What to Include in Your SaaS Contract

CIOUpdate on December 19, 2006

This article reviews some of the financial benefits of software-as-a-service, which have been covered pretty extensively elsewhere, then delves into how to evaluate the costs of SaaS vs. the costs of hosting software applications in-house and — the real meat of the article, as far as we are concerned — offers tips on areas that should be covered in SaaS contracts. Among them: Make sure code is placed in escrow, so you have the option of running SaaS applications internally in the event of a service shutdown. Make sure data migration procedures are clearly spelled out. Obtain service level agreements (SLAs) on availability, response times and notifications of outages.