Zen Systems Ltd - Service Level Agreement

Effective From Date: March 2010

Version: 3.0

(i) This Service Level Agreement ("SLA") describes the level of service Zen Systems Ltd, company number: 03744427 ("Zen Systems"), will provide to Customers in respect of Email Services. This SLA applies to Customers with current contracts for Services and no outstanding, non-disputed bills.

(ii) These SLA Terms will operate in conjunction with Zen Systems' Specific Terms and Acceptable Use Policy to form the basis of any agreement between Zen Systems and the Customer.

(iii) The act of ordering or using an Applicable Service from the Zen Systems' website indicates the Customer's agreement to and acceptance of this Service Level Agreement.

1. Definitions

1.1. In this SLA the following terms shall have the following meanings, unless otherwise specified here:

Applicable Service

any Service from the list at 2 below;

Availability

Means the percentage of a particular calendar month a Service is available for access as measured by Zen Systems not including any Scheduled and or Emergency Maintenance;

MX Servers

means Zen Systems' Mail Transfer Agents which deal with the filtering and routing of emails for all email Services hosted by Zen Systems;

Smart Hosts

Zen Systems' SMTP servers which deliver email for all Services;

First Line Support

means all liaison with End Users; creation/editing/deleting mailboxes; account managing the day to day requirements of a client;

Second Line Support

means issues which first line support technicians are unable to resolve such as mailbox migrations; mail routing; lost email queries; reported server failures or connectivity problems;

Third Line Support

dealing with service failures which result in degraded or reduced email service;

Response Time

means the time Zen Systems will start working on an issue.

1.2. In the event of any inconsistency between the SLA, the Specific Terms, and the Acceptable Use Policy:

1.2.1. the SLA shall prevail over the Specific Terms and the Acceptable Use Policy; and

1.2.2. the Specific Terms shall prevail over the Acceptable Use Policy.

1.3. Headings and sub-headings are included for ease of reference only and shall not affect the interpretation of this SLA.

2. Applicable Services

2.1. This SLA applies only to the following Zen Systems Services:

2.1.1. Email Continuity, Email Archiving, Email Security; and

2.1.2. Zimbra Mailbox; and

2.1.3. Zen Systems Customer Support.

3. Service Level Targets

Zen Systems have no control over the speed, performance or availability of the wider Internet or other organisations' mail servers. No guarantees are made or implied for e-mail originating from, or addressed to, any mailbox or system outside of Zen Systems' own network. 

3.1. Receiving and Sending Emails (Zen Systems MX Servers & Smart Hosts)

3.1.1. Incoming emails addressed to legitimate addresses without attachments will ordinarily be ready to be routed to the destination server within 120 seconds of being accepted by a Zen Systems MX Server. Emails containing attachments may take longer depending on the attachment size. Zen Systems' smart hosts will attempt first delivery of a 25KB MIME encoded email within 60 seconds of receipt.

3.2. Availability target: 99.9%

3.2.1. Zimbra Mailbox 

3.2.2. Zen Systems hosted Zimbra mailboxes will be accessible to end users 99.9% of the time in any calendar month. End Users may be temporarily restricted from accessing their mailbox whilst it is being backed up. Such restriction does not count as non performance against Availability target.

3.2.3. Zen Systems will provide Customers with first line support during UK working hours for all non-critical issues. The preferred method for logging support requests is via email to This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it . Critical issues will be supported 24/7. To obtain support for critical issues Customers must in the first instance telephone the 24 hour support line. Critical issues will be assigned the highest priority and as such Zen Systems request that Customers exercise restraint when logging a Critical issue. Zen Systems reserve the right to charge out of hours support rates for unreasonable use of the 24 hour support line. Working hours are 9.00am to 6.00pm on Mondays to Fridays (excluding Public holidays in England and Wales).

First Line Support Request

SLA Type

Response Time

Level 1 minor - configuration change or general support enquiry.

Best endeavours

Same working day

Level 2 Serious - a non critical defect or problem for which there is a workaround or ongoing operation is still possible. 

Best endeavours

4 working hours

Level 3 Critical - the problem results in total unavailability of the email system affecting the entire user base. 

Guaranteed

30 minutes 24/7

3.2.4. Zen Systems are able to restore Zimbra mailbox backups up to 30 days old unless Zimbra has been upgraded in which case it may not be possible to restore any historical backups. Notwithstanding this, Zen Systems will endeavour to commence mailbox restores according to the Support Response Times. Mailbox data restore requests will only be accepted in writing by e-mail from the Customer. Restoring a mailbox backup can take considerable time if the data has to be retrieved from the offsite location.

4. Scheduled & Emergency Maintenance

4.1. Scheduled Maintenance activities anticipated to affect mailbox access will be scheduled after 8pm GMT on a Friday and before midnight GMT on the immediate Sunday following.

4.2. Advanced noticed of Scheduled Maintenance will be posted to http://zimbra.zensystems.co.uk/news at least 7 days prior to the maintenance window.

4.3. Zimbra upgrades are considered Scheduled Maintenance and are ordinarily conducted quarterly and take between approximately 1 and 8 hours depending on complexity and whether problems are encountered during the upgrade. Customers are restricted from accessing their mailbox whilst the upgrade is underway.

4.4. Scheduled Maintenance which affects Availability of Services other than Zimbra will not exceed 2 hours in any one calendar month.

4.5. Emergency Maintenance may be necessary in order to apply security related software patches or resolve a service affecting critical issue. Zen Systems will conduct this maintenance out of UK business hours where possible and will notify Customers if practical. 

5. SLA Measurement

5.1. To monitor email Availability, Zen Systems test POP3 (port 110 and port 995), IMAP (port 143 and 993), SMTP (port 25 and port 587), HTTP/S (ports 80 & 443) from multiple independent monitoring stations outside of the Zen Systems network using a third party monitoring service. In addition, Zen Systems' monitoring systems send and receive, via SMTP (port 25) and IMAP (port 143), test emails to a Zimbra mailbox.

5.2. Performance against SLA Service Availability targets is measured on a monthly basis and is calculated using the equation below using data gathered solely from Zen Systems' monitoring systems.

Availability = Total minutes in month - Maintenance minutes - Unavailability minutes

    Total minutes in month - Maintenance minutes

5.3. Maintenance minutes include minutes of unavailability due to Scheduled Maintenance, Emergency Maintenance and Exclusions (listed below)  

6. Credits

6.1. Failure to meet an SLA target for a given Service will result in Customers becoming eligible for the following credit. Credits will only be applied against the Service for which the credit is due if the Customer has no outstanding, non disputed bills.

Metric

Service Level

Incident

Service Credit - % of 1 month charge

MX and Smart Host Server Availability

< 100% & ≥ 99.9%

Availability below service level

25

< 99.9% & ≥ 99.0%

50

< 99.0%

100

Zimbra Availability

< 99.9% & ≥ 98.0%

Availability below service level

25

< 98.0% & ≥ 95.0%

50

< 95%

100

Valid Level 3 Support Request

Engineer will begin dealing with issue within 30 minutes

Failure to commence within 30 minutes

25

Failure to commence within 2 hours

50

Failure to commence within 4 hours

100

 

7. Exclusions

7.1. Customers will not receive any credits under this SLA if any of the following cause or are associated with unavailability or deficiency:

7.1.1. Scheduled or Emergency Maintenance or agreed downtime; and

7.1.2. unavailability whilst a mailbox backup is in progress; and

7.1.3. unavailability of or disruption or delay in telecommunications or third party circuits or links; and

7.1.4. any external Internet Service Provider or an Internet exchange point; and

7.1.5. malicious attacks intended to degrade Zen Systems' email Services; and

7.1.6. behaviour of Customer or End User equipment, facilities or applications; and

7.1.7. Customer and or End User acts or omissions or acts or omissions of others engaged or authorised by Customer and or End User including without limitation any negligence, wilful misconduct or use of the Services in breach of Zen Systems' Terms and Conditions and Acceptable Use Policy; and

7.1.8. acts of god, acts of any governmental body, war, civil disorder, embargo, natural cataclysm or other occurrences beyond the reasonable control of Zen Systems.

7.2. Zen Systems shall in addition, not be liable for any loss, liability, damages (whether direct, indirect or consequential) or expense of whatsoever nature that howsoever arising where Zen Systems' failure to meet the service level or otherwise perform any of the services.

8. Claims

8.1. To receive credit if any of the guarantees has not been met, the Customer must email This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it within 15 days of the end of the month for which the credit is requested. The Customer shall only be entitled to claim credit under one section of the SLA per day. The total amount credited to a Customer in a particular month under this SLA will not exceed the total Service fee paid by a Customer for such month for the affected Service.