Planned Changes) shall mean changes that:
a. are complex in nature
b. require a business outage
c. non hot-fix application code releases (X.Y e.g. 2.3)
d. take down a highly available component of the architecture, not causing an outage, but leaving the application with single points of failure during the maintenance
e. are made to the architecture of shared service components that could cause impact to the application in question like authentication services, network devices, load balancing devices, databases, mainframes etc.
Publication of change notifications for releases, which include Medium to High Risk Changes, will normally be published at least 72 hours in advance of the change being implemented.
3. Incident and Problem Management:
Shelter Buddy is expected to perform root cause analysis (“RCA”) and develop a defect elimination plan (“DEP”) within the SLA requirements listed below. The purpose of RCA (Root Cause Analysis) is to investigate the underlying cause of an incident, and aim to prevent incidents of a similar nature from recurring. This also includes a DEP which details the exact actions being taken to prevent the incident from reoccurring.
Shelter Buddy Contact Information:
Shelter Buddy is responsible for providing its customer partner with a current list of contact information and escalation points. Shelter Buddy is responsible for keeping current the incident contact support resource information, which shall be updated on a quarterly basis. This information will be used to engage critical Shelter Buddy support resources during severity 1 and severity 2 incident responses.
Severity 1 & Severity 2 Incident Response:
Shelter Buddy will engage immediately upon detection of issues and work to resolve them as quickly as is reasonably possible without introducing unnecessary risk. Shelter Buddy will keep an accurate record of these incidents, which will include their severity, impact and duration. Shelter Buddy will make the previous six months of records available to its customers upon request.
Severity 1 and Severity 2 incidents and the standard Shelter Buddy procedures for management of those incidents are defined below.
a. Severity-1(Critical Urgency)
Full Production outage, loss of functionality or serious performance degradation
Impact: Customer has lost productivity
Expected Shelter Buddy Action: Critical issues are worked on continuously until service is restored.
Critical issues are immediately escalated to Shelter Buddy customer success staff.
A dedicated team comprising of software support staff, QA engineers, and/or developers as required, work to identify the source of the problem, and if necessary create a workaround or other resolution in order to restore mission-critical operations in the shortest time possible. At that point the severity level is downgraded.
Target Services Restoration: ASAP
Incident status updates during outage: Every 60 minutes
Initial Root Cause Analysis document: Within 24 hours
Signed off and Approved Root Cause analysis with Defect Elimination plan identified with owners and dates defined: Within 72 hours
b. Severity - 2(High Urgency)
Impaired functionality, less serious performance degradation
Impact: Operations can continue in a restricted fashion.
Expected Shelter Buddy Action: Technical Rep will engage during normal office hours with software support staff, QA engineers and/or developers as appropriate to identify the source of the problem, and if necessary create a workaround or other resolution in order to restore normal business operations as soon as possible.
Target Services Restoration: ASAP
Incident status updates during outage: Every 120 minutes
Signed off and Approved Root Cause analysis with Defect Elimination plan identified with owners and dates defined: Within 5 business days
c. Severity – 3 (Average/Low Urgency)
Partial, non-critical loss of functionality or general product usage question.
Impact: No business productivity or internal SLA impact. Cosmetic issues.
Expected Shelter Buddy Action: Shelter Buddy will use commercially reasonable efforts to provide an acceptable workaround and incorporate a solution to the problem in the earliest possible scheduled maintenance or product release. Contact software support to monitor status of any bug.
High Risk Known Issues/Critical Patches/Fixes: If Shelter Buddy discovers a high risk, known issue, security vulnerability or has developed critical patch/fix for the Hosted Products Shelter Buddy will patch issues as quickly as is deemed necessary.
4. Disaster Recovery:
Shelter Buddy will have a viable DR plan and practice in place. Shelter Buddy must run and complete a successful DR test every year.
Shelter Buddy’ recovery time objective is less than 24 hours
Shelter Buddy’ recovery point objective is less than 24 hours
5. Customer Support Shelter Buddy offers standard support from 9am to 5pm ET. Our product support is staffed by product specialists who coordinate with our system operations team and engineering team for seamless collaboration to ensure mission critical system function.
