Pure master software and service agreement

Service Level Agreement

The service levels specified in this Service Level Agreement will enter into effect on the date the Subscribed Products go into live production (“Go Live Date)”.

The following Annexes will form part of this Service Level Agreement:

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  Annex 1: Help Desk Services;

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  Annex 2: Error Reporting;

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  Annex 3: Pure Cloud Hosting; and

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  If you have subscribed to Pure Portal, Annex 4: Pure Portal.

Support

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 will not perform technical support on the Subscribed Products until you update to one of the Supported Releases.

Service Level Test

If this is your first time purchasing the Subscribed Product, you will be able to perform a service level test on the Subscribed Products to determine whether the Subscribed Products comply with the agreed service levels (the “Service Level Test”), as set out below.

The Service Level Test may only commence after you have notified us in writing that you will start the Service Level Test. If you wish to conduct a Service Level Test, you must do so within 20 working days after the Go Live Date, and you will be responsible for conducting the test (with our assistance, where reasonably required).Any Service Level Test will be conducted will be carried out for the Subscribed Products as a whole. If you have purchased Professional Services then you will have approved the Acceptance Test before the Service Level Test commences.

During the Service Level Test we will optimize performance of the Subscribed Products, and remedy any defects observed.

The Service Level Test will take at least 10 working days in succession, during which the Subscribed Products must have been live with normal functions. The time limit for completing the Service Level Test will be 3 months from the Go Live Date.

The Service Level Test has been fulfilled when the service levels have been met for at least 10 consecutive days for the Subscribed Products as a whole. If the Service Level Test is not completed within 3 months from the Go Live Date, and this cannot be attributed to us, the Service Level Test will be considered approved.

If you purchased Professional Services from us, and have approved the Acceptance Test with observed defects, you will only be obligated to approve the Service Level Test when those defects have been remedied to only include defects that fall within defect categories D and E, as defined in Annex 2 to this Service Level Agreement, Error Reporting, at Categorization of Defects. However, you will not be obligated to approve the Service Level Test in case there are more than 5 of these defects.

Service Level Agreement. Annex 1. Help Desk Services

You will have access to the Pure help desk (“Help Desk”) for the Term of the Agreement. The Help Desk will answer short precise questions regarding the Subscribed Products, undertake simple problem diagnosis and provide general guidance on the Subscribed Products, including whether an observed condition appears to be due to a defect in the Subscribed Products, 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;

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  E-mail to [email protected](opens in new tab/window)

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  The Pure European Help Desk can be reached via telephone +45 7214 6782, on all Elsevier Denmark working days from 0900 to 1600 CET.

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  The Pure United States Help Desk can be reached via telephone +1 212 448 2125, on all Elsevier New York working days from 0900 to 1600 EST.

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  The Pure Asia Pacific Help Desk can be reached via telephone +65 6349 0134, on all Elsevier Singapore working days from 0900 to 1600 SGT.

Outside of the above hours please contact Elsevier Customer Service:

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  0800 to 1900 CST on +1 (888) 615 4500 (US toll free) or +1 (314) 447-8068 (non-US toll free)

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  0800 to 1900 SGT on +65 6 349 0222.

The preferred entry point for support queries is via our issue and feature request system, which is available at all hours. Access to this system will be granted before Go Live Date:

https://support.pure.elsevier.com(opens in new tab/window)

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 the Subscribed Products that are raised in our tracking system will be processed as soon as possible.

Service Level Agreement. Annex 2. Error Reporting

If you observe suspected defects in the Subscribed Products , 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:

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  Pure version number;

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  Description of (suspected) defect, including action taken and subsequent response;

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  Steps to reproduce (suspected) defect;

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  Severity of (suspected) defect;

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  Possible annexes for clarification of the defects (e.g. screen prints);

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  Time of observing the (suspected) defect; and

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  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:

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  Asserting the type of issue: bug, improvement, question, etc.;

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  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

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  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 the Subscribed Products 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 the Subscribed Products. 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 Subscribed Software. “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 error escalation hierarchy available within the Documentation.

Service Level Agreement. Annex 3. Pure Cloud Hosting

The service levels set out in this Annex 3 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 the Subscribed Products, and make it available to you online in accordance with the Agreement.

Installation and Update Services

We will maintain your installation of the Subscribed Products within our IT environment on the following basis:

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  We reserve up to 4 hours out of every week to perform Installation and Update Service on the agreed installation(s) of the Subscribed Software (“Service Window”). These hours will be:

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    (i) if you are located in APAC: Wednesdays 12:00 – 16:00 CET;

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    (ii) if you are located in EMEA+NE: Wednesdays 20:00 to 24:00 CET;

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    (iii) if you are located in NOAM+LA: Thursdays 8:00 – 12:00 CET.

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  Note that this service window is used for all subscribers of the Subscribed Software, so your actual service window will likely be less than the full 4 hours.

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  If you have subscribed to Pure Cloud Hosting – Non-Production, then your non-production environment(s) will be updated in the first service window after the release date of a Feature Release. Your production environment will then be updated in the third service window after the release date of a Feature Release. Both your non-production and production environments will be updated in the first service window after a Maintenance Release or an Emergency Release is released by us.

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  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.

Operational and availability guarantees

We will use reasonable efforts to provide the Subscribed Products with a quality of service consistent with industry standards, including to provide continuous access to such Subscribed Products with an average of 99.5% up-time per year (“Availability”). In the event the Subscribed Products dos 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 Subscribed Product performance issues: (i) that result from a suspension permitted by the General Terms And Conditions Of Sale; (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 the Subscribed Products 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 the Subscribed Products 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 Subscribed Product being unavailable for any reason.

Security

We will use reasonable efforts, to conform with generally recognized industry standards, to preserve the security, integrity and accessibility of all information received from you.

System maintenance windows

We reserve the last Sunday of each month for scheduled maintenance work on our IT environment. Maintenance work only includes actual maintenance on the servers, such as operating system updates or other software updates. The IT environment maintenance window will not be used for updating the Subscribed Products. Updating of the Subscribed Products will be arranged according to the then current procedures.

We reserve two days per year for major system maintenance work, such as upgrading the operating system or other required software (e.g. the database), moving servers to different hardware to balance loads, etc.

We will send a notification to the Notification Mailing List (as defined herein) one week prior to any monthly service window if we are planning any scheduled maintenance work within that particular month.

Critical Security Patches

Critical security issues will be handled on a case-by-case basis. We will assess the gravity of the issue, and will decide on actions needed to remedy the issue.

We will notify you if we deem it necessary to act immediately upon a critical security issue. Such notification will include information on the issue that is being addressed and information on expected downtime.

Disaster recovery

In the event of a disaster, the Subscribed Products will, if possible, be restored in the same datacenter as before. If not, the Subscribed Product will be created in an alternative datacenter. After the Subscribed Product has been recreated all data will be restored from the latest backups. Whenever possible, you will be notified of the expected timeline for getting the Subscribed Product ready again. We will generally notify you of the status and progress during the recovery process. We also have a business continuity plan in place for more global emergencies (e.g., total loss of our IT environment).

Backup procedures

We warrant that a backup will be carried out every 24 hours. Our guaranteed retention time for audit logs, job logs and backups is 26 weeks. Backups older than 14 days will be archived and may then take up to one extra day to restore.

The backups are for disaster recovery only. We will not be responsible for creating backups that are required as a result of your use of the Subscribed Products that is not in accordance with the terms and instructions set out in the Documentation.

A backup will also be performed before any updates are made to the Subscribed Software.

Storage

Hosting will include storage of up to 1 TB front end data per environment, including, but not limited to, the database, upload files, audit logs, etc. Should we exceed this limit, we will contact you to agree on any needed changes to the Agreement. Any changes to the storage limit will be agreed in writing between the parties, and may be subject to additional fees.

Monitoring

All environments of the Subscribed Products, which are hosted by us, will be registered in our monitoring software, which runs regular checks on the Subscribed Products.

Designated contact

You will provide the email address of at least one designated contact person who will be responsible for receiving notifications of events related to the Subscribed Products. We will add this person to a mailing list used to notify our subscribers of service windows, emergencies or other system related notifications (“Notification Mailing List”).

Service Level Agreement. Annex 4. Pure Portal

This Annex 4 applies only if you have subscribed to the Pure Portal.

The Pure Portal will be hosted by us, in our IT environment.

Set up of the Pure Portal

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

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  installation and setup of the Pure Portal on our IT environment, and;

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  establishment of monitoring, and;

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  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

Updates to the Pure Portal will be performed in accordance with our Release Policy.

Setup of the Pure Web Service

You will ensure that a dedicated user is created for us, within the Pure Web Services included in the Subscribed Products, 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. 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 suspension as described in Section 1 and 3.11 of the Elsevier General Terms and Conditions of Sale; (ii) caused by factors outside of our reasonable control, including any force majeure event or 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 the Subscribed Products 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 Annex 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 the Subscribed Products.