Operations and support

Key operational services

System administration and security:

Continuous management and compliance with IBM internal (ITSS) and external (ISO, SOC) standards.

Environment management:

Compliance with IBM IT Cloud Security Policies for secure and efficient environments.

Application and system updates:

Deployment, middleware updates, patches, and fixes to keep systems up to date.

System monitoring and optimization

Continuous monitoring and tuning for both applications and databases.

Environment refreshes:

Support for environment refreshes (for example, TEST to DEV) to keep your system environments consistent.

24 x 7 system administration support:

24 x 7 access to the IBM Support Community for case support ticket submission and updates

Client communication center (CCC):

Access to the Client Communication Center (CCC) for viewing status of environments and subscribing to environment alerts & notifications.

Disaster recovery & backup services:

Comprehensive recovery support and backup solutions to protect your data.

Support - General

Technical support for the cloud service is available as part of the customer's subscription period.

Maximo and TRIRIGA on Cloud systems can be provisioned in multiple languages, however support for IBM on Cloud products is provided in the English language.

IBM Maximo and TRIRIGA on Cloud customers receive support coverage 24 hours per day, 7 days per week, 365 days per year. This includes IBM Support Community Portal access, comprehensive backup and restore, system monitoring and patching.

IBM SRE operations staff are located in Canada, United States, India, Brazil, Costa Rica, Ireland, and Australia.

When the client receives confirmation to establish their service, IBM will include in the Welcome Kit an overview of the Support options available, which includes the Knowledge Center and access to our IBM Support Community. This system allows clients to create, submit, update and review support cases. IBM encourages the use of these technologies to engage support. We also provide emergency on call access for system down (Severity 1) situations. The use of these technologies allows us to engage the most appropriate resource to resolve customer question/concerns in a timely fashion.

Case (ticket) support hours of operation

8:00 AM – 8:00 PM Eastern Standard Time, Monday – Friday (excluding holidays)

Note: IBM SRE global resources provide coverage outside of these standard hours

24x7 emergency on-call support is available for severity 1 or system down incidents. This is reserved for production outages where the Maximo or TRIRIGA application is unavailable or service has been severely degraded. IBM leverages an automated alert system integrated with our ticketing system(s) to provide timely customer response to Sev1 issues. The IBM SRE team employs a two shift rotating schedule in which a Client Communicator, First Responder, Escalation Manager and DBA are assigned to each shift. Backups are also assigned to the Client Communicator and First Responder roles to insure redundancy. Sev1 tickets receive a response time objective of within 1 hour.

Information on off hours and weekend support can be found here

IBM support guides

IBM support guides for each product are available. The guides contain information such as contact information, hours of operation, severity level guidelines and response time objectives and issue escalation. For more information, see IBM Support Guide for Maximo EAM SaaS Flex and IBM Support Guide for TRIRIGA Facilities and Real Estate Management on Cloud.

Case escalation

There is an escalation process for IBM on Cloud customers who wish to pursue a particular concern regarding an open case of any severity. Customers should submit a new case in the IBM Support Community (https://www.ibm.com/mysupport) with the issue summary of “ESCALATION” and the following information in the body of the ticket:

• Case number needing escalation in the format of "ESCALATION required for 99999."
• Reason for the escalation request on previously submitted cases, so we may prioritize your requests.

Customers can also ask to speak to the Maximo or TRIRIGA on Cloud Client Delivery team Lead. Escalations to a Client Delivery team Lead will receive prompt attention. If you are unable to reach the Client Delivery team lead, ask for the Service Delivery Operations Manager.

Case severity levels

Severity Level: 1

Severity Definition: Critical business impact/service down: Business critical functionality is inoperable or critical interface has failed. This usually applies to a production environment and indicates an inability to access services resulting in a critical impact on operations. This condition requires an immediate solution. Response Time Objective: Within 1 hour. Response Time Coverage: 24 x 7

Severity Level : 2

Severity Definition: Significant business impact: A service business feature or function of the service is severely restricted in its use or you are in jeopardy of missing business deadlines. Response Time Objective: Within 2 business hours. Response Time Coverage: M-F business hours.

Severity Level: 3

Severity Definition: Minor business impact: Indicates the service or functionality is usable and it is not a critical impact on operations. Response Time Objective: Within 4 business hours. Response Time Coverage: M-F business hours.

Severity Level: 4

Severity Definition: Minimal business impact: An inquiry or a nontechnical request. Response Time Objective: Within 1 business day. Response Time Coverage: M-F business hours.

Off -shift weekend/holiday support (Severity 1 Only)

If you require support between the hours of Friday 8 PM to Sunday 6 PM US Eastern Time (and Christmas Day and New Years Day) for a Severity 1 case, the following steps are required:

1. Log a new case by using the IBM Support Community and set the Severity to 1 (only if not related to an existing Sev1). Provide as much detail as possible, including the business impact and confirm it is a production system issue.
2. Call your local IBM Support Center (click here for IBM Directory of worldwide contacts) and request to speak to the duty engineer.

Failure to follow this process results in no support during off-shift hours.

Support ticket system for Maximo and TRIRIGA on Cloud

System Name	Applies to	URL Link	Ticket Type	Description / Notes
IBM Support Community	All IBM on Cloud Customers	https://www.ibm.com/mysupport	Case	For all on cloud and hosting customers

Provisioning

IBM's objective is to provision Maximo and TRIRIGA on Cloud systems within 5-10 business days of their corresponding sales order being placed, approved, and fully processed. The overall amount of time can vary depending on the number of concurrent or authorized users on the subscription, total number of environments (for example DEV, TEST, PROD), the number, and type of industry solutions within each environment and number and type of add-on components (such as Maximo Anywhere, use of an Oracle database or bare metal servers within the environment).

When the sales order is fully processed, and a Provisioning form is completed, the SRE operations staff is notified to begin the provisioning process. Application and Database servers are sized and ordered through IBM Cloud. Once provisioned, Maximo and TRIRIGA are installed on the servers by using provisioning scripts. Bear in mind that environments are single tenant, meaning that customers receive individual, dedicated application and database servers (virtual and/or bare metal) for each environment. This helps ensure maximum stability, performance, and logical separation. Security, domain and DNS registration is also completed during provisioning for each server.

Getting the DNS correct on the provisioning form is critical. This DNS is used to name servers and tie the ordering information through change procedures and our security processes. Changing the DNS after the fact is not a simple procedure. While business conditions change, and the CDS team will respond, requesting a different DNS because the original DNS requested was not correct will result in more charges to complete.

When the environments are provisioned and ready, customers receive a Welcome Kit from IBM with full details on accessing their environments.

IBMers can contact the SRE Project Office for order provisioning, questions, or details.

Current Maximo and TRIRIGA SaaS version levels being provisioned are:

• Maximo v7.6.1.2

• TRIRIGA Platform v 4.5 / Application v 11.5

Provisioning form

A provision form must be completed as a part of the order, when placed for Maximo SaaS. It includes the following information:

1. Customer primary, secondary technical contact names, email, and phones numbers.
2. Indicate whether the order is an add-on, change to an existing agreement or a new order.
3. Indicate whether customer is migrating from on-premises to the cloud.
4. Indicate whether the order is for a Federal (FedRAMP) deployment.
5. Indicate the country (geography) where most of the users are located as it will help IBM SRE determine the primary IBM Cloud Data Center location.
6. Indicate
   1. When the environments need to be provisioned, as the lead time is 5-10 business days from the date that the order is fully approved and processed by the SRE Project Office. For more information, see Provisioning.
   2. Expected date of production site to go live.
   3. Additional languages to be installed apart form English (up to 5 allowed).
   4. Total number of sites to be provisioned.
      Note: New SaaS orders include 2 sites by default (One PROD and one NON-PROD).
7. Indicate URL prefixes for each environment and note the following considerations:
   • No Special characters are allowed in prefixes except for a hyphen (-)
   • No extra subdomains are allowed in prefixes (for example acme.test.maximo.com)
   • Second and top-level domain names (maximo.com and tririga.com) are controlled and defines by IBM. These are required and nonnegotiable
8. Note:

   • URL prefixes once defined and submitted on the provisioning form, cannot be changed after the order is processed and provisioned.
   • Be sure that you have fully vetted and approved the URL prefixes for all environments.
   • Any URL prefixes that need to be changed post-provisioning will require complete re-provisioning of the environment(s) - at customer expense.
9. Include all the users who should receive the welcome kit. This might include the customer’s Business Partner, IBM services, or system integrators.
10. Indicate any additional requirements and comments.