Z-Cloud

• • System administration and ongoing security compliance 
  • MAS environment provisioning including sizing, product installation, configuration and deployment 
  • Ongoing maintenance including Application, Middleware and O/S upgrades, updates, patches and fixes 
  • Ongoing environment and database monitoring, logging & tuning 
  • 24 x 7 system administration support on call 
  • 24 x 7 support and monitoring for systems and applications 
  • ITIL managed operations (service request, incident, problem and change management) 
  • Disaster recovery and backup / restore support & services 

Technical support for the cloud service is available as part of the customer’s subscription period. 

Z-Cloud customers receive support coverage 24 hours per day, 7 days per week, 365 days per year. This includes ZPro Support Portal access, comprehensive backup and restore, system monitoring and patching. 24×7 emergency on-call support is available for Severity 1 or system down incidents. This is reserved for production outages where the application is unavailable or service has been severely degraded. ZPro leverages an automated alert system integrated with our case ticketing system to provide timely customer response to Sev1 issues. 

Maximo Application Suite Managed Service is currently offered from the following ZPro Cloud data center locations (regions). 

• • • Naples, FL 
    • Rancho Cordova, California
    • Miami, Florida.
      

ZPro’s MAS-MS support personnel are located across the globe in the following countries: 

• • • United States 
    • UAE 
    • Pakistan 
    • India 

The following table lists the expected lead time for the ZPro SRE team (CDS) to complete certain types of tasks based on the initial case or service request response date. Lead times are in business days and are approximate. 

The ZPro SRE team has monitoring in place for all sites and infrastructure under our control. These are designed to allow the SRE team to pro-actively respond to service impacting or service threatening events or conditions. When a site is unavailable, or there are infrastructure issues leading to monitor alerts, an incident record is automatically generated within our Incident Management System. 

At the same time, for production environments, a SRE Incident Response Team (IRT) provides 24/7 critical outage support. The goal of IRT is to ensure our customer’s applications are running when they should, and to provide effective and timely customer communication during availability incidents or Severity 1 cases during off hours. IRT is sometimes referred to as the “on call” team. 

Please note IRT is not considered standard support. It is for emergency and Sev1 cases only. Please see our Support & Operations section for standard support details and hours of operation. 

How is the ZPro SRE Incident Response Team (IRT) organized? 

The IRT is organized into a 2-person rotating schedule on 8-hour cycles over 7 days. This means that there are two IRT members for each 8 hour period: a Client Communicator and a First Responder. IBM SRE uses a region based “follow the sun” support model. The IRT schedule is maintained and updated by IBM on a regular basis. 

Client Communicator 

• • The Client Communicator (CC) is responsible for ensuring that any customer affected by a Severity 1 incident or alert is receiving prompt and frequent communication regarding the status of their incident. This resource does not necessarily have technical skills or access to investigate / act upon systems that are failing. The CC may also be expected to triage requests that do not fall within the definition of Severity 1 and communicate with the customer regarding these issues. 

First Responder 

• • The First Responder (FR) is a technical role that requires access to systems that may be in a failed or failing state, as well as the skills required to understand what can be done to recover affected environment(s). It may not be possible for the FR to correct all problems and he/she should be equipped to escalate issues to specific individuals for resolution if necessary. The FR remains focused on incident resolution at all times and is not expected to communicate directly with customers; they remain in regular contact with the Client Communicator on duty. It is important to note that the First Responder is precisely that, the first responder – he/she is not solely responsible for solving every incident. 

The first responder will respond to alerts and off hours Severity 1 cases to: 

• • Determine the impact of the alert or case 
  • Determine the cause of the alert or case 
  • Initiate corrective action if appropriate 
  • Alert the Client Communicator if escalation is determined necessary. 

The IBM first responder’s priority will be to restore service. The IBM client communicator is notified if there are any challenges to restoring service. The IBM client communicator will lead the recovery activities and escalate to any personnel required to resolve the issue, while also ensuring that continuous communication is maintained with the customer throughout the length of the incident. 

Escalation Manager / Discipline Team Members Additional support for IRT members is provided by an Escalation Manager as well as dedicated Database and Network discipline team members. These specific SRE individuals are assigned to the IRT schedule to also provide coverage. 

Applying our years of experience, as well as the various skill sets within our resource pools, will afford us the capabilities to address all normal services that are a party to maintenance and support agreements:

• Analyze and prioritize reported incidents
• Route and assign incidents to team members by skill set
• Troubleshooting and error resolution per the scope and severity of the incident
• Full incident tracking and incident metrics
• Application of patches and updates, monitoring of performance where product vendor agreements and/or hosting agreements do not already cover the services
• Monitor application health to ensure the integrity of configurations and supported modification
• Ensure application availability and uptime, in coordination with hosting vendors
• Follow formal change management protocols, as also governed by the client
• Support training initiatives that are not consultative (documentation, end-user support)
• Maintain a full working relationship with both client application administration and development staff as well as all major product vendors. 

Schedule a consultation meeting for more information.