CloudFirst Service Models

The following Service Models relate to the “Service Model Entitlements” table in each Service Definition i.e. each Service Definition will specify which of the Service Models, shown below, are applicable to that service.

Service Desk

CloudFirst’s Service Desk provides a single point of contact on a 24 hour basis. Customers are able to submit questions, Requests, and Issues using e-mail, Customer Portal or phone. The Service Desk will record and classify issues which may result in a variety of actions depending on the nature of the submission and the customer’s contracted services.

Customer Portal

CloudFirst’s Customer Portal, where applicable, provides Customers access to Service related functions including, but not limited to the status and history of: Requests, Incidents, and Changes. Additional features may be available as detailed in the “Customer Portal” section of the relevant Service Definition.

Request Management

CloudFirst’s Request Management allows customers to interact with the services they’ve purchased to request standard, service-related, actions that are included in the monthly fee. Each Service Definition shows the predefined catalog of requests, along with any defined limits, that will be fulfilled by CloudFirst. Each request will be ticketed and the activity, status, and history, will be available on the Customer Portal.

Monitoring & Event Management

CloudFirst’s Monitoring & Event Management proactively detects, logs, filters, associates, and categorizes, relevant technology events per the customer contracted Services and relevant Service Definition. CloudFirst monitors the technology health and distinguishes actionable events from informational events. Actionable events will insert Incidents directly into the Service Management System.

Where applicable, CloudFirst’s monitoring leverages automated tools and Artificial Intelligence (AI) to detect anomalies, correlate related events, identify patterns, determine root causes, and automatically trigger appropriate action, such as incident creation, or escalation. This advanced approach reduces manual effort, accelerates time to resolution, and in many cases, enables the prediction and prevention of issues—supporting improved uptime, performance, and operational stability.

Incident Management

CloudFirst Incident Management provides logging, tracking, triage, escalation, and resolution of incidents. Incidents will be created from: Service Calls; Portal submissions; Internal ticketing submissions; or automatically generated Alarm Events if Monitoring is included with the applicable service.

Automated electronic communication will occur at the initiation of the Incident and at updates through the Incident lifecycle. Incident priorities will be automatically set based on the criteria provided for the SLA. Per ITIL standards, temporary workarounds may be used when available while full resolution of the root cause is addressed.

Incidents will be automatically closed if there is no customer objection within 5 days of resolution notification. Incident activity, status, and history can be accessed from the Customer Portal.

Problem Management

CloudFirst’s Problem Management works to identify root causes of recurring or high-priority incidents with the goal of mitigating future disruptions. Problem Management will result in recommendations for remediation and incident prevention. Problem activity, status, and history can be accessed from the Customer Portal.

Change Management

CloudFirst’s Change Management has the objective of ensuring that standardized methods and procedures are used for the efficient handling of changes, with the least possible disruption to IT Services. Changes include additions, modifications, updates, or removal of Configuration Items (CI’s). Change activity, status, and history can be accessed from the Customer Portal.

Change Types include:

• Routine – low risk, low impact, pre-defined changes. Some routine changes are classified as pre-approved.
• Comprehensive – a planned change in response to a request, planned activities or to implement a non-urgent correction.
• Emergency – an expedited change where urgent correction of service is required to prevent an imminent service outage or to respond to an urgent legislative directive.

The customer is involved in the approval process of all change types with the exception of pre-approved Routine Changes.

Crisis Management

CloudFirst’s Crisis Management includes an urgent response and coordination for critical service-impacting incidents requiring escalated attention. In these situations, CloudFirst will triage the situation and activate a crisis response process including a dedicated communication channel for relevant customer, CloudFirst, and if necessary, vendor personnel.

This process involves continuous updates and coordination with customer stakeholders throughout the crisis. CloudFirst will complete the process with a documentation of crisis activities, resolution steps, and the final outcome.

Capacity Management

CloudFirt's Capacity Management is the operational discipline of tracking resource consumption across the platforms and services CloudFirst delivers, identifying trends that affect availability or cost, and surfacing them through the Customer Portal, Service Desk reporting, and the Customer Business Review cadence defined in the applicable Service Definition. 

Coverage spans storage on backup repositories, compute on managed hosting platforms (CPU, memory, and licensed capacity units such as LPAR core or vCPU), network throughput where CloudFirst provides connectivity, and service-specific consumption metrics. The Service Model is included in the applicable CloudFirst service without separate charge, and its purpose is to keep customers ahead of capacity-driven incidents, unanticipated overage charges, and growth-blocking constraints. Formal capacity forecasting, planning workshops, and cost optimization advisory are out of scope.