APM Accelerator

Overview

A fixed-price, time-boxed professional services engagement delivering production-ready Application Performance Monitoring across up to three in-scope applications on an existing Elastic deployment. Elastic consultants design the APM architecture, deploy agents, validate service topology and distributed tracing, configure golden signals and SLOs, build five operational dashboards, and train the customer team — all within a structured fixed engagement window.

Scope

• Pre-engagement preparation; project kickoff; environment discovery and architecture review; APM deployment architecture design; scope confirmation; risk register
• APM Server configuration and validation; agent deployment to dev/staging for up to 3 applications; transaction baseline metrics; service topology mapping; distributed tracing validation; OpenTelemetry integration validation (if pre-qualified)
• Golden signals definition per service (latency, throughput, error rate, saturation); SLO/SLI configuration and error budget tracking; alerting rules configured and tested; SLO tracking dashboard
• Production agent deployment to all instances; 5 operational dashboards (Service Health, Performance, Business Metrics, SLO Tracking, Infrastructure); 2–3 APM troubleshooting runbooks; RBAC configuration; team enablement session; knowledge transfer verification
• Success criteria verification; post-delivery support plan; 30-day check-in scheduled

Out of scope

This engagement does not include:

• More than 3 applications instrumented
• Additional dashboards beyond the 5 defined above
• More than 2–3 troubleshooting runbooks
• Multi-environment deployments — single production environment only; additional environments require a change order
• Manual OpenTelemetry SDK instrumentation — agent-based instrumentation only; manual OTEL SDK is out of scope
• OTEL collector deployment unless pre-qualified and within package assumptions
• Custom business metrics beyond what is achievable within the standard agent configuration
• Production hardening, high availability configuration, or disaster recovery
• Applications using unsupported or legacy frameworks
• Post-engagement managed services, ongoing support, or additional APM tuning beyond the 30-day check-in call

Any work outside the scope above requires a mutually executed change order and may result in additional fees, revised assumptions, and schedule changes.

Engagement timeline

• Scheduled to commence approximately 6–8 weeks after purchase, subject to resource availability and Customer readiness
• Delivered by an Elastic Consultant or a certified partner resource under Elastic oversight
• Unless otherwise agreed in writing, the services will be delivered remotely
• Delivery is expected to occur over contiguous business days or contiguous calendar weeks, as scheduled by Elastic
• If delivery is delayed, interrupted, or rescheduled due to Customer availability, access issues, environment readiness, or other Customer dependencies, Elastic may reassign resources, adjust the schedule, or require an Order Form (change order)
• Time scheduled for the engagement that cannot be used due to Customer delay, unavailability, failure to meet dependencies, or inability to provide required access will count against the total consulting days

Fixed-price xonditions and assumptions

• Customer has an existing Elastic deployment (ES 8.0+, Kibana 8.0+, APM Server configured and accessible) before Day 1
• Up to 3 applications in scope; each application uses a language supported by Elastic APM (Java, Go, .NET, Python, Ruby, JavaScript/Node.js, PHP); additional applications require a change order
• At least one lower environment (dev/staging) is available for agent validation before production deployment
• Required customer access, credentials, and deployment permissions are confirmed before Day 1
• Customer technical resources (DevOps, platform engineers, application owners) are available full-time for the duration of the engagement
• Production change approvals and notification channels are pre-arranged before engagement commencement
• Customer architecture is stable and documented; source code is accessible for agent instrumentation where required
• Network access from application environments to APM Server is confirmed without major firewall or proxy complications
• No production maintenance windows or change freezes are scheduled during the engagement period
• If OpenTelemetry integration is required, customer has existing OTEL collectors or an explicit pre-qualified requirement to deploy them
• Agent-based auto-instrumentation only; manual OTEL SDK instrumentation is out of scope

If any of the above assumptions are not met, Elastic may adjust the schedule, limit the services performed to fit the fixed-price scope, count impacted time against the allocated consulting days, or require a change order.

Deliverables

Discovery & Design

• One (1) APM deployment architecture design document, covering APM Server topology, instrumentation approach, and integration points for the environment confirmed during discovery
• One (1) scope confirmation and signoff document, capturing final in-scope applications, environments, and any exclusions agreed during kickoff
• One (1) risk register, identifying delivery risks and dependencies identified during discovery, with owner and mitigation noted per item

Instrumentation & Validation (bounded to up to three (3) applications; additional applications require a change order)

• One (1) agent configuration playbook, covering agent deployment and configuration for up to three (3) applications across dev and staging environments
• One (1) OpenTelemetry integration plan and validation report — included only where the customer's environment is confirmed pre-qualified for OTel during the architecture review; if not pre-qualified, this deliverable is excluded from scope rather than partially delivered
• One (1) transaction baseline metrics report, documenting response time, throughput, and error rate baselines per in-scope application, captured over the agreed monitoring window
• One (1) service topology diagram, depicting service-to-service dependencies and transaction flows across in-scope applications
• One (1) distributed tracing validation report, confirming end-to-end trace continuity for sampled transactions per in-scope application
• One (1) production readiness checklist, documenting configuration, validation, and signoff status required prior to production agent deployment

SLOs & Alerting

• One (1) golden signals definition document, defining latency, throughput, error rate, and saturation thresholds per in-scope service
• One (1) SLO/SLI configuration specification, documenting SLO targets, SLIs, and error budget policy per in-scope service
• Alerting rules configured and tested in Elastic, aligned to the golden signals and SLOs defined above for in-scope services
• One (1) SLO tracking dashboard, reflecting real-time SLO/error budget status for in-scope services

Production Rollout & Enablement

• Production agent deployment to all in-scope application instances
• Five (5) operational dashboards: Service Health, Performance, Business Metrics, SLO Tracking, Infrastructure
• Two (2) APM troubleshooting runbooks, covering [high-latency investigation] and [error-spike investigation] 
• RBAC configuration, using Elastic's built-in role definitions for up to Three (3) role profiles (e.g., Admin, Developer, Viewer); custom role engineering beyond built-in roles is out of scope
• One (1) team enablement session (single session, format and duration to be confirmed) with a knowledge transfer verification document, listing topics covered and acknowledged by named customer stakeholders

Closeout

• One (1) success criteria verification summary, confirming delivery against the criteria agreed at scope confirmation
• One (1) post-delivery support plan and escalation guide, defining the post-go-live support window, escalation path, and contacts
• 30-day check-in call, scheduled with a defined agenda (success criteria review)

Completion

The engagement will be considered complete upon: all success criteria verified; knowledge transfer confirmed; and post-delivery support plan delivered. The engagement may also be deemed complete if Customer delays, is unavailable, fails to meet required prerequisites, or is otherwise unable to participate after Elastic has made commercially reasonable efforts to deliver within the agreed engagement window.

General terms

Capitalized terms used but not defined in this package description have the meanings given to them in the Order Form, the applicable Service Description, or the Elastic Services Agreement.

No formal Customer signoff and no milestone or deliverable acceptance process applies to this fixed-price Services Package. Each Service is deemed accepted upon Completion.

"Completion" means, with respect to a Service, the point at which Elastic has performed the activities within the scope of this Services Package, including (where applicable) delivery of any written report, materials, or knowledge transfer session described in this package's scope, or the expiry of the time-boxed engagement period for this package, whichever occurs first. Completion does not require Customer signoff or acceptance of any deliverable.

Customer is solely responsible for the backup, maintenance, and security of its environment, systems, and data. Elastic is not responsible for any configuration changes, data loss, downtime, or other impact to Customer's environment arising from or in connection with the Service.

This engagement delivers a configured net-new, self-managed Elastic document search solution, including search use case analysis, data modeling and ingestion, advanced example query implementation, advanced RBAC configuration, infrastructure provisioning, and a final report, within the defined fixed-price scope. Elastic does not guarantee any specific performance, cost, operational, or business outcome beyond the deliverables defined above. Customer remains solely responsible for ongoing operations, configuration changes made outside the engagement scope, and all post-engagement activities related to its environment.

References in this package to validation, testing, acceptance tests or acceptance test harnesses, golden queries, launch readiness, or go-live describe activities performed, demonstrated, or delivered by Elastic and do not create any Customer acceptance, signoff, testing, or payment condition. Completion occurs as defined in this package regardless of any such activity, and no portion of the fees is withheld or deferred pending any test result, validation, or go-live event.