E.A.L. Electronic Application Laboratory (Apeldoorn) B.V. (EAL) has entered into an escrow arrangement with Escrow Alliance. With this escrow arrangement, EAL ensures that the availability of the application is secured. With this, the people at EAL have thought about your business continuity should something unexpected happen to EAL.
IT has become an integral part of today’s business operations. But in what ways are the risks mitigated if the supplier goes away due to, for example, bankruptcy, acquisition or cessation of business? What effect does this have on business continuity? How does one ensure the uninterrupted use of applications such as financial software, software to control business processes or document management software?
On the other hand, the intellectual property of the supplier should be protected and it is not desirable for “source materials” to be owned by the end user. After all, they are major assets of the supplier and that requires adequate protection, both legally and also in the handling of these materials.
Escrow Alliance, with its escrow arrangements, mitigates these operational IT risks by applying escrow and makes the software user less dependent.
The escrow arrangement consists of three components:
Escrow agreement
The escrow agreement is between EAL and Escrow Alliance. The escrow agreement contains the legal arrangements as agreed upon in the context of ensuring application continuity.
Verification
On each delivery, Escrow Alliance performs Technical Verification Service Level 1 (TVS Level 1) and only upon successful completion of this verification will the materials be deposited.
The TVS Level 1 checks for material integrity such as presence of source code and documentation, viruses, passwords, readability and file size.
Deposit
The deposit consists of all materials required to ensure continuity in the event of the loss of EAL. Examples include source code, manuals and other documentation.
After successful depositing, you will receive a notification.
If EAL is no longer able to ensure continuity on the use of the application, as a beneficiary on the escrow arrangement, you will obtain access to the materials necessary to maintain, modify and correct the application for your own continuity.
These materials include source code and necessary technical documentation make it possible for an experienced engineer to keep the application operational and grow with the needs and requirements of the organization.
Materials will be released only under strict conditions and based on verifiable facts and must always be consistent with the release events in the escrow agreement.
In brief:
At any time, you may request full verification of the material on deposit.
With more extensive verification, the material is tested, checked, as well as compiled entirely. This ultimately means a high level of reliability and you can be sure that all the necessary building blocks are in place.
They will register your company on this arrangement. Then Escrow Alliance will send you a beneficiary declaration. After you return this signed beneficiary declaration, you will receive a certificate from Escrow Alliance confirming your participation. You will receive a new certificate annually.
