Support Services Agreement
This Support Policy defines Kinetica’s support terms and conditions and provides a detailed description of Kinetica’s levels of Support Services.
1. Definitions.
1.1 Documentation.
The documents published by Kinetica and made available as part of the Software, which may be modified from time to time by Kinetica.
1.2 Error.
Error means a failure of the Software to conform in all material respects with the applicable Documentation published by Kinetica.
1.3 Major Release.
Major Releases (X.y.z) are vehicles for delivering major and minor feature development and enhancements to existing features. They incorporate all applicable Error corrections made in prior Major Releases, Minor Releases, and Maintenance Releases.
1.4 Minor Release.
Minor Releases (x.Y.z) are vehicles for delivering minor feature developments, enhancements to existing features, and defect corrections. They incorporate all applicable Error corrections made in prior Minor Releases, and Maintenance Releases.
1.5 Maintenance Release.
Maintenance Releases (x.y.Z) are vehicles for delivering Error corrections that are severely affecting a number of customers and cannot wait for the next major or minor release. They incorporate all applicable defect corrections made in prior Maintenance Releases. While there is no predefined schedule for Maintenance Releases, these are released as needed based on customer feedback and outstanding defects.
1.6 Software.
Software means (a) the Kinetica Database, (b) the Kinetica APIs, (c) the Kinetica Connectors, (d) other Kinetica Code which are developed and licensed by Kinetica DB, Inc.
2. Support Services.
- Case Management. Facilities for case and issue tracking and escalation of problems for priority attention in relation to the Software. Case Management is done within the Kinetica provided support portal accessible from the Kinetica web site (“Support Portal”).
- Questions & Answers.Questions answered about the Software or use of the Software that can be answered within a reasonable period of time. For questions for which answers would involve lengthy discussion or training, referral will be done to training materials or programs. For questions which require hands-on software coding assistance, referral will be done to review professional services offerings.
- Troubleshooting.Assistance with troubleshooting of issues encountered to diagnose and fix the problem including potential fixes for errors in the Software.
- Documentation.Access to Documentation relating to Software.
3. Exclusions from Support Services.
Kinetica will not support: (i) Software which has been altered or modified by anyone other than Kinetica; (ii) a release of the Software that has not been approved for general availability (“GA”); (iii) problems caused by Customer’s negligence, misuse, or hardware or environment malfunction; or (iv) use of Software inconsistent with the Documentation (e.g., Software not installed on supported systems in accordance with the Documentation). Support Services do not include information or assistance on technical issues related to the debugging, installation, administration, and use of Customer’s computer systems and enabling technologies including, but not limited to: other databases, computer networks, communications, hardware, hard disks, networks, or cloud services.
4 Customer Responsibilities.
Customer shall provide commercially reasonable cooperation and full information to Kinetica with respect to Kinetica’s furnishing of Support Services. Customer is required to assist Kinetica’s technical support staff until problem resolution. Required Customer activities may include logging into Customer’s systems for diagnosis of problems, downloading and installation of software patches, retrieval and transfer of system logs/files, re-installation of existing product and participation in tests for fixes
4. Levels of Support Services
Support Services are offered with the following tiers: Community, Basic, Standard, and Premium.
| Support Level | Availability | Offering |
|---|---|---|
| Community | Developer edition, anyone not registered with Support Services. | Support via Kinetica SLACK channel. |
| Basic | Cloud Marketplace Pay-As-You-Go (PAYG) customers registered with Support Services. Other customers who have purchased Kinetica with Basic level support with registered users. | Support via Workbench chat, Support Portal, or email. No SLAs offered (see below). |
| Standard | Cloud Marketplace Bring Your Own License (BYOL) customers registered with Support Services. Other customers who have purchased Kinetica with Standard level support with registered users. | Support via Workbench chat, Support Portal, or email. SLAs offered (see below.) |
| Premium | Customers who have purchased Kinetica with Premium level support with registered users. Cloud Marketplace customers requesting Premium support should contact sales. | Support via Workbench chat, Support Portal, or email. Enhanced SLAs offered (see below.) Monthly service reviews. Quarterly health checks. Named Technical Representative. |
5. Support Contacts.
Customer shall designate a number of contacts (“Support Contacts”) eligible to interact with Kinetica related to the Support Services according to the schedule below. The Support Contacts are authorized to submit problems via the customer support portal described in the Support section of the Kinetica website (https://support.kinetica.com). If needed, the Customer can purchase additional contacts. All Support Contacts must be registered with Kinetica either through the Cloud Workbench sign up process or by emailing contact data for the Support Contact to Kinetica support (support@kinetica.com.)
Number of named Support Contacts for each Kinetica Support Level
| Support Level | Number of named contacts |
|---|---|
| Basic | Up to 5 |
| Standard | Up to 10 |
| Premium | Up to 50 per contract |
6. Severity Levels.
Upon receipt of a properly submitted Error, Kinetica shall prioritize it in accordance with the guidelines below. Error severity may be re-evaluated upon submission of a workaround.
- Severity 1 (S1). An S1 Error is a major Error within the Software that severely impacts the Customer’s use of the Software for production purposes, such as the loss of production data or where production systems are down or not functioning and no work around exists. This is also known as Urgent.
- Severity 2 (S2). An S2 Error is an Error within the Software where the Customer’s system is functioning but in a degraded or restricted capacity, such that it is causing significant impact to portions of the Customer’s business operations and productivity, or where the Software is exposed to potential loss or interruption of service. This is also known as High.
- Severity 3 (S3). An S3 Error is a medium-to-low impact Error that involves partial and/or non-critical loss of functionality, such as a problem that that impairs some operations but allows the Customer’s operations to continue to function. This is also known as Normal.
- Severity 4 (S4). An S4 Error is a low priority request for information where there is no impact to business operations. This is also known as Low.
7. Enhancement Requests (“ER”).
An ER is a request for a future product enhancement or modification to add official Support Services and Documentation for unsupported or undocumented features, or features that do not exist in the Software. Kinetica will take ERs into consideration in the product management process, but has no obligation to deliver enhancements based on any ER. ER’s should be logged with through the Customer support portal.
8. Support Level Agreement.
Support will be addressed through initial response time guidelines as indicated in the Availability and Initial Response Times table below. Initial Response time depends on the Support Level (“Basic,” “Standard,” or “Premium”) that Customer has selected and for which appropriate fees are paid.
The time windows for Support Services availability will be based on the local time zone of the office from which the Customer has subscribed to Kinetica.
Kinetica addresses Error resolutions through a number of mechanisms, including defining workarounds, developing Maintenance Releases, or through an upcoming general release based on issue severity and priority. Scheduling of the Error resolution will be based on severity and priority. At Kinetica’s discretion, a Maintenance Release approach may be followed in cases that are high severity or impact multiple customers if a workaround is not available.
If at any time, a customer believes the level of service being provided is not consistent with this Support Services Policy, the case may be escalated to Kinetica’s account team or Chief Customer Success Officer by emailing support@kinetica.com. Any customer-requested escalation receives direct management attention and consideration.
9. Availability and Initial Response Times.
Kinetica provides a service level agreement for response (“SLA”) for Standard and Premium Support Service subscribers. Kinetica shall exercise commercially reasonable efforts to meet the following initial response times as documented in the table below.
| Level of Severity | Description of Severity | Characteristics | Standard Support | Premium Support |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Level 1 - Urgent | Critical Business Impact: Critical issue occurring on production system preventing business operations. A large number of users are prevented from working with no procedural workaround. | System hangs or crashes. Critical functionality not available .Data loss or data corruption .Large number of end users blocked from work Impact is escalating quickly | 2 business hours | 1 hour |
| Level 2 - High | Significant performance degradation Important functionality not available Small number of users blocked from work Impact is escalating | Significant Business Impact: Major issue occurring on production system severely impacting business. A large number of users are impacted by issue but they are still able to work in a limited capacity. | 8 business hours | 4 hours |
| Level 3 - Normal | Normal Business Impact: Issue causing a partial or non-critical loss of functionality on production system. A small number of users are affected. | Some system functions not available Minor performance degradation Small number of users impacted Impact is not escalating | 16 business hours | 8 business hours |
| Level 4 - Low | Minimal Business Impact: issue occurring on non-production system or question, comment, feature request, documentation issue or other non-impacting issue. | Incorrect product behavior without impact Product question or enhancement | 48 business hours | 24 business hours |
10. Use of Support Services.
Unless otherwise stated in Customer’s order, Support Services are included in Customer’s Software License Subscription as long as the Customer has registered Support Contacts to participate in support channels. (Refer to levels above).
While Customer has an active license entitling Customer to receive Support Services for Kinetica Software, Customer is required to purchase applicable Support Services subscriptions for each computer device (e.g., node, core, physical server, or virtual machine) on which Customer has installed the Kinetica Software (including variants or components thereof).
11. Product Lifecycle and End of Life (EOL).
Major releases (defined in section 1.3 above) will be supported for 24 calendar months after they are superseded by the next major release. e.g. Version 6.0 will no longer be supported 24 months after version 6.1 is released. Current product EOL/EOS (end of life/end of support) dates are listed below:
| Version | Superseded by | End of Life/Support Date |
|---|---|---|
| 6.1 | 6.2 | 2/16/20 |
| 6.2 | 7.0 | 2/1/21 |
| 7.0 | 7.1 | 8/18/22 |
| 7.1 | 7.2 | 2/12/26 |
| 7.2 | Current | NA |
