NCC calls for standards to protect users against disaster

National Computing Centre pleads for help in writing business codes of conduct

The National Computing Centre (NCC) made a plea this week for help in drawing up standards to protect users against mergers or collapses of vendors and non-existent year 2000 support, writes Lisa Kelly.

The services organisation is being funded by The European Committee for Standardisation, to produce escrow guidelines that will give users access to the software source code of suppliers? products under special conditions.

The committee has invited all interested parties to help in the development of standards at a free conference in Manchester next month.

The committee?s concern is that while some companies have set up escrow agreements with software vendors, it is by no means general practice.

The NCC argues that escrow standards would provide ?a basic insurance that software you bought continues to have value if disasters occur?.

Rob Hailstone, research director at Bloor Research, believes that escrow agreements are under-used.

?It is not general practice across the whole industry, but people should be given the opportunity of ensuring the continued availability of a strategic piece of software.?

Escrow agents, such as the NCC, are trusted third parties that store product source code.

The NCC says that ?less than 30% of mission critical software is in escrow?.

Daniel Dresner, the NCC?s quality manager, said that all other aspects of software procurement ? including so-called ?stiffing?, where suppliers demand unreasonable financial returns when contracts are renegotiated ? are peripheral if a company cannot get access to the source code in its systems

?An escrow agreement means fundamental protection for your investment,? he added.

Escrow in action: Bedford Borough Council

When a software supplier to Bedford Borough Council went into receivership last year, the council activated its escrow agreement. Keith Simmons, senior licensing officer said: ?It meant we could maintain the software inhouse. Without the source code, the system would have toppled over, we would have lost data, and there would have been a hiatus of a year while we attempted to get a new system?