This question is somewhat multi-part. First, I realize it can vary somewhat, but what is generally expected from SaaS vendors in terms of what happens when a customer discontinues service with respect to their data.
I have/am building a hosted Web based business application that customers use for an important aspect of their business. I don't intend to lose customers; however, this question inevitably comes up. "What happens if we end the service?"
Another, related question is related to backups and redundancy. We have redundant processes in place but one potential customer's IT staff acted as if we should provide a ready-to-run standalone version of the application for their servers. Is this typical? The application is very important to the business but in reality even if the service was unavailable for 1-2 days (not something we tolerate, per se), the customer should not lose any money.
So, to get to the point is it common practice to provide monthly "data dumps" to customers? Also, obviously, if the user severs ties we would like to make sure they have all the relevant data they created for their business.
However, one major issue is that just given a data dump, it will be a lot of work for them to get a plain data dump to a usable state quickly. For instance, there are many PDFs and various other data items that would not be easily searchable. If so what's the best way to deal with with? (a customer's data can be several gigabytes - not gigantic but over many customers and finite bandwidth to our hosting provider, can be a challenge)
Is it common practice to build a client/desktop app that can present a "read only" subset of the data in the event the user discontinues service (or for extended downtime)?