With more employees than ever working remotely, how can companies ensure business continuity? Adam Boland of SES explains how you can best protect business-critical applications during the Coronavirus (COVID-19) lockdown.

How has the Coronavirus (COVID-19) lockdown affected business continuity?

Most businesses in the UK rely on business-critical applications to perform key tasks and automate processes. But what happens when the suppliers of those applications are no longer available to support them?

That’s the situation being experienced by companies up and down the UK during this unprecedented period of uncertainty where many businesses are fighting to stay afloat. Unfortunately, no matter the industry, size, market share or even media coverage, no organisation is immune to market forces. All companies are susceptible.

Organisations using applications installed on site may begin to lose functionality, and businesses working from home using ‘Software as a Service (SaaS)’ applications delivered through hosting providers, such as Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure or Google Cloud Platform, may also experience problems, with suppliers unable to support the service effectively during the lockdown.

How can you ensure business continuity during the Coronavirus (COVID-19) lockdown?

However, there are suppliers out there who can help, providing end users of business-critical systems with legal access to a copy of their source code if the third-party software owner is no longer available to develop and support the application. The idea is that this protects end users and puts them in control of their third-party software.

The likes of a Software Escrow Agreement permit an independent specialist to hold and test a copy of your application's source code to make sure it’s accurate, complete and can be compiled independently in the event of vendor failure.

During the likes of the Coronavirus (COVID-19) lockdown, an independent specialist can then recreate the working service on your behalf. This naturally has a significant number of benefits to end users, including:

• business continuity
• protection of investment
• assurance that even the most complex applications can be rebuilt
• a fully managed service, minimising your costs and administration

About the author

Adam Boland is an Account Director at SES and has 18 years’ experience protecting businesses continuity with Software Escrow protection.

See also

What does the Coronavirus Business Interruption Loan Scheme (CBILS) mean for businesses?

What does it mean to be furloughed?

What does the COVID-19 'lockdown' mean for UK employers?

Find out more

COVID-19: guidance for employees (GOV.UK)

Image: Getty Images

Publication date: 22 April 2020