Magnet Investments

Requirements Software

In the age of automation, software escrow the software underlying the business processes of a company plays an increasingly important role. Regularly by an external provider of software is programmed, developed and customised to the company. But what happens when the software fails, troubleshooting is denied by the software provider or this adjusts the own business all of a sudden? The source code underlying a software is the key to the development and maintenance of the software underlying the business processes for the company concerned in such cases. The source code is basically however intellectual property and trade secrets of the software manufacturer and not regularly used for the undertaking. A fiduciary deposit (software escrow) of the source code can adequately protect the interests of all parties involved in such a worst-case scenario.

The source code is for a debtor to extreme secrecy Depository institution deposited and may only under circumstances precisely defined previously by the parties – how are issued for an insolvency of the provider of. The quality of the deposit of the source code is currently unfortunately only rarely in practice its existential meaning. It is problematic, in particular, deposited the source code on a disk on a trustee, without having previously someone critically has grappled with its contents. To actually have an added value for the company in the theSoftware, the source code must be complete, understandable, difficult, properly documented and identical version. An expert technical review of the source code before depositing is therefore virtually indispensable, so not in the theSoftware turns out that the stored source code is practically worthless. Current publications on the topic: ITRB 04/2013, 87-89 “proper verification for software escrow – requirements for the testing of source code and documentation for software depositing” by Dr. Oliver Sankaran

Tags: hardware & software, it