With 99% of businesses currently using one or more SaaS solutions and a projection that 85% of all software used by businesses will be SaaS by 2025, it is safe to say that the adoption of cloud-based software has seen a significant spike.
Yet, there is a level of apprehension from businesses as the move to these cloud-based applications can bring new risks. In order for SaaS vendors to assure their customers that they can safely and securely move to the cloud and adopt their applications, they need to provide them with some sort of resilience offering.
One valuable way to let customers know their business operations and data are secure is by proactively putting a SaaS escrow agreement in place – but which software resilience solution would work best for your customers?
This article will review the concept of SaaS escrow and give an overview of NCC Group’s offerings which let you assure customers with long-term business continuity plans for their key SaaS applications and data. With SaaS escrow, you can deliver a comprehensive level of protection that builds trust and confidence in your customer relationships and makes your software endlessly resilient.
A SaaS Software Escrow Agreement is a simple tri-party arrangement with mutually-agreed terms between the SaaS vendor, customer and NCC Group. Under the terms of the agreement, the vendor deposits the materials required to access, restore or rebuild the SaaS application into NCC Group's secure virtual vault so it can then be released if required.
For SaaS applications, there are specific escrow services called Escrow as a Service (EaaS) agreements. There are four types of EaaS agreements and with each of these solutions there is the option of validating the software escrow deposit and these are known as Verifications.
1. EaaS Access
EaaS Access meets the needs of your customers who host their application and database separately from your other customers, with no shared resources. In the case of a release event, your customer is provided with access to their own specific live environment.
The access credentials, such as administrative usernames and/or passwords, are safely stored within NCC Group’s secure vault in case they are needed. There is also the option to store a copy of the cloud software source code as part of the same agreement.
2. EaaS Replicate
Unlike EaaS Access, described above, the EaaS Replicate agreement involves the duplication of the customer's specific application and data into NCC Group's cloud environment, where it will be held in case of a release event.
EaaS Replicate is a service to meet the needs of customers where a single software application is shared or used within multi-tenanted environments – in addition to meeting the needs of customers in single-tenanted environments.
This service gives your customer access to a separately hosted and mirrored instance of their individual organisation’s software and unique data in the event you can no longer support their application. The process consists of the software supplier transferring a copy of the customer’s cloud environment to NCC Group for physical and digital storage within our safe and secure vaults.
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Discover how Software Vendors & End-users can proactively manage Cloud Computing Risks & ensure Cloud availability with SaaS Escrow.
3. EaaS Control
An EaaS Control Agreement provides an architectural overview of how the application is hosted and its operational dependencies. It provides your customer access to the source code and the build documentation if the release conditions are met.
This helps your customer to access, maintain, build, or compile the software in case of a future release event where you would be unable to support the software. EaaS Control is geared for application users hosting software on their own, self-managed, public or private cloud infrastructure.
4. EaaS Scale
EaaS Scale was developed specifically for SaaS software vendors and gives you an automated cloud environment depositing process, designed to synchronise with storage environments on a predicted frequency. This is especially helpful when continuous updates are required to be deposited with NCC Group, at scale.
The process consists of the software supplier working with one of NCC’s Cloud Engineers to establish a stable connection between the NCC Group environment and the software supplier environment, where requirements will be refined to meet the expected scale of deposits per customer. As a result of the engagement, any relevant material will be collated and stored for continual maintenance of the environment and subsequent release processes, as needed.
To learn more about the resilience options open to you and your software solution, you can download one of our sample agreements or our team of cloud architects is on hand to talk you through your options - simply complete our Contact Us form.
