Golf
A Myrtle Beach Golf association seeks to protect the source code for their local online booking platform after a series of acquisitions.
From restaurant reservations to concert tickets to tee times – everyone books everything online these days. When we’re planning our weekends or vacations using devices nestled comfortably in the palms of our hands, we don’t think about the millions of lines of coding that make all that clicking and confirming at the touch of a fingertip possible.
However, if any of that code is lost, compromised or no longer supported – your plans to eat lobster, see your favorite band live or enjoy 18 holes won’t play out quite the way you hoped. What prevents you from having to worry about source code and platform functionality?
There are people out there who worry about things like source code for you. People like Tracy Conner, General Manager of Grand Strand Tee Time Network.
Grand Strand Tee Time Network (GSTTN) and Myrtle Beach Golf Holiday partner to serve the Myrtle Beach golf community. GSTTN developed a web-based reservation system and holds the license for the Myrtle Beach market.
This software is invaluable to the Myrtle Beach golf community. Every golf course in the market uses it. Through the platform the golf courses’ tee sheets are embedded into their Point of Sale systems. The golf courses are connected through the software to 120 distribution channels; this lets players book golf through hotels, online travel sites, and other outside channels. Those channels book a million rounds of golf per year in the Myrtle Beach market – one third of the total rounds booked in the area.
Conner and GSTTN believed that connecting golfers to golf courses in the Myrtle Beach was an important service, but they also acknowledged GSTTN was not a software company. In order to deliver the best product and better serve their community, GSTTN sold the software to Integrated Business Solutions (IBS) in 2013, and IBS continued to develop and maintain the software. EZLinks then purchased Integrated Business Solutions in 2015, and Grand Strand Tee Time Network continued to license the software from the new owners. Despite this complexity, this is a typical real-world situation, and one that introduces risk into the equation.
GSTTN originally sold the software to IBS as a five-year installment sale. There were performance clauses in the contract that guaranteed that if performance goals weren’t met, the software would revert back to GSTTN. The source code, which Integrated Business Solutions – and then EZLinks – had to maintain and update, was routinely deposited in an Iron Mountain technology escrow account.
Before Conner and GSTTN sold the software, they wanted to find a technology escrow partner they could trust to maintain the integrity of the source code. At the time, GSTTN still had a small team of developers maintaining the product and he asked them to research technology escrow vendors.
Conner said, “Iron Mountain was the company they recommended. They gave me a laundry list of reasons why. However, I did not take their recommendation at face value, even though they worked for me. So, I took those recommendations and vetted them with other industry contacts that we had worked with over the years to get their feedback. It all came back positive, so that’s how I made the decision to choose Iron Mountain as our technology escrow provider.”
Golf courses depend on this technology for a huge portion of their business. If the software were somehow corrupted or lost, or if EZLinks were to go out of business and could no longer support it, the Myrtle Beach golf community would be in for a bumpy ride.
No one is more aware of this potential hazard than Conner.
After EZLinks acquired Integrated Business Solutions, Conner added a Level 2 Verification to his technology escrow service. Conner said, “When that company was sold, the two principals were no longer a part of this new company. The new company is a much bigger company, a great company, and I’ve got great relationships there, but I just felt it was in my best interest to verify that that source code was getting deposited and validated properly.”
Verification testing is the only way to ensure that everything will work according to plan if the software source code is ever released from escrow. Specifically, with a Level 2 Compile Test verification, it validates whether the development environment can be recreated from the documentation and files supplied in the escrow deposit.
Conner and GSTTN had the foresight to ensure that the integrity of their source code was protected by Iron Mountain and took that assurance one step further by choosing verification testing.
What does that mean for Myrtle Beach golf market? It means those million rounds of golf keep getting booked on Myrtle Beach courses. It means golfers hit the links none the wiser to people like Conner making sure everything behind the curtain is working just as it should.
NCC Group Software Resilience has acquired Iron Mountain’s Intellectual Property Management (IPM) business. For more information on the acquisition, please visit our dedicated information hub, or contact Iron Mountain IPM.
