All support requests are handled first by a Tier I Support Engineer who will triage your request and work with you to identify and, in many cases, solve the problem. If the issue cannot be immediately resolved, the Tier I Support Engineer will assign the TSR to a Tier II Support Engineer for further investigation and resolution. If at any point in time, you feel that the support request is not being resolved appropriately or that your request needs a more senior technical resource or needs to be assigned a higher severity because of your business need, you can request escalation to a Tier II or Management resource. 

All support requests reported electronically receive an immediate automated e-mail confirmation with a Technical Service Request number for tracking purposes. A Support Engineer responds to the customer by phone or e-mail based on the Severity Level assigned to the TSR, with the exception of problems reported on weekends and holidays. Customers are advised to report Severity 1 problems by phone using our Production Emergency Hotline. Severity Levels help ensure that support issues (TSRs) are prioritized to minimize the impact on our customers' operations.

100% System Availability

The expected availability of the production system is 100%, with system uptime computed as:
System Uptime =   (Available-Time-per-Month) - (Downtime-per-Month)
                                             (Available-Time-per-Month)

A given instance of system downtime begins after receipt of an Emergency Support call, with confirmation by ChemWare's technical support engineer as a Severity 1 or Severity 2 failure attributable to ChemWare-supported software. Non-production systems, or failures attributable to customer error, unsupported software, hardware, or other circumstances beyond ChemWare's control are not included in the system uptime computation.

Immediate Response for Severity 1 Issues

The Software Maintenance Agreement describes the response and resolution time obligations for ChemWare's technical support engineers, the customer's response time obligations, and the escalation path and timing for issues that cannot be resolved through "front line" support. Issues relating to IT infrastructure, advanced system configuration, and programming may be escalated by the front line support engineer. The SLA also describes ChemWare's obligations for software patches/updates, if applicable.

 

Service Level	Severity 1	Severity 2	Severity 3	Severity 4	Severity 5
	Production Systems			General Questions	Enhancements
Description/ Examples	Complete loss of services; application unusable or inaccessible.	Severely impacted use of application with no reasonable workaround.	Moderately impacted use of application with reasonable workaround.	System configu-ration questions for additional features or new installation.	Enhancement requests or documentation errors.
ChemWare Response	Immediate	1 hour	4 hour response	1 business day	3 business days
Customer Response1	1 hour	Shorter of 4 hours or same business day	1 business day	1 business day	N/A
Escalation	Immediate (Tier 2)	4 hours	1 business day	1 business day	N/A
Resolution	1 hour	Shorter of 4 hours or same business day	3 business days	N/A	Other Service2, if applicable.
Software Update	Next update or general release	Next update or general release	Next update or general release	N/A	Other Service2, if applicable.

    ¹Severity categorization may be downgraded if Customer Response is delayed.
    ²See Technical Services Agreement for applicable terms and rates. 

Software maintenance includes unlimited technical support during normal business hours (8 am - 6 pm Eastern Time) on all software licensed from ChemWare. An emergency support level option is also available for customers requiring after-hours support.

If you are experiencing a production emergency (Severity 1 or 2), call the Priority Support line (press Option 1) for immediate assistance. Do not send email. If this is an after-hours emergency, call the Emergency Support Hotline (special contract terms apply).

Help Desk staff are available Monday - Friday (excluding holidays) during normal business hours (8 am - 6 pm Eastern Time).

2012 ChemWare Holiday Schedule (office closed):

• Monday, January 2 (New Years)
  
• Friday, April 6 (Good Friday)
• Monday, May28 (Memorial Day)
• Wednesday, July 4 (Independence Day)
• Monday, September 3 (Labor Day)
• Thursday/Friday, November 22-23 (Thanksgiving Day)
• Tuesday, December 25 (Christmas)

For additional disaster preparedness, ChemWare offers 24x7x365 production emergency support as an "on-call" service. The emergency support line is monitored after normal business hours: weeknights from 6pm EST - 8am EST, and 24-hour coverage on weekends and holidays. This coverage supplements the standard Software Maintenance Agreement, which already includes provisions for emergency (Severity 1 or 2) technical support during normal business hours through the Priority Support line (919.855.8716, Option 1).