SaaS Escrow / Cloud Software Escrow Agreements

As organisations have accelerated their move to the cloud, the responsibility to protect the continuity and integrity of hosted applications has become increasingly vital. In response to this, SaaS Escrow, also known as Cloud Escrow, emerged as a modern safeguard, one that's designed specifically to protect cloud‑hosted software and ensure that organisations can continue to operate even if their SaaS provider experiences disruption, failure, or ceases trading.

Using third party applications that are delivered through a Software as a Service (SaaS) model or Application Service Provider (ASP) is becoming an increasingly popular way for End Users to access business-critical applications, as they no longer require their own infrastructure. This can not only save on time and cost, but it can also have the potential to be more flexible, accessible and compatible.

Unlike traditional on-premise software, where in the event of a release the user retains access to all infrastructure, making the impact of supplier failure much less immediate, services delivered through a SaaS model can have a much more immediate impact with the sudden withdrawal of service or loss of business functionality being a direct result of supplier failure. So how would you ensure that your service continues in the event your Software Developer or Application Service Provider suffers business failure? Or, how would you recover both the software and the data to ensure you can continue to use the application through an alternative ASP or manage the application in-house? This is where SaaS Escrow comes into play.
 
In our experience, most software Escrow services do not address the real needs of a SaaS environment or the need for continued access to business-critical applications. SaaS Escrow from SES provides services that address these and other more complex SaaS and web-based, business-critical systems.

To mitigate the sudden withdrawal of service created by Developer failure for organisations using hosted applications, SES has created an industry-leading SaaS Escrow solution.

A copy of the applications source code and runtime files are held in Escrow as standard. However, what differs from our standard Software Escrow solution is that we take regular copies of application data and updates from the application service provider, which are stored securely alongside the source code and runtime files.

In the event of supplier failure, all material required for the successful redeployment of the application can be accessed through the SaaS Escrow agreement, guarding against service disruption and providing continuity of service.