WATCH FOR THE HOOK HIDDEN IN THE NETWORK
Most companies attempt to retain their customers by a combination of features and pricing, very rarely mentioning that your data may be stored in a proprietary format that makes it time-consuming and costly to retrieve and integrate on another product.
Today’s mailbox contained two warnings of impending actions.
One from Salesforce who announced that the company was retiring its Data.com Connect product effective May 4, 2019, and that as of May 4, 2018 customers would no longer be able to purchase plans, contacts, or point. According to the company …
“Guided by customer and partner feedback, Salesforce's priority over the last year has been focused on developing a new vision for data integration. To help us maintain this focus, we're beginning a wind-down process of not only Data.com Connect, but also our Data.com Clean and Data.com Prospector products. The contacts data from Data.com Connect will only be used in the maintenance of the Data.com Clean and Prospector products for Salesforce through the end-of-life of those products (currently targeted for some time in 2020). After the Data.com end-of-life is complete, the contact database may be archived by Salesforce. Please note you can only export up to 50,000 contact records at a time. Please be sure to do so no later than May 3rd, 2019, as you will not be able to log in as of May 4th, 2019.” Thanks, Data.com Connect
And one from Network Solutions who announced changes to their email platform …
”We're writing to let you know we'll be updating our email service platform in two weeks. Once the update is complete, you'll discover a newly designed platform plus a host of new features designed to make using your email easier and more efficient. It is important to make sure you backup and save your stored files, photo albums, notes and any contact distribution lists. Not saving this information will result in its permanent loss.” Best Regards, Network Solutions Customer Support
Which leads us to this prescriptive …
Since almost all companies use a unilateral “terms of service” agreement that holds them harmless for any loss of connectivity, loss of data, data breach, or other catastrophic occurrences, it is up to you to ensure that you always have an exit strategy to backup your data in such a manner as it can be manipulated into a compatible format that can be used with similar products and services.