How enterprise companies are ensuring business continuity when adopting SaaS applications (Guest blog by Escrow London)
Author: Evan Lever, CEO, Escrow London
As an increasing number of enterprise companies are shifting to SaaS hosted applications, the demand for software escrow solutions with the ability to provide continuity is rapidly growing.
In the past, these enterprise companies would have avoided SaaS hosted applications due to concerns over the perceived risks of cloud hosted systems. However, the onset of the Covid pandemic forced these companies to accelerate their adoption of cloud hosted applications in order to facilitate remote and hybrid working environments.
In recent years there has been major adoption of SaaS hosted applications including productivity apps such as Monday.com, Salesforce, Slack, and Trello. As companies have become more comfortable with SaaS hosted apps, they are widening their adoption of anything from entire banking systems, police enforcement, airline management systems, insurance portals, ERP systems and more.
Software vendors globally are largely hosting their applications within AWS, Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud. These platforms come with massive benefits in providing higher levels of information security, scalability and efficiencies compared to on-premise or data centre hosted applications.
The risk for enterprise companies is that the solution and all their data is controlled by the software vendor. For these companies to adopt SaaS hosted solutions in a responsible way, they need to ensure they have a third-party continuity process in place in the unlikely event something happens to the software vendor. Such events may include bankruptcy, major failure that remains unremedied or a ransomware attack.
Enterprise companies are now turning to software escrow vendors to develop robust SaaS continuity solutions that provide for a continuation of service if something were to happen to the software vendor. The most popular SaaS Continuity Escrow solutions include:
- Replicated SaaS Continuity with 90 Days of Live Availability – providing a replicated cloud environment with databases using deployment templates that may be activated in the event of a release situation. In the event of a release, the software escrow vendor will be on hand to keep the lights on and provide a continuity of service for a period of up to 90 days.
- SaaS Environment Escrow – incorporating a deposit of the cloud environment which may include containers, deployment scripts, templates, automated deposits of databases and source code deposits from Git repositories including relevant documentation.
- SaaS Access Continuity – including the deposit of the developer’s access credentials to the cloud hosting vendor’s production account. Solutions include the transfer of the access credentials to the Beneficiary and the possibility of the software escrow vendor maintaining the production environment for a 90 day period to ensure continuity post-release event.
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Sue Daley
Sue Daley
Sue leads techUK's Technology and Innovation work.
This includes work programmes on cloud, data protection, data analytics, AI, digital ethics, Digital Identity and Internet of Things as well as emerging and transformative technologies and innovation policy. She has been recognised as one of the most influential people in UK tech by Computer Weekly's UKtech50 Longlist and in 2021 was inducted into the Computer Weekly Most Influential Women in UK Tech Hall of Fame. A key influencer in driving forward the data agenda in the UK Sue is co-chair of the UK government's National Data Strategy Forum. As well as being recognised in the UK's Big Data 100 and the Global Top 100 Data Visionaries for 2020 Sue has also been shortlisted for the Milton Keynes Women Leaders Awards and was a judge for the Loebner Prize in AI. In addition to being a regular industry speaker on issues including AI ethics, data protection and cyber security, Sue was recently a judge for the UK Tech 50 and is a regular judge of the annual UK Cloud Awards.
Prior to joining techUK in January 2015 Sue was responsible for Symantec's Government Relations in the UK and Ireland. She has spoken at events including the UK-China Internet Forum in Beijing, UN IGF and European RSA on issues ranging from data usage and privacy, cloud computing and online child safety. Before joining Symantec, Sue was senior policy advisor at the Confederation of British Industry (CBI). Sue has an BA degree on History and American Studies from Leeds University and a Masters Degree on International Relations and Diplomacy from the University of Birmingham. Sue is a keen sportswoman and in 2016 achieved a lifelong ambition to swim the English Channel.
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Laura Foster
Laura Foster
Laura is techUK’s Head of Programme for Technology and Innovation.
She supports the application and expansion of emerging technologies, including Quantum Computing, High-Performance Computing, AR/VR/XR and Edge technologies, across the UK. As part of this, she works alongside techUK members and UK Government to champion long-term and sustainable innovation policy that will ensure the UK is a pioneer in science and technology
Before joining techUK, Laura worked internationally as a conference researcher and producer covering enterprise adoption of emerging technologies. This included being part of the strategic team at London Tech Week.
Laura has a degree in History (BA Hons) from Durham University, focussing on regional social history. Outside of work she loves reading, travelling and supporting rugby team St. Helens, where she is from.
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- [email protected]
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- www.linkedin.com/in/lauraalicefoster
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