Service Level Agreement
1. Definitions:
- Incident: Any event not part of the standard operation which causes, or may cause, an interruption to, or a reduction in, the quality of the service.
- Ticket: A formal report of an incident, categorized by priority levels.
- Response Time: The time taken from the receipt of a ticket to the initial acknowledgment from a service technician.
- Resolution Time: The time within which a reported incident is resolved.
- Critical Incident: An incident that severely affects the client’s operational capability.
- High Priority Incident: An incident that significantly impacts aspects of the client’s operational capability but is less severe than a critical incident.
- Medium Priority Incident: An incident that moderately affects the client’s operational capability without any significant business impact.
- Low Priority Incident: An incident with minimal impact on the client’s operational capabilities.
- Service Credit: A credit issued to the client’s account, reflective of the percentage of the monthly fee, due to service failures.
- Business Hours: The hours during which scheduled services are provided, typically 9 AM to 5 PM, local client time, Monday through Friday.
2. Service Commitments:
Response and Resolution Times Based on Incident Priority
Priority Level | Response Time | Resolution Time |
Critical | 1 hour | 4 hours |
High | 4 hours | 16 hours |
Medium | 6 hours | 36 hours |
Low | 8 hours | 72 hours |
Help Desk Support Add-on Response Times
(For clients who purchase the Help Desk Support Add-on and available during business hours)
Priority Level | Response Time | Resolution Time |
Critical | 30 minutes | 3 hours |
High | 1 hour | 8 hours |
Medium | 2 hours | 16 hours |
Low | 4 hours | 48 hours |
3. Incident Priority Reclassification:
- Clients or service providers can request a reclassification of an incident’s priority based on evolving impact or understanding of the issue.
- Reclassification requests must be justified and documented to maintain transparency and accountability.
4. Service Availability:
- NGC commits to a monthly uptime of 99.5% for all IT services provided.
- Uptime calculations exclude planned maintenance windows, which will be communicated in advance.
5. Service Credits:
- A failure to meet agreed response or resolution times results in service credits as follows:
Service Level Failure | Service Credit |
> 5% to 10% | 10% of monthly fee |
> 10% to 15% | 15% of monthly fee |
> 15% to 20% | 20% of monthly fee |
> 20% | 25% of monthly fee |
Applying Service Credits:
- Service credits must be claimed within one month of the reported failure.
- Credits are applied against future payments and cannot be converted to monetary refunds.
6. Consequences of SLA Breaches:
- Repeated failures (3 or more consecutive months) to meet SLA commitments may result in contract termination options for the client or restructuring of the terms based on mutual agreement.
7. General Terms:
- Both parties agree to review the SLA annually to reflect changes in technology, business practices, and client needs.
- Changes to the SLA must be agreed upon in writing by both parties before taking effect.
- Emergency changes (e.g., due to new security risks) may be implemented immediately but must be formalized in the SLA at the earliest possible review point.
8. Pricing:
- Basic Tier: $3,000/month
- Silver Tier: $6,000/month
- Gold Tier: $10,000/month
- Platinum Tier: Starting at $15,000/month
- Help Desk Support Add-on: Ranging from $500 to $900/month, included in the Platinum tier.