Hardware Warranty Policy

This is used when full corporate resources are required to help resolve a very critical customer issue, where time is of the essence. In addition, this is used to inform management of a particularly sensitive issue with an account that may have had a series of recent or historical issues. Hot-list does not necessarily relate to the severity level, but maybe due to the sensitive nature of the customer problem and/or relationship. A daily report is generated automatically and distributed to senior management.

This is used for cases that have been escalated to Global Services management. This signifies that either a customer or employee has requested management intervention and extra focus on the issue due to this being a top customer priority.

• High Used when severity is Down System or Critical and when it is of the utmost importance that the problem be resolved immediately. Generally, only used for customers who are in production and whose system is down or severely impaired. Implies that solving this task should be prioritized over all other tasks.
  
• Medium Indicates that the people involved in solving this case should prioritize this task relative to other tasks. This priority is used for cases where the issue prevents the customer from performing a task that is important to their business process or impacts the progress of their implementation project.
• Low Indicates that this task can be given a relatively low priority but still deserves attention. This priority is used for cases where the customer does not require a quick response to the inquiry.

Priority 1 Hot List or Priority 2 Management Escalation

Emergency-Down System Severity level 1 represents an emergency condition, which makes the use or continued use of any one or more functions impossible, or if customer Data has become completely inaccessible, severely impacting customer production/operations. The condition requires an immediate solution that is not already available. Response time target is immediate.

• EXAMPLE: When a customer loses access to their data for any reason, this is a severity 1 = Emergency-Down System. A crash or reset is typical here. Even if the system comes right back up, the customer still had no access to their data. We need to report on this outage with a Severity 1.

Critical Severity level 2 represents a condition which makes the use (or continued use) of any one or more functions difficult, and the condition cannot be remedied on a temporary basis (workaround). Data may be accessible, but accessibility could be sporadic, or performance reduced to a point of impacting production/mission critical data. Response time target is 1 hour.

• EXAMPLE: When a customer loses partial use of their system for any reason, this is a severity 2 = Critical. This might be one of their heads went down, one of 2 switches is bad or system performance is extremely poor. All data is still accessible.

Priority 4: Medium

Major Impact Severity level 3 represents a reproducible limited problem condition, which is not critical in that no loss of data or data access occurs and which may be circumvented or avoided on a temporary basis (workaround). Response time target is 2 hours.

• EXAMPLE: Performance issue, Backups not working, certain functions or commands aren't working making it difficult to perform a task.

Priority 5: Low

Minor Impact Severity level 4 represents minor problem conditions or documentation errors, which are easily avoided or circumvented by the customer. Additional request for new feature suggestions, which are defined as new functionality in existing Product are also classified as Severity level 4. Response time target is 4 hours.

Your request will be assigned a unique tracking number in our Call Management System, and a Severity Level will be assigned based on the nature of the problem. The Severity Level determines the path your Case will follow to resolution.

If your problem is determined in Stage 1 to require additional resources or the escalation threshold has elapsed, your call will be reviewed at Stage 2 by a Product Specialist. The Product Specialist and the Technical Service Engineer (TSE) will develop a plan to troubleshoot the problem. The TSE will continue to manage your call and provide you with a single point of contact for the Case Number.

During the resolution process, contact the TAC if you want to learn the status of your outstanding case, or if you would like to escalate your concerns. The TSE can escalate your case (please have your case number available.) This Engineer can escalate your case to the next level. Should you need to escalate your case more quickly, you may also contact any of the following people:

• Technical Assistance Center Manager
• Director of Customer Services
• Vice President of Global Services

If at any time Engineering resources are required to solve a problem, the TSE will engage the appropriate Development Engineer, through our escalation process, to participate in the resolution of the problem. BlueArc maintains a fully staffed Sustaining Engineering organization with on-call development personnel available 24x7. Sustaining Engineering works closely with the BlueArc TAC management to assess, prioritize, and status on-going and immediate customer cases and to prioritize resolution of identified Defects.