The Security Kitchen

Michelle Dickman over at TriGeo has an interesting story .

Apparently her company was in a bid that was eventually won by a competitor ‘High Tower Software’ because they lowballed. The customer took the risk to buy from High Tower and eventually High Tower went out of business in November 08. Good times. There you are with a great (?) product.

There is something you can do against this type of risk and it’s called source code escrow. Basically it is an agreement to have the source code stored at a third party escrow agent which will release the source code when and if the licensor goes out of business. More info here .

Escrow Europe is one of the companies that provides these services in Europe (and in the US too ?). If you know any other companies that do the same, let me know, I’ll add them to the list.

When buying in economically tough times like these or when buying from great startups, it’s an option you have to consider. It’s a risk you can now easily mitigate !