Last updated January 2023 – Section 1.8 has been changed to reflect shorter Support Hours. This is a medium term change that reflects the current cost of service.
Here at Kobas we understand our responsibility to provide rock solid in-venue EPoS and Cloud based hospitality business management platforms. This Kobas Service Level Agreement (“SLA”) details our commitment to our paying clients. It explains how we strive to ensure our systems are available for use, and our support arrangements should things unfortunately go wrong.
1. Some definitions
1.1 Our web sites, EPoS systems, associated data processing and emailing facilities are collectively known as the “services”.
1.2 “We” or “us” are Kobas, a trading name of Kobas Hospitality Ltd, registered in Ireland with company number 666501.
1.3 “You” or “the user” are a user of our Cloud based hospitality management platform, or our in-venue EPoS system, working for a paying Kobas client.
1.4 Annual Uptime Percentage” is calculated by subtracting from 100% the percentage of minutes during the year in which Kobas Cloud or EPoS, as applicable, is “Unavailable” outside of planned maintenance events.
1.5 “Unavailable” and “Unavailability” mean:
For Kobas Cloud, when it is not possible to connect to our Cloud User Interface, or Public API, from any and all internet connections, or when a persistent code 500 Internal Server error is experienced for all requests.
For Kobas EPoS, when it is not possible to perform EPoS transactions, when it has been absolutely proven that the Local Area Network (LAN) is functioning correctly. Note that while the Wide Area Network (WAN / Internet) is not required for Kobas EPoS to function, it is required for remote troubleshooting, software upgrades and support assistance.
1.6 All times are in UK time unless otherwise stated.
1.7 “Business Hours” means 09:00 to 18:00 on weekdays excluding public holidays.
1.8 “Support Hours” means:
- 09:00 to 20:00 on weekdays excluding public holidays
- 12:00 to 18:00 on Saturdays
- 12:00 to 16:00 on Sundays and public holidays, excluding:
- New Year’s Day – Closed
- Good Friday – Closed
- Easter Day – Closed
- Christmas Eve – Close at 14:00
- Christmas Day – Closed
- Boxing Day – Closed
- New Year’s Eve – Close at 18:00
2. Goals & objectives
The purpose of this agreement is to ensure proper process and commitments are in place to provide essential business tools to the user. This agreement seeks to present a clear, concise and measurable description of your Kobas service provision, and to match perceptions of expected service provision with actual service support and delivery.
While this agreement outlines our minimum obligations to you, we will always strive to exceed them. A higher level of service agreement is available upon request and is subject to a premium.
3. Service scope
The following services are covered by this agreement:
- The Kobas Cloud hospitality management platform.
- The Kobas Application Programming Interface (KAPI).
- Kobas in-venue Electronic Point of Sale (EPoS) systems.
- Telephone support.
- Monitored email support.
- Planned or emergency on-site assistance (extra costs apply).
4. Your requirements
In order to meet your requirements in support of this agreement, you must:
- Provide reasonable availability of representatives when establishing new systems and when resolving service-related incidents or requests.
- Notify us in advance of any venue network or internet infrastructure changes, so we can advise of consequential risk to the service we provide.
- Provide us with email and telephone details for a named contact for network infrastructure problems at each of your trading venues.
- Ensure payment for all support costs are met at the agreed interval.
5. Our commitments
5.1 Planned maintenance events
There is a weekly routine maintenance window between 05:00 and 06:00 UTC on Monday mornings. Outside of this, we commit to providing appropriate notification to you ahead of all other planned maintenance events. This would be a minimum of two business days ahead of an event. If an event is expected to take more than 2 hours, or conflict with trading hours, we would provide a minimum of 5 business days of notice. Wherever possible, we will perform such events outside of your trading hours, and outside of UK business hours.
5.2 Automated backups and patches
The Kobas Cloud and KAPI services run on Amazon Web Services (AWS). All data is routinely backed up between 03:00 and 04:00 UTC daily, which may result in a slight loss of performance at that time. When necessary, software package maintenance occurs between 05:00 and 06:00 UTC on Monday mornings, and brief outages are possible (though rare) during this time. Kobas Cloud backups are stored for 40 days.
Kobas EPoS servers run on dedicated hardware in your venue. We run remote backups at 05:00 UTC daily. At this time performance may be briefly reduced, but the EPoS will still function. The nature of our continuous delivery of software means that your EPoS software could be patched at any time without unavailability; though we always strive to perform non-trivial updates outside of your venue’s trading hours. Operating system updates occasionally require a remote reboot which will result in a brief outage. If this is necessary, it will be performed outside of your venue’s trading hours. Kobas EPoS backups are stored for 31 days.
5.3 Uptime
With the exclusion of planned maintenance events (5.1) and automated backups and patches (5.2), we commit to Kobas Cloud, KAPI and EPoS services maintaining a minimum of 99.95% annual uptime. This allows for a maximum of 278 minutes of unavailability for each service throughout the year – an average of 22 minutes a month.
Our availability and historical performance are monitored by AWS alarms, Pingdom, and from our own external monitoring software.
5.4 Monitored email support
Support requests should be raised and continued by emailing our helpdesk address support@kobas.co.uk. Email is our preferred channel as it allows us to triage and collaborate effectively, leading to the quickest resolution for the more critical incidents.
While we commit to acknowledge all new requests within two Support Hours, we understand a rapid response is crucial to holding confidence in our support offering. We therefore strive to respond as quickly as possible, and tickets are flagged with our support manager if we do not respond within half an hour within these times.
Outside of Support Hours we continue to monitor support emails. Nominated members of our team will receive push notifications to their smart phones when new support emails arrive, and any operationally critical cases will be addressed as swiftly as possible. Non-critical requests will be addressed during Support Hours. Requests that require escalation beyond our support team will be handled during Business Hours.
5.5 Telephone support
Telephone support is not available on our basic SLA. However, callbacks may be requested by email. Premium telephone support can be requested at additional cost.
5.6 Planned or emergency on-site assistance
In the event of catastrophic failure, we can provide emergency on-site assistance. Extra costs apply on a per-incident basis. Costs are dependent on the nature, location and time of the incident.
6. Service assumptions
Changes to services provided and this SLA will be communicated to Kobas clients.
Electricity supply, Internet connectivity and Local Area Network (LAN) systems will be stable when service incidents are reported to us.
7. Exclusions
- This Service Level does not apply to any unavailability of our services under the following circumstances:
- Caused by factors outside of our reasonable control, including any force majeure event or large-scale Internet access or related problems.
- If the origin of any service interruption is proven to be the result of faults with or failure of your equipment, software or other technology and/or third-party equipment (other than within our direct control).
- Following suspension or termination of your Kobas account.
Thank you for using Kobas.