Account Management 

Chemwatch will allocate a dedicated Account Manager (AM) from within our Customer Services team. The AM will assemble a small team of support staff. These will include:

1. A Project Manager

2. A Chemist

3. An IT Specialist

The AM will contact stakeholders at least quarterly. 

Application Uptime

Chemwatch will use commercially viable efforts to make its applications available with an Annual Uptime Percentage (defined below) of at least 99.95% during the Service Year. 

Where it is necessary to interrupt the service, downtime will be kept to a minimum and a notice to users will be posted on the site.  Should a user have any urgent requirements, during any downtime, emergency assistance may be requested by telephone. 

Service Credits: In the event Chemwatch does not meet the Annual Uptime Percentage commitment, the user may apply to receive a compensatory Service Credit. 

The table below depicts the Service Credits applied to a specific scenario:

Planned Downtime

Planned downtime is the time for scheduled maintenance and upgrades during which a system cannot be used for normal productive operations.  Planned downtime includes automatic Windows update on Sunday early morning (AEST). It may take up to 1 hour depending on the update.

Unplanned Downtime 

Unplanned downtime is the time during which a system cannot be used for normal productive operations due to unforeseen failure in hardware or software components, or operator mistakes. Chemwatch IT uses monitors to detect unplanned downtime. All detected unplanned downtime is registered in the downtime registry. Unplanned downtime is evaluated on a yearly basis.

Technical Support Services 

Chemwatch employs a three-tiered support model.

Line 1: Customer support is available by phone during business hours. Such support may include:

• Application queries 

• SDS queries

• Regulatory queries

• Account queries

All incoming calls to Tier 1 responders are recorded in a log and issues requiring a further response or fix are recorded in a Trouble Ticket system.

Line 2: Specialist support

Line 1 response may need to be supported by a specialist response. Tier 1 responders are charged with triaging calls when they cannot provide immediate response. Matters relating to IT issues are one such example. On many occasions, the call can be patched immediately to the correct department. Where this is not possible the correct department will respond within a maximum of 12 hours and provide timelines for resolution.

Line 3: Escalation support

Where issues relating to a complaint or comment have not been resolved (within a defined period), they will be communicated automatically to the Principal of Chemwatch. Because all issues recorded in the Trouble Ticketing system are graded by importance, different elapsed periods are identified, in terms of resolution.

Chemwatch also provides Emergency Response Support 24/7.

This is free during business hours to all employees of our subscribers and is intended to address issues such as fire, spills and accidental exposure to chemicals in the workplace.

If subscribers require this service to be made available to their own clients/customers, a separate subscription for Emergency Response Support is available for a fee.

Issue Prioritisation

The following criteria will be used to define issue priority and fixing time.

Committed Response and Fixing Time

* If the problem cannot be resolved within the designated time frame, then an explanation must be provided directly to General Management as to why an extension is required.

In cases where requests are user-specific, minor or suggested enhancements may be considered for development and assigned an appropriate priority. 

TECHNOLOGY

Hardware

Chemwatch applications are delivered from the Cloud as SaaS and, as such, need only a thin client to operate.

New applications have also been developed for use on mobile or smart devices.

Software

Chemwatch Services are accessed via the Internet.   We support all browsers including  Safari, Chrome, Firefox and IE. 

Data Centres

All Chemwatch services are hosted from within dedicated data centres operated by Amazon Web Services (AWS) (Host). User data is also securely stored within these facilities.

Amazon has many years of experience in designing, constructing, and operating large-scale data centres. This experience has been applied to the AWS platform and infrastructure.

Security

AWS data centres are housed in nondescript facilities. Physical access is strictly controlled both at the perimeter and at building ingress points by professional security staff utilising video surveillance, intrusion detection systems, and other electronic means. Authorised staff must pass a two-factor authentication a minimum of two times in order to access data centre floors.

All visitors and contractors are required to present identification and are signed in and continually escorted by authorised staff.

AWS only provides data centre access and information to employees and contractors who have a legitimate business need for such privileges. When an employee no longer has a need for these privileges, his or her access is immediately revoked, even if they continue to be an employee of Amazon or Amazon Web Services. All physical access to data centres by AWS employees is logged and audited routinely.

Fire Detection and Suppression

Automatic fire detection and suppression equipment has been installed to reduce risk. The fire detection system utilises smoke detection sensors in all data centre environments, mechanical and electrical infrastructure spaces, chiller rooms and generator equipment rooms. These areas are protected by either wet-pipe, double-interlocked pre-action or gaseous sprinkler systems.

Power

Data centre electrical power systems are designed to be fully redundant and maintainable without impact on

operations, 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Uninterruptible Power Supply (UPS) units provide backup power in the event of an electrical failure for critical and essential loads in the facility. Data centres use generators to provide backup power for the entire facility.

Climate and Temperature

Climate control is required to maintain a constant operating temperature for servers and other hardware, which prevents overheating and reduces the possibility of service outages. Data centres are conditioned to maintain atmospheric conditions at optimal levels. Personnel and computer systems constantly monitor and control temperature and humidity at appropriate levels for server health.

Management

AWS monitors electrical, mechanical and life support systems and equipment so that any issues are immediately

identified. Preventative maintenance is performed for the continued operability of equipment.

Certifications

AWS (Amazon Web Services) has in the past successfully completed multiple SAS70 Type II audits and as of September 30, 2011, published a Service Organisation Controls 1 (SOC 1) report, under both the SSAE 16 and ISAE 3402 professional standards. In addition, AWS has achieved ISO 27001 certification and has been successfully validated as a Level 1 service provider under the Payment Card Industry (PCI) Data Security Standard (DSS), and has received FISMA-Moderate Authority to Operate.

Built-in resilience

Stand-by clusters are available in separate physical data centres to ensure resilience. Clusters are made available automatically/instantly in the event of a failure in the master node.

Data backup scheme

Data is backed up in different regions (North America, Asia Pacific) ensuring that it can be restored even in the event of a catastrophe.

Data is stored in an Oracle database which is mirrored globally. It is also backed up, both manually and automatically, on a daily basis.

Data restore time

Data can be restored within 24 hours and also to any point in time within a two-week window.

Disaster Recovery

Data is stored in separate data centres and separate regions, making recovery from a disaster a simple task. If one data centre ceases to exist, data can be fully restored by utilising other centres.

Data is synced between data centres hourly. Data centres are located in different regions, meaning that data created in Singapore will be available in Virginia, the US or Ireland within the hour.

The IP address of each instance within a region is elastic. This allows all clients to be transferred to any instance within the region should the application server go down. Images of the application server are kept in reserve and activated instantly should the server become unavailable. IP addresses are re-mapped without any disruption to the user.

Each region has a minimum of two data centres.

If for instance, the Oracle database goes down, the application will switch to reading from a database in another region, a mirror of the original, until the database is restored thereby avoiding any disruption to clients.

The table below shows the main Disaster Recovery Objectives: