Consolidate & Control Your Escrow Protection

The majority of businesses in 2018 rely on applications to provide critical business functions such as managing customers, logistics and finances etc. These key applications have become integral to the way businesses operate, helping them serve wider markets, reach more customers and operate more effectively, cutting costs.

Because businesses are so heavily reliant on critical applications for day to day operation, Software Escrow agreements exist to protect the end users of these applications from the failure of their software developer to continue with development and support of these key applications.

Software Escrow protects your 3rd party licence agreements and ensures the continuity of your business. An independent Escrow agent is legally permitted to hold and validate a copy of a software application’s source code, including all relevant documentation on behalf of the software user (Licensee).

If the supplier is unable to maintain the service, the code and supporting documentation can be released to the Licensee so that they or an alternative 3rd party can continue to maintain the application until a suitable replacement can be procured.

While Escrow is widely regarded as good practice to protect your organisations business critical functions, many organisations still take a short term and limited view of their Escrow protection. Agreements are commonly established on single/ individual basis without taking into account the organisations wider risk mitigation and disaster recovery strategies. This leads to protection varying significantly across the organisation as a whole and can be heavy on administration, unnecessarily expensive, and can create uncertainty in disaster recovery planning as protections can differ across the organisation.

SES’s Master Services agreements are specifically designed to prevent this.

In setting up a Master Services agreement with SES, you will be assigned a dedicated account manager who will work with you, listen to your individual requirements and create bespoke coverage, tailored to your risk mitigation priorities.

This Escrow coverage can then be applied to all of your critical systems, with all requirements co-ordinated and reported on by SES. This provides you with assurances of what is protected, the release criteria, the level of protection and that all those involved in the process are aware of their responsibilities to limit the impact of unforeseen circumstances.

By using a Master Services agreement to provide Escrow protection through a single agreement, SES are able to waive the setup fee for each additional Escrow contract added onto the agreement, as a new agreement is not required to be set up each time a new application is procured. This streamlines and simplifies the process of setting up Escrow protection for your new applications and enables SES to provide a single invoice for all of your organisations Escrow protection.

Advantages of a Master Services agreement to end users of business-critical applications include:

• Protect all of your business critical applications with a single Escrow agreement.
• Covers multiple software applications from various providers.
• All agreements are bespoke to match your individual requirements.
• Easily track all of your Escrow agreements, reducing your administration.
• Eliminate implementation fees on future Escrow agreements.
• Receive a single invoice for all of your Escrow protection, reducing administration.

If your business uses multiple critical applications and you are looking to consolidate and control your Escrow protection, please speak get in touch to one of our specialists.

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