Terms: Customer Support - Updated 2023.6.26
The Customer Support policy is designed to ensure that all customers receive prompt, professional, and courteous support. This policy provides an overview of the support and maintenance policies, which are part of the Lightbend Subscription and Product worldwide offerings.
This policy applies to all customers participating in Lightbend’s Subscription Plans and applies to all employees and contractors who deal with customers.
Lightbend’s goal is to ensure the success of each customer. Customers may use Lightbend Support to ask questions in addition to reporting bugs. Lightbend Support will guide the use of Lightbend technologies. Support does not include code or architectural reviews in-depth, nor does it include writing any application code. For services like these, the customer can engage Lightbend’s Professional Services team.
Lightbend is committed to providing the best possible support to all our customers. Lightbend strives to resolve all customer queries and requests as soon as possible and to keep our customers informed throughout the process.
Customers with Lightbend subscriptions will get support and access to the Customer Portal where the customer may submit support cases and view the Lightbend knowledge base, security alerts, documentation, and other technical content.
All support interactions will be conducted in English.
Support cases may be submitted for experimental features, however, the expected response times below do not apply in this case.
Lightbend offers 24/7, Developer, and Basic support. 24/7 Support satisfies the requirements of deployed production applications while Developer support assists during the development of the application:
| Support | Description |
|---|---|
| 24/7 |
24/7 support is geared towards enterprise customers who require “around-the-clock” support. This option provides customers with 24 hours per day, 7 days per week, and 365 days per year coverage for production outages (Severity 1). 24/7 support is ideal for mission-critical applications. To expedite a response, Lightbend has specific instructions for reporting 24/7, Severity 1 incidents, including a special hotline phone number. Special instructions are provided to subscribers with 24/7 support; these instructions must be followed to assure the noted response time. |
| Developer |
Developer support is for assistance during the development phase of an application. Developer support is not for production systems. |
| Basic |
Basic support is for online-only support for bug reporting and fixes/workarounds. |
The number of support incidents is unlimited for all classifications.
Incident severity levels are a measurement of the impact an incident has on the business.
| Severity | Description | Lightbend Response |
|---|---|---|
| Severity 1 |
An Error in the Software which severely affects the overall production performance of the Software’s function or process, such that a production system is non-functional and no procedural workaround exists. Only applicable in production environments. |
Lightbend will work continuously on Severity 1 incidents until a workaround or system recovery is successfully implemented and either the incident is closed or the severity is reduced. When required, Lightbend will provide a patch release to resolve Severity 1 incidents. |
| Severity 2 |
An Error in the Software which materially affects the overall production performance of the Software’s function or process so that the function or process is noticeably impaired, but where business operations continue. Only applicable in production environments. |
Lightbend will work to provide a resolution to Severity 2 incidents by a reasonable date agreed to between Lightbend and y the Customer. When required Lightbend will provide a patch release to resolve Severity 2 incidents. |
| Severity 3 |
An Error that does not materially affect the overall performance of a production function or process. This may include a minor issue with limited loss or no loss of functionality or impact on the Customer's operations. |
Lightbend will work to provide a resolution to Severity 3 incidents in an Upgrade release. |
| Severity 4 |
An Error encountered in a non-production environment, general usage questions, and documentation Errors. |
Lightbend will work to provide a resolution to Developer incidents in an Upgrade release. |
For customer support for products/services not hosted by Lightbend, Lightbend will use commercially reasonable efforts to provide an acknowledgment of a reported Issue to the Customer and respond within the target time frames specified below (“Response Time“). Response times define the maximum time to initially respond to the customer’s report of an incident, the time for a workaround or patch, and the time for a permanent correction to the incident, if applicable.
While not making a guarantee or warranty, Lightbend will make commercially reasonable efforts to respond to Error reports within the timeframes outlined in the tables below for each Support level.
| Severity | Target Response Time | Target Work Around Time | Target Permanent Correction Time |
|---|---|---|---|
| Severity 1 | 1 hour, any time of day (24 x 7 x 365) | 3 hours | Next release |
| Severity 2 | 4 business hours | 1 business day | Next release |
| Severity 3 | 1 business day | Future release | Future release |
To expedite a response, Lightbend has specific instructions for reporting 24/7, Severity 1 incidents, including a special hotline phone number. Special instructions are provided to subscribers with 24/7 support; these instructions must be followed to expect the noted response time.
Because there are fixed times during which an incident can be reported, the response time shown is not necessarily contiguous. For example, if an incident is reported at 5:00 PM on a Friday afternoon, it may be as late as the following Monday morning before a response is issued.
| Severity | Target Response Time | Target Work Around Time |
|---|---|---|
| Severity 4 | 1 business day | Future release |
Because there are fixed times during which an incident can be reported, the response time shown is not necessarily contiguous. For example, if an incident is reported at 5:00PM on a Friday afternoon, it may be as late as the following Monday morning before a response is issued.
Basic support is the minimum level of support Lightbend provides, applicable to only certain categories of customers. This is “bug fix” level online support to assist with Errors, and does not include the wide degree of advice typically supplied with Lightbend’s other support levels.
Lightbend provides support to customers worldwide. Each customer will be designated a regional support center that best matches the customer’s time zone. Response times are dictated by the time zone of the customer’s designated support center. Support hours are 08:00 to 18:00, Monday through Friday, within the time zone of the designated regional support center. Daylight savings time changes apply within each center’s time zone. Holidays are regional and are itemized below. Lightbend provides support in the following support centers:
| Support Center | Time Zone/Holidays |
|---|---|
| Australia |
Time Zone: Australian Eastern Time (AET) Holidays: New Year's Day, Australia Day, Good Friday, Easter Monday, Anzac Day, Queen’s Birthday, Labour Day, Christmas Day, Boxing Day. |
| Central Europe |
Time Zone: Central European Time (CET) Holidays: New Year's Day, St Berchtold, Good Friday, Easter Monday, Ascension, Whit Monday, Swiss National Day, Federal Fast holiday, Christmas Day. |
| US East |
Time Zone: Eastern Time (EST) Holidays: New Year's Day, Martin Luther King Day, President’s Day, Memorial Day, Independence Day, Labor Day, Thanksgiving Day, Day after Thanksgiving, and Christmas Day. |
| US Pacific |
Time Zone: Pacific Time (PST) Holidays: New Year's Day, Martin Luther King Day, President’s Day, Memorial Day, Independence Day, Labor Day, Thanksgiving Day, Day after Thanksgiving, and Christmas Day. |