How Do You Guarantee Continuity Of Service?

The vast majority of businesses are heavily reliant on third party software owners to develop and maintain their business critical applications.

An Escrow Agreement provides the mechanism for the end users of these business critical applications to legally access source code and supporting material in the event that their third party software owner is no longer available to continue with development and support.

SES conduct Basic Validation testing on all Escrow deposits as standard. This entry level testing ensures that the source code held under the Escrow agreement is accessible and virus free so that in the event of a release, the end user can access the source code files.

Though the Basic Validation test provides access to the source code, this entry level testing does not enable SES to provide tangible assurances as to the complete or accurate nature of the source code, nor the integrity of any build documentation and is unlikely to be sufficient for business critical, bespoke, highly customised or revenue generating applications.

So how do you guarantee continuity of service?

Further Validation services including SES’s Remote Code Validation test ensure that the Source Code which will be held in our vaults is complete, accurate and can be built into a working application. We achieve this by witnessing the recording of your software owner’s development team executing a complete build of the software in their environment.

In addition to this and an important aspect to highlight, is the detailed Audio-Visual recording which is created by the SES Testing Consultant when witnessing the build of the Source Code and which is stored along with the Source Code deposit. Both the Build Guide and AVI contain the vital information any reasonably skilled programmer would need in order to quickly and effectively re-deploy the software in the event of a release.

Key benefits of Remote Code Validation testing include:

• Proves that the source code held under the Escrow agreement is complete, accurate and contains all the source code, data and supporting material required to accurately redeploy the application upon release.
• Random functionality testing carried out on the built application at the end of the validation exercise to confirm the application functions correctly.
• Independent report compiled and deposited in Escrow along with the complete code deposit. Report includes unique details of any third party tools, build environment and build processes executed by the developer.
• Increased disaster recovery capability as the Escrow agreement with the source code validation option provides a greater degree of certainty that the code held in Escrow can be used effectively.
• Added protection against the loss of key development staff involved in developing/building the application.
• Peace of mind for the user that all necessary build documentation is held in Escrow for the purpose of a rapid deployment of the software in the event of a release of source code.
• Assurance that even the most complex applications can be rebuilt based on the SES independent validation report.

If you are interested in finding out more about our Escrow agreements and various Validation options to protect your business in the event of vendor failure, please get in touch and one of our specialists will get back to you within one business day.

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