The Sketch Engine

Service Level Agreement

The Sketch Engine, as installed at  http://www.sketchengine.co.uk is a web service used under licence by the customer. The Sketch Engine will normally be available continuously. Lexical Computing Ltd, provider of the service, guarantees that:

1. Any individual outage in excess of four hours within the working week or twelve hours outside it or sum of outages exceeding eight hours in a month will constitute a violation. The working week is defined as 9am-5pm (UK time zone), Monday-Friday, excluding UK Bank Holidays, the month of August, and the period between Christmas and New Year.
2. The Sketch Engine team will respond to incidents that prevent or severely limit multiple users (typically more than 10) from using the service within two hours within the working week or twelve hours outside it, resolve the problem within four further hours within the working week or twenty-four further hours outside it, and update status every day. Missing any of these metrics on an incident will constitute a violation.
3. The Sketch Engine team will respond to service incidents that prevent or severely limit individual users from using the service within eight hours within the working week or 48 hours outside it, resolving the problem within the same period again. Missing any of these metrics on an incident will constitute a violation.
4. The Sketch Engine team will respond to non-critical inquiries within three working days. Missing this metric will not constitute a violation. A non-critical inquiry is defined as a request for information that has no impact on the service quality if not answered or acted upon promptly.
5. Incidents will not be classified as violations if they are caused by:
   1. force majeure
   2. the customer, customer’s employees or customer’s auxiliary persons
   3. unavoidable service impairments due to changes in the service which have been ordered by the customer, or have become mandatory because of legal or regulatory demands
6. The Sketch Engine team will announce scheduled maintenance which may have an effect on the customer’s services at least three working days in advance. Scheduled maintenance works are normally carried out between midnight and 6 a.m. In exceptional cases, system maintenance can be carried out at all other times as well, but having regard to the least possible influence on running operations.
7. Lexical Computing Limited (LCL) is only liable for non-compliance with the service level specified if it is solely responsible for the non-compliance. In particular incidents will not count as violations if the incident results from:
   1. external DNS server problems, electronic attacks on LCL’s servers, network or mail infrastructure, and failures of parts of the internet not under the control of LCL
   2. customers, especially breakdowns due to incoming or outgoing hacker attacks (DoS) resulting from faulty or insufficient maintenance of the customer’s network
   3. If LCL can prove for any asserted claim by a customer that it is not a valid warranty claim, the error diagnostics and trouble shooting will be at the expense of the customer.
8. Number of violations per year and associated penalties
   1. 1-3 violations: no penalty
   2. 4-8 violations: 10% reduction in all recurring fees for which service was impaired for the year
   3. >8: 20% reduction in fees plus LCL to provide customer with a plan to improve the service, to be ratified by the customer.

Lexical Computing Ltd

28 April 2009