Do you want to avoid being caught “dead in the water”!
Providers, subscribers and legal counsel are all well aware of the benefits and burdens that surround implementation and use of SaaS applications for mission critical requirements. Disaster can strike in any number of ways and the need for a risk mitigation tool such as SaaS Escrow is more important for SaaS application than it is for a distributed (non-hosted) application.
There are several reasons:
Application Access: Imagine is the lights really went out. When lights shut off with a SaaS application the disaster is immediate and swift. Unlike a distributed application where the customer has access to the application and their data when a SaaS customer is denied access they are dead in the water.
Data Access: Picture trying to switch vendors during a calm period?Switching vendors is never a simple process, what would it be like if you had zero days due to a failure? Do you have your data? If not, where does it reside and how do you get it? Will you get it in a usable format for migration to a new provider? Can you find a new provider quickly? All this takes time, costs money and does not avoid disaster.
Code Access: Subscribers who wish to access the run time environment must have the object code, source code and the data.
Hosting: If disaster strikes and you have a SaaS Escrow agreement in place will you host the application?
Business Continuity: Remember, in order to avoid a disaster you need to have plan, test your plan, and test that plan yet again. A good insurance plan comes in more than one form.
SaaS Escrow, testing and back-up hosting should be part of the disaster plan because it’s simple, because it’s cost effective and because it makes good business sense. InnovaSafe, a SOC2 Type II Compliant technology escrow service provider can provide you with all these solutions.