[taylodl]

Lesson learned: always have a number to call, always have the ability to get a hold of a flesh-and-blood human being. My company mandates this as a minimal requirement for all our SaaS providers.

With regards to having a mitigation strategy we take another tactic: what's the SaaS provider's mitigation strategy? How do they cope with data center loss, communications loss - what processes and procedures do they have in place? Any business-worthy SaaS provider has this information readily available. Any hemming or hawing is a sign of trouble.