Play It Safe with a Software Escrow Agreement
That's the title of an article in the latest McLean Report, a regular newsletter of the Info-Tech Research Group. The article has some good discussion on the workings of software escrow, and some benefits and pitfalls. The article starts off with this explanation:
In software escrow, organizations engage an independent escrow agent to store and protect source code and related intellectual assets of a vendor. If a âtrigger eventâ specified in the escrow agreement occurs, organizations can then obtain these assets from the agent.
Escrow generally protects against trigger events like bankruptcy, ceased operations, and competitor takeovers. In these scenarios, the vendor may cease to support applications the customer depends on, so escrow allows the customer access to the source code to facilitate continued use of those applications.
The McLean Report is only available by paid subscription, but the article is reproduced here with their permission.