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Continuing 7 Question & Answer Blog Series: When evaluating SaaS and cloud computing for your government agency …

#6. Is there a disaster recovery plan for this web-based software / SaaS?

Any vendor providing web-based, SaaS services should consider every potential disaster, and be prepared for anything. When evaluating SaaS vendors for your government agency, ask whether the provider has:

• Data backup procedures
• A multilevel backup strategy that includes disk-to-disk-to-tape data backup where tape backups serve as a secondary level of backup
• Failover that cascades from server to server and from data center to data center in the event of a regional disaster, such as a hurricane or flood

BasicGov web-based / SaaS provider develops and hosts its software on Salesforce.com cloud platform Force.com which has world class disaster recovery plans and procedures:

• The Salesforce service performs real-time replication to disk at each data center, and near real-time data replication between the production data center and the disaster recovery center
• Data are transmitted across encrypted links
• Disaster recovery tests verify our projected recovery times and the integrity of the customer data

Read more at http://www.salesforce.com/platform/cloud-infrastructure/reliability.jsp and http://trust.salesforce.com/trust/security/

Click to read Intro Blog and list of 7 questions.

Click to read #1Q&A: Is my web-based software / SaaS data secure?

Click to read #2Q&A: Can I track SaaS performance?

Click to read: #3Q&A: Is the web-based software / SaaS truly multitenant

Click to read: #4Q&A: Will this web-based software, SaaS application scale for my government agency needs today and tomorrow?

Click to read: #5Q&A: Is web-based software, SaaS high performance?

7 Question & Answer Blog Series: When evaluating SaaS and cloud computing for your government agency …

3.  Is the web-based software / SaaS truly multitenant?

Multitenant architecture allows for quick deployment, lower cost, and faster innovation. It is important to evaluate SaaS vendors for your government agency for:

• Efficient service delivery, with low maintenance and upgrade burden
• Consistent performance and reliability based on manageable multitenant architecture
• Rapid product release cycles

With web-based / SaaS applications such as BasicGov and its cloud platform partner Force.com, government agencies have a true multitenant architecture.

BasicGov with Force.com dramatically reduces the effort to integrate with either on-premises applications including Microsoft, Oracle, SAP, ESRI or other third-party solutions and external cloud services such as Amazon Web Services, Facebook, Google AppEngine, and Twitter.

Click to read Intro Blog and list of 7 questions.

Click to read #1Q&A: Is my web-based software / SaaS data secure?

Click to read #2Q&A: Can I track SaaS performance?

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