Most cloud-based applications are delivered as Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) based on a subscription model. Rather than investing thousands of pounds on buying and installing in-house servers, thousands more on purchasing software licences and then hiring the necessary IT resource to get it all up and running and then to keep it operational, you pay a cloud-based software vendor such as Affinity, to use their system on a pay-as-you-go basis. There is a very attractive low cost of ownership and minimal setup time or cost with this approach which explains its growing popularity.
Of course the glaring question is what happens when you stop paying your subscription? Well, the answer is the obvious one you would expect it to be – when you stop paying, you are no longer a customer so you stop using the system. You’ll need to make sure that you have exported all your necessary data from the system before cancelling your account. Don’t worry, you will be warned before you take this action; you won’t do it by mistake!
The reason why your data is deleted when you cease to be a customer is one of data protection, nothing more sinister. Reputable software vendors like Affinity will be registered with the appropriate data protection authorities, the UK Information Commissioner’s Office in our case, and this obliges the data controller (us) to make sure all customer data is handled securely and responsibly, which includes not retaining data for any longer than is required. When you cease your account we will queue it for deletion within 30 days at which point all identifiable client data will be fully purged from our servers. We do retain our nightly server backups for a rolling period of one year, but these are securely archived off the application servers. Please note that these are used only for disaster recovery purposes and do not allow the restoration of individual accounts.
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