Caveat Emptor

I reader sent me an email today. So, today, I'll play educator (hey, I'm out of practice, its inter-session) and educate all you nice folks about the concept of Caveat Emptor, buyer beware or in today's hip-hop fast paced world, duh!

Today's Lesson

It seems, this particular gentleman's company (I'll call them "The ODam Co.") entrusted its mission critical Web site, and data to a particular Web hosting service (lets call them "Ooopsie Ltd"). The relationship hasn't gone as anticipated.

It seems that the Ooopsie Ltd. company made certain promises in the way they would perform disaster management. These promises, it is alleged, included making daily backups of all data and programs, which would, in the case of a disaster, protect and serve the client.

In order for ODam to take advantage of Ooopsie's service, it signed a contract. The contract stipulated all sorts of do's, don'ts, wherefores and whereas, between the parties. Most important, to Ooopsie, and of course the source of major aggravation to ODam, is the particular paragraph that said in essence:"Should we goof " Ooops. We're not responsible!"

Which is, of course, where they got the idea for their corporate name.

Well, as in any good story, Ooopsie had a malfunction, or an "ooops." Some inept employee typed the wrong command and wiped out a server. There went all the Web sites and all the data. Not a biggie, you say, we can restore from our back up. WRONG! Ooopsie, you see, never bothered to make backups, as they had agreed to do in the previously mentioned contract.

The ODam Company was livid. No backups! We're out important data here; we've lost time and money. What are you going to do to compensate us Ooopsie?

Ooopsie's reply, "Nothing. We made an ooopsie, and our contact that you signed said we're off the hook." ODam's reply was, well, you can figure that out, I'm sure.Lessons Learned

A)Re-read your contacts carefully.
B)In any situation that leaves data and programs on a third-party computer, insist on, and make sure you receive backup media periodically that can be read by the equipment you currently own in-house.

This gives you the ability to:
1)check that they are indeed backing up your data and
2)read the backup, so you know its your data.

Class is dismissed.