01. Purpose, Applicability & Contractual Scope
This Service Level Agreement ("SLA") sets forth the operational performance metrics, availability commitments, and support escalation protocols provided by Cogential IT, LLC ("Service Provider", "we", "us", or "our") to the client organization ("Customer") identified in the applicable ordering document, Master Services Agreement ("MSA"), Statement of Work ("SOW"), or Service Invoice.
cogentialit.com), which is governed by our Website Terms of Use.
This SLA is incorporated by reference into each Customer Invoice or SOW. Service Provider reserves the right to modify this SLA periodically by publishing an updated version on our website, provided that material changes will not unilaterally reduce existing contractual commitments during an active subscription term.
02. Production Environment Definition
For the purposes of this SLA, the "Production Environment" comprises the mission-critical cloud software systems, communication gateways, and data processing engines managed directly by Cogential IT to deliver live EDI translation and document exchange:
- Customer SaaS Portal: The web-based portal interface where authorized Customer users access integration monitoring dashboards, review transaction set logs, configure trading partner profiles, and verify functional acknowledgments (997/999/CONTRL).
- EDI Translation & Transformation Engine: The proprietary data mapping cluster responsible for parsing, validating, and converting structured EDI documents (ANSI ASC X12, EDIFACT, XML, JSON, CSV) into proprietary ERP schemas and vice versa.
- B2B Communications Gateway: Secure protocol endpoints managed by Cogential IT, including AS2 (RFC 4130), SFTP, FTPS, and RESTful API endpoints used for automated transaction transport.
- Production Databases & Message Queues: High-availability database clusters and persistent message broker queues holding active and archival transaction records.
03. 99.9% Service Availability SLA
Cogential IT commits to maintaining a minimum monthly Service Availability of 99.9% across the Production Environment during each calendar month.
Service Availability is calculated on a monthly calendar basis using the following formula:
"Unscheduled Downtime" refers to an unannounced state where Customer cannot transmit or receive transactions through the communications gateway, or where the core translation engine is completely unresponsive to data payloads, measured from the moment the condition is reported or detected by automated telemetry.
04. Service Credit Remedies
In the event Cogential IT fails to achieve the 99.9% monthly availability commitment for causes within our reasonable operational control, Customer is entitled to request a contractual Service Credit against their monthly managed service subscription fee as outlined below:
| Monthly Availability Level | Monthly Downtime Threshold | Service Credit Percentage |
|---|---|---|
| 99.9% or higher | Under ~43 minutes | Standard SLA Met (0%) |
| 99.0% to 99.89% | 44 minutes to ~7.2 hours | 10% Monthly Service Credit |
| 95.0% to 98.99% | 7.3 hours to ~36 hours | 20% Monthly Service Credit |
| Below 95.0% | Exceeding 36 hours | 30% Monthly Service Credit |
Service Credits are applied to subsequent billing cycles upon written request submitted to support@cogentialit.com within thirty (30) days following the end of the month in which the SLA deficit occurred. Service credits represent Customer's sole and exclusive monetary remedy for availability failures.
05. Incident Severity Levels & Guaranteed Response Times
When support tickets are opened via our support desk, Cogential IT triages each ticket according to the following 4-tier Severity Matrix and adheres to strict initial response and escalation commitments:
| Severity | Impact Criteria | Response Time | Resolution Effort |
|---|---|---|---|
| Severity 1 (Critical) | Complete production outage. AS2/SFTP gateway down, order processing halted, or critical transactions blocked across all trading partners. | < 15 Minutes 24/7/365 Coverage |
Continuous 24/7 engineering effort until operational workaround or resolution is achieved. |
| Severity 2 (Major) | Severe degradation. A single high-volume trading partner is failing, functional acknowledgments (997) delayed, but core system remains operational. | < 2 Hours Extended Business Hours |
Dedicated engineering focus during active business hours with regular progress updates every 2 hours. |
| Severity 3 (Minor) | Non-critical issue. Isolated mapping discrepancy, reporting error, or minor customer portal display inconsistency not affecting transaction delivery. | < 8 Hours Standard Business Hours |
Resolution investigated during standard operating hours and queued for next maintenance deployment. |
| Severity 4 (General) | General inquiries, new trading partner onboarding requests, non-urgent mapping modifications, or advisory questions. | < 1 Business Day Standard Business Hours |
Scheduled with Customer according to standard onboarding and implementation timelines. |
06. Zero-Cost Reprocessing Guarantee
Cogential IT stands firmly behind the accuracy and precision of our managed integration deliverables. We recognize that in supply chain EDI, data errors can disrupt warehouse packing, freight scheduling, and retailer invoice settlement.
The Cogential IT Zero-Cost Reprocessing Commitment
When managed services or translation workflows are performed incorrectly due to an error, misconfiguration, or defect on the part of Cogential IT, LLC, we will correct any inaccurate output and reprocess the impacted transactions without additional cost to the Customer, even if doing so requires otherwise billable engineering and consulting resources.
This guarantee ensures that Customer is never billed for remediation hours or reprocessing runs required to fix an issue originating within Cogential IT's managed mapping scripts or operational pipelines.
07. Scheduled Maintenance & Disaster Recovery
A. Planned Maintenance Windows
To ensure ongoing infrastructure stability, security patching, and platform enhancements, Cogential IT conducts routine scheduled maintenance during off-peak weekend hours (typically Saturday or Sunday between 11:00 PM and 3:00 AM UTC).
- Cogential IT will provide Customer with at least five (5) calendar days advance written or email notice prior to standard scheduled maintenance that may cause service interruptions.
- Emergency security patches (e.g., critical zero-day cryptographic vulnerabilities) may be applied with shorter notice when necessary to protect infrastructure integrity.
- Planned maintenance hours are expressly excluded from monthly Unscheduled Downtime calculations.
B. Disaster Recovery (RPO & RTO Targets)
Cogential IT maintains geo-redundant cloud infrastructure and automated off-site snapshot backups to ensure business continuity in catastrophic data center outage scenarios:
- Recovery Point Objective (RPO): Less than one (1) hour. Data replication intervals ensure that in the event of hardware failover, maximum potential data loss is limited to under 60 minutes of queued payloads.
- Recovery Time Objective (RTO): Less than four (4) hours to restore core transaction processing and AS2 communication gateways on secondary standby infrastructure.
08. Exclusions, Limitations & Contact Desk
The availability guarantees and response time commitments set forth in this SLA do not apply to downtime or service impairments resulting from:
- Outages or latency originating within external third-party telecommunications carriers, public internet backbones, or third-party Value Added Networks (VANs) such as OpenText or Inovis.
- Customer-managed ERP systems, local accounting databases, client-side firewall blocks, or expired client SSL/AS2 certificates.
- Customer's failure to adhere to system prerequisites, malformed transaction payloads submitted by Customer or Customer's trading partners, or uncoordinated stress testing.
- Force majeure events beyond Cogential IT's reasonable control, including natural disasters, acts of government, armed conflict, or regional infrastructure failures.
For questions regarding this Agreement, to log an incident, or to file a service credit claim, please contact our support desk: