Huddle for Procurement & Supplier Management

Transcription

1 Huddle for Procurement & Supplier Management G-Cloud Service Definition This document intends to outline the capabilities and benefits of Huddle for Procurement & Supplier Management to public sector organisations and seeks to summarise why we believe that we have the best fit for purpose solution to meet the ever increasing needs of Procurement & Supplier Management departments within the public sector to collaborate and provide more efficient, effective and joined up working.

2 Contents 1. Executive Summary... 3 About Huddle... 3 Huddle Transforming the Way Procurement and Supplier Managers Work... 3 Huddle - Security First... 4 Huddle Service Driven User Adoption... 4 Huddle True Native Mobility... 5 Huddle for Procurement and Supplier Management - Benefits of the Solution... 5 Huddle Award Winning Service Huddle Overview... 8 Create & Edit Content Together... 8 Manage, Store and Share Content... 8 Access Anywhere... 8 Manage and Calendar... 8 Communicate with Everyone... 8 Search across the Social Enterprise... 8 People perform Workflow... 9 Government-level Security... 9 Access self-service and specialist applications Reference Guide of Features Comprehensive collaboration system Client extranet: Corporate intranet and internal file storage: Secure external collaboration: Project management: Knowledge management Key features: Project management File sharing Document management Collaboration tools Managing and connecting people User controls Customisation:

3 Mobile and third party access Microsoft Outlook Integration Huddle for Procurement & Supplier Management Feature List Security at Huddle Hosting Environment Huddle in UK Government Network Infrastructure Multiple Levels of Security Physical Security System & Network Security Application Security SAL & Resilience Backup & Disaster Recovery Privacy Considerations of the Software Lifecycle Security FAQ Suggested Transition/ Migration Approach

4 1. Executive Summary This document intends to outline the capabilities and benefits of the Huddle for Procurement & Supplier Management service to public sector organisations and seeks to summarise why we believe that we have the best fit for purpose solution to meet the ever increasing needs of the procurement and supplier management departments to collaborate and provide more efficient, effective and joined up service delivery. About Huddle Established in 2006, with offices in London and San Francisco, Huddle is the leader in cloud collaboration and content management for the enterprise. Huddle was founded with a single aspiration: to help people work better together. At Huddle, we believe that true collaboration means more than just file sharing. It s about delivering the right information to the right people and giving them all the tools they need to achieve their goals in one place. We also believe that true collaboration is about actions not words. It s about actually getting stuff done, not just talking about getting it done. Fewer status updates, more completed projects, whilst ensuring security and compliance as standard. Trusted by 80% of UK central government departments and In-Q-Tel (IQT), our partner in the U.S., Huddle is the most pervasive cloud-based content collaboration platform in the government. It allows teams, departments, and agencies to share and work on documents and files internally and across the firewall, securely and confidentially. Huddle is a popular alternative choice to SharePoint in the cloud, offering unbelievably easy-to-use collaboration tools, uptime and adoption guarantee. Simply: if SharePoint was built today, they would ve built Huddle. Huddle Transforming the Way Procurement and Supplier Managers Work Public procurement is, by its very nature, a process of detailed internal and external collaboration, with procurement departments having to share and work on sensitive and complex information and content with internal teams across finance, legal, operations, IT, policy, security and others, as well as multiple external suppliers and stakeholders. Procurement teams must co-ordinate and manage the creation of functional and nonfunctional requirements and specifications, in addition to associated procurement and contractual documentation obtaining input from various internal teams and external expertise. Various iterations need reviewed, commented and updated before final documentation can be issued to suppliers for a public procurement exercise. 3

5 The sharing of sensitive information and commercial information with potential suppliers and partners creates the need for a highly secure portal which can be easily accessed and managed by procurement professionals across Government regardless of their location or device. Huddle for Procurement & Supplier Management provides a highly secure solution for Government bodies and procurement professionals. It delivers a network of online workspaces for public sector procurement teams to share content and manage the various stages of the procurement process, including pre-procurement activities, the tender response management and supplier engagement, and the post award process including supplier negotiation and management. Huddle for Procurement & Supplier Management has been proven to assist Government organisations in managing the complete procurement and contracting lifecycle, providing security of information, ease of collaboration, and full auditing and compliance with associated legislation. With the ability to set approvals and assign deadlines with various suppliers and stakeholders, Huddle for Procurement & Supplier Management provides a full and verifiable audit trail and version history of all files whilst also recording the activities and interactions with suppliers. This has proved to be crucial when challenges arise over negotiations on customisation of proposed solutions, price, service levels and other key contracting terms and conditions. Teams and organisations work more efficiently, using Huddle s secure cloud collaboration service that can be accessed via web browsers, desktops, or mobile devices anytime, anywhere. Huddle - Security First Huddle is committed to keeping your data safe and secure. Some of the biggest businesses in the world, and numerous government organisations, trust Huddle with their data. Huddle has very rigorous security standards as detailed in our security whitepaper from SSAE16 certified datacenters run by Rackspace to ISO27001 certification covering both our corporate and data centre environments. The UK Government's CESG department has also certified Huddle for pan-government accreditation (PGA), meaning any government department can use Huddle without having to do their own risk analysis. Huddle is currently the only collaboration company to have achieved this status. Huddle Service Driven User Adoption User adoption is the most critical factor in the deployment of a collaboration and content management application. 4

6 A high level of user adoption also means that you can significantly reduce training time and costs, while minimizing management issues, typical of enterprise on-premise deployments. Huddle s user interface has been architected with the business user in mind to guarantee the highest possible adoption rates and positive ROI. Huddle s dedicated Customer Success team assist our customers to get started through user provisioning, onsite training and supporting your business users, so that IT can focus on driving innovation and empowering the organization with the most productive and cost efficient tools. Several studies suggest that other popular collaboration solutions, due to their inherent complexity and multi-purpose feature set, suffer from low adoption rates within organisations. In fact, Huddle s customer research shows a user adoption of 90+ per cent, compared with the typical 32 per cent adoption of these other systems. With the Huddle Adoption Guarantee, we are confident that, within 90 days, 100 per cent of your initial user base will be actively using Huddle or we will refund the entire three months subscription value. For the IT department, Huddle, with its adoption guarantee, is the best way to obtain high levels of collaboration, adoption and ROI. For the Procurement professional it is an intuitive collaboration and content management application that they will enjoy using. Huddle True Native Mobility Accessing information wherever you are and on whatever device you choose is a core design philosophy of Huddle. We provide industry-leading ios (ipad and iphone) and Android applications, with Blackberry and Windows Phone 3rd party support. Huddle for Procurement and Supplier Management - Benefits of the Solution Public sector organisations will realise the following benefits from implementing Huddle for Procurement & Supplier Management: Increased Efficiency through significantly improved access to up-to-date procurement and supplier information, guidance and policy has proven to result in more efficient and costs effective process across public sector procurement departments Improved Supplier Engagement leading to more open and transparent relationships with potential supplier base for procurement activities and existing contracting partners across various service and operational areas. Easier Information Sharing Huddle for Procurement & Contract Management keeps documents in a centrally, controlled repository that can be easily accessed and shared with internal stakeholders as well as external suppliers or advisers No Duplication of Effort and Effective Version Control working on procurement and contractual documents via and legacy systems, often leads to multiple 5

7 versions of the same document being created and shared throughout the process. This typically results in conflicting edits, confusion over version hierarchy, with time often wasted merging multiple modifications and additions. Through Huddle for Procurement and Supplier Management s automated document versioning, all document versions are organised chronologically with full comment and audit trail capability. Increased Levels of Security- enabling a highly secure way of storing confidential information, Huddle provides full Encryption at Rest, protecting your documents and files at all times whist held in the system Enhanced Back Up Capability- Huddle can provide a data export tool which allows all information stored within Huddle to be exported to an alternative file store or system, addressing any additional back-up requirements for your critical information. Security First Huddle has been ISO270001, IL2 and Pan Government Accreditation security certified. It has also been delivered to IL3 level for enhanced security requirements Remote Device Wiping Huddle's ios applications have full and granular remote wipe capabilities. If a user is removed from a workspace or from an account, the application will remove any pertinent cached content. If a device is lost, the application's OAuth token can be revoked, removing content from the device but retaining a user's privileges. Increased File Size Limit- Huddle for Procurement & Supplier Management allows your department to upload individual files up to 10GB (extended from 2GB), thus removing the inefficiencies and frustrations created by file size limitations in traditional systems Guaranteed User Adoption driven by an industry leading intuitive user interface aligned to how people operate in modern systems Unsurpassed Service dedicated and named Huddle Customer Success representative to ensure each customer clearly understands how to use Huddle to its full potential. Webinars and onsite launch & learn sessions included as standard Industry Leading Support including Quarterly Business Reviews with a dedicated account team (including your Public Sector Account Director, Customer Success representative and Sales Engineer), online knowledgebase, video tutorials, support case logging and ticketing system No Cost of Management negligible management overhead costs, particularly when compared to either on-premise or hosted SharePoint implementations True Uptime - Huddle offers True Uptime Guarantee with a 99.9 per cent uptime money-back guarantee. This promise includes zero downtime for Huddle s service updates, of which 13 occur a year Anywhere, Anytime, Any Device User Access not limited by web browser provider and enhanced capabilities via iphone, ipad, Android and BlackBerry apps Intelligent Working Huddle s unique Intelligent Sync engine ensures users always have access to their relevant content at all times both online and off-line. Fully Customised User Interface to provide a familiar corporate look and feel to users Huddle Award Winning Service Computer Weekly Best Supplier for Enterprise Software Gartner Cool Vendor 2009 Gartner consistently recognised as a Visionary in the Social Software in the Workplace Magic Quadrant 6

8 The Daily Telegraph - Winner Best European Enterprise B2B Product (Collaboration, Storage, Security) 2011 TechCrunch Europe - Best Enterprise / B2B Startup (EMEA) 2009 UK IT Industry Awards - Internet Product of the Year 2009 Tech Media Invest Tech Media Invest 100 (ranked 4 th ) 2010 Tech Start-up 100 Awards Winner of Best Enterprise Tech Start Up in Europe 2011 KMWorld Top 100 Companies that Matter in Knowledge Management 2013 Red Herring Europe Winner

9 2. Huddle Overview Huddle is a true cloud solution and would provide both the consuming organisation s employees and external parties the ability to securely access their information from wherever they are and whatever device they re on. While the emphasis is on ease-of-use, Huddle would also provide the control and auditing required for an enterprise solution. Create & Edit Content Together Creating and editing content in a collaborative environment is at the heart of what Huddle does. Content is available to users from wherever they are in the world on whatever device they want to use. Manage, Store and Share Content Management of content is Huddle s core competency. Content can be shared and accessed from anywhere in the world with anyone in the world (with an address). Content is held in the datacentres that adhere to industry-leading, accredited practices. The ease of use of Huddle is another core tenet allowing for seamless versioning, permissioning and publishing workflows. True collaboration will only occur if the tool is simple and useful. Access Anywhere Accessing information wherever you are and on whatever device you choose is a core design philosophy of Huddle. We provide industry-leading ios (ipad and iphone) and Android applications, with Blackberry and Windows Phone 3rd party support. Manage and Calendar While Huddle is not an or calendaring service, it does adhere to standards such as ical, allowing for tasks scheduled in Huddle to show in calendaring applications provided by Microsoft, Google and others. Communicate with Everyone Huddle provides the ability to communicate via whiteboards and discussion forums, as well as comments and the ability to reply via , extending the conversation to members of your team who are on the go. As Huddle is a cloud service, everyone can access the information required for a meeting wherever they are in the world, with all communications verified and audited to ensure government-level security. Search across the Social Enterprise Huddle provides a search engine that fully indexes content and will surface information relevant to your workspaces. 8

10 People perform Workflow Huddle provides powerful workflow and task creation/assignment. Workflow tasks are available in the native mobile apps and deep-linked notifications are sent out for desktop/non-supported mobile devices. Government-level Security Security is at the heard of everything we do. Collaboration and sharing content must be done in a way that is transparent, audited and secure. Huddle's pan-government accreditation to IL2 is testament to this. Please see the Security section for more information. Access self-service and specialist applications Huddle provides an extensive API that would allow for application integration. 9

11 3. Reference Guide of Features Comprehensive collaboration system Huddle is the most comprehensive cloud-based application for increasing efficiencies when managing projects and files securely in the enterprise. It combines the functionality of extranets, intranets, knowledgebase and project management software, and FTP and VPN systems, with integrated phone and web conferencing. Client extranet: Huddle serves as a secure online environment where information can be shared externally with your customers, partners and suppliers Transparency for the client, with permissions and audit trails Ability to separate, or identify in progress and completed work Deliverables need approvals and sign off Ability to manage all clients projects from a single portal Customisation of the workspace in line with the client s branding Corporate intranet and internal file storage: Huddle provides a secure online environment where information can be shared with colleagues, teams and departments within your organisation Ability to access content from anywhere and at any time, no VPN required Set granular permissions to restrict access to sensitive documents Track content versions and feedback from colleagues Secure external collaboration: Huddle works across firewalls Relevant people, inside and outside of an organisation, can access content in a secure online environment s can be intercepted and accidentally sent to the wrong people. Huddle enables access control Track feedback and comments Keep a record of all versions of a document as it evolves Store all discussions relating to a project Project management: Huddle enables you to manage projects, simply and efficiently Assign tasks to people Track progress and project milestones Keep all documents and content relating to a project in a central/secure environment Huddle sends auto-reminders on upcoming tasks Contact details of all people on a project are easily accessible Deliverables can be approved and signed off 10

12 Knowledge management Keep all content in a secure online space and create a central knowledgebase Sort files and folders by title, size, date modified or approval status Search for required information using Huddle s search engine Ability to access content when members of a team are on holiday/off sick Share information with relevant people by uploading into Huddle and notifying them Keep track of a document s history Key features: Project management A personalised dashboard provides an overview of project activity and enables quick access to information Invite colleagues, customer, partners or suppliers into a workspace to collaborate on projects Assign tasks to people and immediately track deadlines and milestones for the projects Receive auto reminders about tasks that are nearing their deadlines Using ical, link Huddle tasks and meetings to Outlook and/or Google calendars File sharing Upload multiple files into a workspace and add new files at any time View your files (Office documents, PDF, images) directly from the browser without downloading them. Copy and search for text, even print, without the need to open Office. Store and share any size and type of file (Office docs, PDF, images, video and more) Create your own folder and sub-folder structure Online software allows you to view, create and edit files directly in the browser without needing to download them or install software Document management Sort files and folders by title, size, date modified or approval status Huddle s search engine looks within the text of files to find exactly what is required Manage versions. Lock files for editing and check them out of Huddle so that conflicting changes can t be made Request and view approvals of files Audit trails are added each time an action takes place against each file Collaboration tools Start discussions with team members and keep conversations in a secure, central space 11

13 Brainstorm with team members, create lists and share images Edit whiteboards directly, save changes and add comments Managing and connecting people Each user in a Huddle workspace has a profile page where contact information can be shared, and pictures and biographies can be uploaded Group people into teams and assign different access rights and permissions See who has been active in the workspace and when they last logged in User controls Set granular permissions against each workspace or folder, controlling who can view specific items Amend permissions or remove users from workspaces Switch features on and off within a workspace for more focused use. Turn it into a sharing portal or a discussion forum Control who can invite users into workspaces Single sign on via SAML2 for increased security and a better user experience Customisation: Create a unique Huddle URL Customise your account and workspaces; add logos and change colour themes Re-skin the site to your corporate theme Mobile and third party access Work on the move with fully-featured apps for iphone, ipad and Android phones, with third-party Blackberry and Windows Phone apps available Microsoft Outlook Integration Upload documents from an trial directly into Huddle Move the content of the into the comment thread of a document Automatically invites members of an thread to the workspace 12

14 4. Huddle for Procurement & Supplier Management Feature List ESSENTIALS Huddle for Procurement & Supplier Management Number of User Licenses within Package 40 Storage Included Maximum File Upload CLOUD STORAGE Personal business file storage All file types supported File sync with mobile devices Single and multi-file loading Online (in-browser) document preview TEAM COLLABORATION Team workspaces Project workspaces Secure document sharing Secure cross-firewall collaboration Full collaboration suite (whiteboards, discussions, tasks, comments) Mobile & desktop apps CONTENT COLLABORATION One-click editing of files Audit & activity trail on documents Version history on documents (with rollback) Comments tracked against document versions Text search within documents across Huddle File approval workflow Whiteboards for team brainstorming WORKLOAD PRIORITISATION Intelligent content recommendations View and access all workspaces from central dashboard Single view of what s new across all workspaces Single view of calendar across all workspaces Single view of notifications across all workspaces Single view of approvals across all workspaces BUSINESS PROCESS OPTIMIZATION Robust task management Attach files to tasks Post comments against tasks Assign and notify about tasks Sort, group, and filter tasks Completion auto reminders 160Gb 10Gb 13

15 Custom task fields Custom task filtering MOBILE COLLABORATION Intelligent sync for mobile devices Edit documents on the move Continue conversations while on the move (online & offline) Manage tasks while on the move (online & offline) Approval workflow on the move (online & offline) Upload photos & videos on the move Preview photos & videos on the move Favourites & recommended files Auto-sync from offline on re-connect Huddle for iphone Huddle for ipad Huddle for BlackBerry Huddle for Android SOCIAL COLLABORATION Activity streams on any device View users profiles and contact details Social commenting on files mentioning within conversations In-app notifications Discussion forums Full integration: move attachments & conversations into Huddle conversations around a file stored automatically in Huddle Auto-respond from to manage approval workflows SECURITY & CONTROL Closed-security model Team-based security model Granular access control: by person, team, workspace, administrator Data centres in UK and US Failover DR (Disaster Recovery) True Uptime Guarantee (99.9%) ISO accreditation UK Government IL2 Secure file transfer (256-bit SSL) Document printing from within Huddle Control what content users can see or edit Control who can invite users Folder levels Control who can create folders HELP AND SUPPORT 24/7 access to Huddle Help portal, knowledgebase & guides 14

16 Help desk ticket submission for all users Support SLA for response to help tickets Remote administration support Twitter help and support Telephone help desk SUCCESS SERVICES Allocated Customer Success manager Customised rollout & training program Best practice workshops Membership to Huddle s Public Sector User Group ADMINISTRATION, BRANDING & REPORTING Custom account branding Admin and reporting suite Bulk content upload Data export utility Access to beta products INTEGRATION SERVICES Salesforce.com integration Single Sign-On Custom application development API access API development package ADVANCED SECURITY Remote wipe of mobile devices Encryption at rest 15

17 5. Security at Huddle Huddle is committed to keeping your data safe and secure. Some of the biggest businesses in the world, and numerous government organizations trust Huddle with their data. This section will give you an overview of Huddle s secure infrastructure and policies, including FAQs at the end of the document. Should you have any further questions regarding our security policies and measures, please don t hesitate to get in touch with us. Hosting Environment Huddle s production systems are hosted by Rackspace in the UK in some of the most highly specified data centres available today. They are built to exacting, rigorous standards and deliver unparalleled security, power, connectivity and environmental control. Our hoster provides world-class infrastructure necessary to keep Huddle s servers up and running uninterrupted around the clock. Huddle has several highly secure data centres in London. All data centres are engineered with fully redundant connectivity, power and HVAC to avoid any single point of failure. Each data centre is staffed 24/7 by highly trained technical support staff. Huddle has chosen to host its data in the UK to ensure that it is protected by EU data laws for our customers outside of the US. Huddle in UK Government Huddle has always been focused on providing the best possible solution for our UK government clients and, as such, was the first collaboration company to receive Pan- Government Accreditation (PGA) for our public instance of Huddle (up to IL2). This ensures that any organization within HMG can use Huddle immediately to store and collaborate on IL2 information safely, knowing that it has been extensively vetted by the G-Cloud team through our technology, operational practices, and data management. If there is a requirement for IL3 information, Huddle IL3 is available through our partner, FCO Services. Huddle IL3 is only available to customers who have access to the secure government infrastructure (GSI, etc.) and has been configured to ensure it meets the stringent requirements for hosting IL3 data. 16

18 Network Infrastructure The below diagram illustrates Huddle s primary and disaster recovery infrastructure. Multiple Levels of Security Huddle offers the maximum level of protection for our customers data. The following paragraphs describe each level in more detail. Physical Security Public access to our data centres is strictly forbidden. The centres only host equipment they own and manage, obviating the need for anyone, but their highly trained engineers, to be allowed into the data centre. In addition, our hoster employs a series of physical security measures, including: Live video surveillance of each data centre facility, monitored 24 hours a day Onsite security personnel monitor each site 24 hours a day Biometric hand scanners restrict access to each data centre A pass card system restricts movement from room to room within each data centre Data centres are unmarked to help maintain a low profile and these physical security measures are audited by an independent company. 17

19 System & Network Security Our servers run a hardened OS, with security patches applied to provide on-going protection from exploits. Network level security is provided by dedicated firewalls complete with DDoS mitigation. Operational policies and procedures are regularly reviewed as part of our hoster's SAS 70 Type II (or SSAE 16) audits. Where applicable, both Huddle's corporate environment and our data centres are also ISO certified. All system access is fully logged and tracked for auditing purposes and all staff with access undergo a thorough background check. Servers are hosted behind sophisticated firewalls, with a protected perimeter. We carry out penetration testing on an on-going basis (at least twice a year) and have had formal penetration testing commissioned on a number of occasions by third parties. Application Security All access to Huddle is protected by Secure Socket Layer (SSL) providing both server authentication and 256-bit AES data encryption. This ensures that your data is safe, secure and available only to registered users in your organization, with relevant permissions. Furthermore, any information stored within Huddle is encrypted at rest within our data centres. Huddle provides each user with a unique username and password that must be entered each time a user logs on. Huddle issues a session cookie only to record encrypted authentication information for the duration of a specific session. The session cookie does not include the username, password, or any user data. Huddle s password control includes a strength indicator and protection against brute-force attempts to discover passwords. Huddle s application security ensures that only those invited into a workspace can access its contents. Access controls are baked into the Huddle data model and user permissions are verified on every request by the core Huddle application framework. These access controls apply not only at the workspace level, but can also be applied to specific file folders to restrict access to certain workspace members. Access can be administered as either read only, edit, or no access. Huddle is able to offer single sign-on capabilities, utilizing the SAML2 web standard, allowing you to further verify your users, using multi-factor authentication and enforcing password policies. The Huddle application has been rigorously tested against common website vulnerabilities such as cross-site scripting (SS), cross-site request forgery (SRF), and SQL injection. SAL & Resilience At Huddle, we recognize that uptime is of the upmost importance for a business-critical web application. We employ two separate external monitoring systems to track and record 18

20 availability and response time from various locations around the globe. We have a 24/7 team available to respond immediately in the unlikely event of a serious application issue. Huddle s Service Level Agreement (SLA) guarantees 99.9% uptime over any three month period. Our record shows we are always performing well above this SLA. For example, in the first six months of 2011, Huddle s application was available 99.99% of the time. Our performance against our SLA is publicly available in real-time. Huddle s outstanding uptime is achieved by planning redundancy in every part of the system, coupled with careful quality assurance and change management. This redundancy applies to everything from power to network connections in our data centres, firewalls, load balancers, switches, web servers, and database servers. Backup & Disaster Recovery To minimize service interruption due to hardware failure, natural disaster, or other catastrophes, Huddle implements a disaster recovery program. All of Huddle s servers are backed up nightly and backups are retained for two weeks. In addition, all data (database and file system) is mirrored almost immediately to standby servers in a second data centre. The secondary data centre is always in the same country as your primary data centre, so you can be confident your data is still protected under local laws. In the event of the most serious of catastrophes, resulting in the complete loss of one of our primary data centre, your workspaces will be available within a matter of minutes via our Disaster Recovery site. Data is replicated to this site in near real-time, so business can proceed as usual. Privacy Huddle maintains a strong privacy policy to protect customer data. Huddle does not own customer data or share it with third parties. Huddle also allows customers to take their data with them, should they decide to stop using Huddle s services. The full privacy policy is available on our website. Considerations of the Software Lifecycle Huddle employs an Agile development methodology, using Scrum alongside selected Extreme Programming (P) practices. This iterative approach to development ensures that Huddle can release incremental product enhancements on a very frequent basis, and modify the product plan quickly and easily in response to changing priorities. Each development iteration lasts two weeks. This includes all the planning, design, development and exhaustive quality assurance activities to ensure that the output is production ready, following a short but rigorous, regression testing process the majority of which is automated. 19

21 Once the Quality Assurance team has approved the product increment for deployment to the live environment, the Systems Engineering team performs the release. Releases typically take place every four weeks and the dates are published in advance. Standard releases do not involve any application downtime. Security FAQ Where is my organization s data stored? All customer data is either stored in Rackspace data centres in the UK. More information on these data centres is available upon request. How do you protect your infrastructure against hackers and other threats? Servers are hosted behind sophisticated firewalls, with a protected perimeter. We carry out penetration testing on a regular basis and have formal penetration testing commissioned on a number of occasions by third parties. Our customers are welcome to carry out their own penetration testing by prior arrangement with Huddle. How do you protect from machine downtime? Huddle has a complete disaster recovery plan which makes use of failover to our second data centre. This is kept up to date in real-time. The worst case scenario for physical disaster at our primary data centre has a 15-minute failover time to the secondary data centre. This redundancy is built into each application layer of the Huddle platform. Huddle, as a business, runs entirely on cloud-based services and our business continuity plan reflects this. Our service is designed to continue running, even in the event of a major incident at one of our business premises. All Huddle staff are provisioned with the tools required to work remotely in the event of a major disaster. Does Huddle offer SSL connectivity? All data on Huddle is fully encrypted with 256-bit SSL encryption. Who owns the data that my organization stores on Huddle s servers? All of the data on Huddle s server belongs to the customer, and it can be extracted upon request, should it be necessary. Does Huddle give third party access to my data? Huddle does NOT give third parties access to its customers data, and it enforces a strict privacy policy. Does Huddle have a Safe Harbor certification? Safe Harbor is a framework developed by the US Department of Commerce in consultation with the European Commission to bridge the differences between the EU and US privacy policy. It allows US companies to comply with the EU s more rigorous data protection law. 20

22 Since Huddle is a UK company, with any European customer data residing in the UK, it is protected by the EU Data Protection Directive, which is regarded as one of the most rigorous privacy legislations in the world, and does not need Safe Harbor certification. Contact us for more information on Huddle s privacy policy. Is my data subject to the Patriot act? The Patriot Act, passed in 2001 by the US states, that any US company or wholly-owned subsidiary of a US company must hand over data that they are hosting on behalf of their customers if they are requested to do so by the US authorities. What this means in reality is that, if you are buying a cloud-based service from a US company, your data can be made available to US authorities upon request without your permission. Huddle is a UK company and uses UK-based hosting providers for our European customers. This enables us to protect your data to the fullest extent of the law. Can I extract my data should we wish to archive? Huddle can provide a data export tool which allows all information stored within Huddle to be exported to a local system of your choosing (e.g. network drive/personal hard drive etc.) This includes: All documents extracted to a standard file and folder format All web-based information (e.g. discussions/whiteboards) in offline HTML format Tasks by workspace export It is also possible to run this on a scheduled basis, so that the risk of loss of information is mitigated bearing in mind that Huddle already runs industry leading data centre mirroring and disaster recovery on your behalf. 21

23 6. Suggested Transition/ Migration Approach Collaboration platforms are often deployed in co-existence with existing systems to ensure that users do not lose data or functionality. With Huddle being a cloud service, it is easy to turn on and allow users to access without necessarily having to port data, allowing users to naturally migrate organically to Huddle over time as projects and teams are created and adoption grows. This approach also has a commercial benefit, as you pay only for what you re using and can decommission existing on-premise solutions as their utilization dips. That said, Huddle does recognize the diverse requirements of many enterprises to import data into a new system. Huddle does have the tools and processes in place to allow for a bulk import of data. Another area of consideration would be any complicated document approval workflows that would need migrating to Huddle may require more work to ensure a seamless transition of the consuming organisation s power users. 22