SaaS Customers often ask or expect SaaS supplier’s to provide them with a privacy policy for use in conjunction with their SaaS products. SaaS suppliers should firmly refuse such requests. Firstly, as they could face liability claims from the customer if the privacy policy is in appropriate and secondly while you will have no adequate knowledge of the issues set out below, which will need to be covered in the privacy policy.
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SaaS Agreements – Terms and Conditions – Email Marketing Rules
There are a number of guidelines and laws that have to be complied with when sending marketing emails and text messages in the UK. If you are a SaaS supplier who provides email marketing services as part of your SaaS services to customers you should ensure that your SaaS customers comply with the following rules and Regulations. Also do not forget that you may need to comply with the rules yourself when carrying out your own email marketing campaigns.
Continue readingSaaS Agreements – Data Protection – Anonymising Data
Often SaaS suppliers or SaaS customers anonymise personal data for use in statistical or marketing information but are unaware that by using such anonymised data they could be breaching the Data Protection Act 1998 (DPA). The Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) has recently confirmed that anonymised personal data may be disclosed without the consent of the data subject, provided that the anonymised data when linked with other information will not lead to the identification of an individual.
Continue readingSaaS Agreements – Customer Lists – Social Media Contacts
If you actively encourage or allow your employees to use LinkedIn and Twitter to store or build up their business contacts you need to ensure that you have control over how this information will be used if the employee ceases to work for you, as most contacts will be your SaaS customers, other employees and SaaS suppliers.
In the last few years there have only been a handful of court cases in the UK (and the US) providing guidance on this issue and whether or not contacts in social media channels such as LinkedIn and Twitter can be used by ex-employees.
Continue readingSaaS Agreements – Terms and Conditions – Online Sales
SaaS Agreements – Online Sales – Terms and Conditions
Many SaaS suppliers now conclude sales of SaaS products with customers online, usually by having customers “click” acceptance of the supplier’s terms and conditions on their website. When concluding online sales, SaaS suppliers need to ensure that their online terms and conditions include the following information, in order to create a legally enforceable SaaS agreement with the customer.
Continue readingSaaS Agreements – SLA – Terms to Include
The above is a general guide to the terms to include in a SLA for a SaaS agreement. The degree of detail that you provide will largely depend upon the following:
The type of SaaS products and services you are supplying;
How much the customer pays for the SaaS product and services;
Whether the SaaS product is business critical i.e. online banking;
What is standard in that particular business area.
SaaS Agreements – Data Protection – The UK Patriot Act
Recently SaaS suppliers have seen a marked increase in EU customers raising concerns about disclosure of their data to US law enforcement authorities under the Patriot Act – an American anti-terrorism law – particularly where the SaaS supplier has a parent company in the USA or data is being hosted or processed in the USA. Now to add to your problems, the UK Government plans to introduce its own “Patriot Act” type law in the near future.
Continue readingSaaS Agreements – Patriot Act – Renewed Customer Concerns
Recently SaaS suppliers have seen a marked increase in EU customers raising concerns about disclosure of their data to US law enforcement authorities under the Patriot Act – an American anti-terrorism law – particularly where the SaaS supplier has a parent company in the USA or data is being hosted or processed in the USA.
Continue readingSaaS Agreements – FAQs – Hosting
Under the terms of your SaaS agreement you will be storing, processing and publishing customer content and data on the Internet using servers located and operated at the data centre of a third party. The third party operating the servers is known as a hosting provider. The hosting services are provided from a data centre owned and operated by the hosting provider.
Continue readingSaaS Agreements – SaaS, PaaS, IaaS – Is There a Difference?
Cloud computing services comprise of – Platform as a Service (PaaS), Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) and Software as a Service (SaaS). These terms are commonly used to describe the different levels and combinations of services which are together commonly referred to as “cloud computing”.
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