What if the company goes under?

[tmilewski]

I've noticed a lot of talk on here about APIs and this brought me to thinking "What happens if that company goes under?"

Many companies now-a-days aren't doing so well with the current economy and all, so what if you invested a large stake of your company into services that another company offered and that second company found itself in the red? How would you cope?

I would hope that these companies have thought of a plan, ahead of time, for a situation like this.

I was simply wondering what your plans are, or would be, should you find yourself, or your company, in the aforementioned situation?

[hbien]

Hopefully, most companies would give you some time to transition off of their services or to at least export your data off of their servers.

What sucks is when they close unexpectedly, don't let you export your data, or even worse pretend they're "upgrading" while they really shut down - http://stikipad.com

[jacquesm]

Find competing services and make sure you can user their api's as well. Never too good to have all your eggs in the one basket.

Monoculture = stay of execution