Micro Focus Support guide

Following this Micro Focus Support guide – be on the lookout for our Academic, Government, & Non-profit guides soon!

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Maintenance & Support

Micro Focus offer both “Business Support” and “Premium Support” which provide access to new software releases and updates and self-support tools. Business Support coverage enables you to purchase optional enterprise-level services, such as:

• Premium Support Engineers
• Service Account Manager
• Advantage Incidents
• Health Checks
• On-site visits
• Scheduled standby

To help make managing renewals a little easier, multiple support renewal dates can be co-termed to a single date.

All or nothing rule

Micro Focus have an “all or nothing” rule for support – you must have active support on all your licenses for a specific product to receive support. Equally, you must have support “from the day you copy, install or use the product” and if you cannot provide “reasonable evidence” of that date, you may be faced with:

• Back support fees
• License fees for unlicensed use

Support details

Business Support

All Business Support customers receive 24x7x365 technical support access, with after hours and weekend support available for Severity 1 issues:

The Business Support Agreement (BSA) can be found here in 7 languages along with various addenda to the BSA.

Premium Support

Building on top of Business Support, Premium Support gives access to services and people including:

• Premium Support Engineers
• Technical Account Managers
• Enterprise Support Managers

Offering enhanced response times and dedicated services.

Support Lifecycle

You can purchase support during both the “Committed” and “Extended” phases of the Product Support Lifecycle, although the benefits received vary between the two phases. During the “committed” phase, customers with support will receive:

• Software Updates
• Technical Support
• Self-help Resources
• Defect Support
• Critical Security Updates
• Ability to submit enhancement requests

Once a product moves into the “extended” phase, the benefits are reduced to:

• Software Updates (exc. new requests for patches, hotfixes, and security updates)
• Technical Support
• Self-help Resources

Extended Support Plus

Certain products have an additional phase known as “Extended Support Plus” during which Critical Support Updates and Defect Support for Severity 1 issues is still available. This type of support incurs an additional fee on top of the active support agreement. More information on Extended Support Plus is here and the lifecycle is here.

It is to be noted that for services provided under the VLA through a statement of work, the VLA terms (or a separately signed services agreement, if applicable) cover the services. If you have a non-standard VLA that does not contain services terms, in the absence of a separately signed services agreement the terms and conditions are located here.

Flexible Credits

Referred to as a “Micro Focus service currency” – Flexible Credits are designed to enable smoother access to additional services across support, education, and consulting. Effectively you purchase a pool of Flexible Credits and can then draw down on them over the next 12 months without needing to raise purchase orders etc. However, you must contact your Account Manager at least 3 weeks in advance to ensure the required resources are available.

“Prices” range from 4 credits for a “Scheduled Standby” (where you have access to an out of hours engineer to assist with updates or maintenance) to 30 credits for “Post-Implementation Support” – with a variety in between.

Active support is required to purchase Flexible Credits and unused credits at the end of the 12-month term will not be refunded. Credits cannot be used by a legal entity different to that which purchased the credits.

You can find a Flexible Credits guide here and additional terms here

Additional Support Resources

General Support Information
Business Support
Premium Support

Also, our Micro Focus Commercial Licensing guide is here.