SaaS Agreements – Reseller Agreements – Price Fixing

SaaS suppliers and SaaS resellers should be aware that price fixing is illegal under UK and EU competition law. Often SaaS resellers are not aware that the terms of their SaaS reseller agreement include price fixing clauses. For example: If the SaaS reseller agreement includes clause on resale price maintenance (RPM). This will usually be deemed to be price fixing by the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) who investigates breaches of competition law in the UK.

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SaaS Agreements – Terms and Conditions – Risk Assessment

SaaS customers often complain that the security provisions in SaaS agreements are inadequate and lack transparency. Following a risk assessment, often using external auditors and regulators, SaaS customers often ask SaaS suppliers to add numerous additional terms and warranties to their SaaS terms. By including the security provisions set out below in your standard SaaS agreement, SaaS suppliers can avoid having more rigorous provisions imposed upon them.

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SaaS Agreements – Hosting – Encryption of Stored Data

Under the Data Protection Act (DPA), SaaS customers are required to take “appropriate technical and organisational measures” to prevent the unauthorised or unlawful processing of personal data and accidental loss or destruction of, or damage to, personal data. SaaS providers who process personal data on behalf of SaaS customers are required to include such obligations in their SaaS agreement (or SLA).

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SaaS Agreements – FAQs – What is a SLA?

SLA is the common abbreviation used for a service level agreement. When providing SaaS services to customers you need to include a SLA in your SaaS agreement, either as part of the main terms of your SaaS agreement or in a specific SLA schedule. A SLA should set out the following support and maintenance services that you will provide to customers to ensure that the SaaS software is made properly available to them.

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SaaS Agreements – FAQs – What is SaaS?

SaaS is the abbreviation for “software as a service”. You may know this under another name, for example ASP services (application service provider), software on demand or software subscription. These names all refer to the same thing – software being made available via the Internet to users.
What is a SaaS Agreement?

A SaaS agreement is simply the name used for the agreement between a SaaS supplier and a SaaS customer which sets out the terms under which SaaS software may be accessed. This will usually include a service level agreement (SLA).

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SaaS 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.

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SaaS 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.

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