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Tensoft Privacy Policy

Effective as of May 22, 2018, Tensoft, Inc. (“Tensoft”) has updated our Privacy Policy (“Policy”). For a prior version of our Policy, click here.

This Policy details our commitment to protecting the privacy of individuals who visit our website[s], who register to use the products and services which Tensoft markets for subscription (the “Service”), or who register to attend Tensoft events. This Policy describes how Tensoft collects, uses, and discloses personal data, and the choices you have with respect to that data.

Definitions

Service
Service(s) refers to Tensoft’s subscription services or hosted products.

Personal Data
Personal Data means data about a living individual who can be identified from those data (or from those and other information either in our possession or likely to come into our possession).

Usage Data
Usage Data is data collected automatically by visiting a web site, such as IP addresses.

Cookies
Cookies are small pieces of data stored on your device (computer or mobile device).

Data Controller
Data Controller means the natural or legal person who (either alone or jointly or in common with other persons) determines the purposes for which and the manner in which any personal information are, or are to be, processed.

TensoftData Processors (or Service Providers)
Data Processor (or Service Provider) means any natural or legal person who processes the data on behalf of the Data Controller.

Data Subject (or User)
Data Subject is any living individual who is using our Service(s) or visiting our website and is the subject of Personal Data.

Information Collection And Use

Tensoft collects several different types of information for various purposes to provide and improve our Service(s) and website. By using the Service(s) and website(s), you agree to the collection and use of information in accordance with this policy.

Types of Data Collected

Personal Data
While using our Service(s) or accessing certain pages of our website(s), Tensoft may ask you to provide us with certain personally identifiable information that can be used to contact or identify you (“Personal Data”). Personally identifiable information may include, but is not limited to:
• Email address
• First name and last name
• Phone number
• Address, State, Province, ZIP/Postal code, City
• Cookies and Usage Data

For website visitors, Tensoft may use your Personal Data to contact you with newsletters, marketing or promotional materials and other information that may be of interest to you. You may opt out of receiving any, or all, of these communications from us by following the unsubscribe link or instructions provided in any email Tensoft sends.

For Tensoft Service(s) users, Tensoft uses your Personal Data to provide the services and support that your employer has contracted with Tensoft to provide, including notifications about service events. In addition, Tensoft may also use your Personal Data to contact you with newsletters, marketing or promotional materials and other information that may be of interest to you. You may opt out of receiving any, or all, of these communications from us by following the unsubscribe link or instructions provided in any email Tensoft sends.

Usage Data
Tensoftmay also collect information how the Service is accessed and used (“Usage Data”). This Usage Data may include information such as your computer’s Internet Protocol address (e.g. IP address), browser type, browser version, the pages of our Service that you visit, the time and date of your visit, the time spent on those pages, unique device identifiers and other diagnostic data.

Tracking Cookies Data
Tensoft uses cookies and similar tracking technologies to track the activity on our website and hold certain information.

Cookies are files with small amount of data which may include an anonymous unique identifier. Cookies are sent to your browser from a website and stored on your device. Tracking technologies also used are beacons, tags, and scripts to collect and track information and to improve and analyze our Service.

You can instruct your browser to refuse all cookies or to indicate when a cookie is being sent. However, if you do not accept cookies, you may not be able to access all or some portion of our website.

Use of Data
Tensoft, Inc. uses the collected data for various purposes:
• To provide and maintain our Service(s)
• To notify you about changes to our Service(s)
• To allow you to participate in interactive features of our Service when you choose to do so
• To provide customer support for our Service(s)
• To gather analysis or valuable information so that Tensoft can improve our Service(s) and website(s)
• To monitor the usage of our Service(s) and website(s)
• To detect, prevent and address technical issues
• To provide you with news, special offers and general information about other products , services and events which Tensoft offers that are similar to those that you have already purchased or inquired about unless you have opted not to receive such information

Legal Basis for Processing Personal Data Under General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR)

If you are from the European Economic Area (EEA), Tensoft, Inc.’s legal basis for collecting and using the personal information described in this Privacy Policy depends on the Personal Data Tensoft collects and the specific context in which Tensoft collects it.

Tensoft, Inc. may process your Personal Data because:
• Tensoft needs to perform a contractual obligation with you
• You have given us permission to do so
• The processing is in our legitimate interests and it’s not overridden by your rights
• For payment processing purposes
• To comply with the law

Retention of Data

Tensoft, Inc. will retain your Personal Data only for as long as is necessary for the purposes set out in this Privacy Policy. Tensoft will retain and use your Personal Data to the extent necessary to comply with our legal and/or contractual obligations (for example, if Tensoft is required to retain your data to comply with applicable laws), resolve disputes, and enforce our legal agreements and policies.

Tensoft, Inc. will also retain Usage Data for internal analysis purposes. Usage Data is generally retained for a shorter period of time, except when this data is used to strengthen the security or to improve the functionality of our Service, or Tensoft are legally obligated to retain this data for longer time periods.

Transfer Of Data

Your information, including Personal Data, may be transferred to — and maintained on — computers located outside of your state, province, country or other governmental jurisdiction where the data protection laws may differ than those from your jurisdiction.

If you are located outside of the United States and choose to provide information to us, please note that Tensoft transfers the data, including Personal Data, to the United States and processes it there.

Your consent to this Privacy Policy followed by your submission of such information represents your agreement to that transfer.

Tensoft, Inc. will take all steps reasonably necessary to ensure that your data is treated securely and in accordance with this Privacy Policy and that no transfer of your Personal Data will take place to an organization or a country unless there are adequate controls in place including the security of your data and other personal information.

Disclosure Of Data

Disclosure for Law Enforcement

Under certain circumstances, Tensoft, Inc. may be required to disclose your Personal Data if required to do so by law or in response to valid requests by public authorities (e.g. a court or a government agency).

Legal Requirements

Tensoft, Inc. may disclose your Personal Data in the good faith belief that such action is necessary to:
• To comply with a legal obligation
• To protect and defend the rights or property of Tensoft, Inc.
• To prevent or investigate possible wrongdoing in connection with the Service
• To protect the personal safety of users of the Service or the public
• To protect against legal liability

Security Of Data

Tensoft takes the security of your data very seriously. We work diligently to protect the Personal Data you provide from loss, misuse, and unauthorized access or disclosure. Given the nature of communications and information processing technology, no method of transmission over the Internet, or method of electronic storage, is 100% secure. While Tensoft strives to use commercially acceptable means to protect your Personal Data, Tensoft cannot guarantee its absolute security.

“Do Not Track” Signals

Tensoft does not support Do Not Track (“DNT”). Do Not Track is a preference you can set in your web browser to inform websites that you do not want to be tracked.
You can enable or disable Do Not Track by visiting the Preferences or Settings page of your web browser.

Your Data Protection Rights Under General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR)

If you are a resident of the European Economic Area (EEA), you have certain data protection rights. Tensoft, Inc. aims to take reasonable steps to allow you to correct, amend, delete, or limit the use of your Personal Data.

If you wish to be informed what Personal Data Tensoft holds about you and/or if you want it to be removed from our systems, please contact us at privacy@tensoft.com.

In certain circumstances, you have the following data protection rights:

The right to access, update or to delete the information Tensoft has on you. Whenever made possible, you can access, update or request deletion of your Personal Data directly within your account settings section. If you are unable to perform these actions yourself, please contact us to assist you.

The right of rectification.
You have the right to have your information rectified if that information is inaccurate or incomplete.

The right to object. You have the right to object to our processing of your Personal Data.

The right of restriction. You have the right to request that Tensoft restrict the processing of your personal information.

The right to data portability. You have the right to be provided with a copy of the information Tensoft have on you in a structured, machine-readable and commonly used format.

The right to withdraw consent. You also have the right to withdraw your consent at any time where Tensoft, Inc. relied on your consent to process your personal information.

Please note that Tensoft may ask you to verify your identity before responding to such requests.

You have the right to complain to a Data Protection Authority about our collection and use of your Personal Data. For more information, please contact your local data protection authority in the European Economic Area (EEA).

Service Providers

Tensoft may employ third-party companies and individuals to facilitate our Service (“Service Providers”), to perform Service-related services or to assist us in analyzing how our Service is used.

These third parties have access to your Personal Data only to perform these tasks on our behalf and are obligated not to disclose or use it for any other purpose.

Support Tickets

Tensoft uses a third-party service to provide product support to our customers.

Zendesk
Zendesk provides a customer service and engagement platform that manages customer support requests. Zendesk uses the data collected from Tensoft customers to resolve support issues and requests, and to provide Tensoft with data on these support requests. For more information on the privacy practices of Zendesk, please visit the Zendesk Privacy Terms web page: https://www.zendesk.com/company/customers-partners/privacy-policy.

Hosting Services

Tensoft uses third-party services to provide hosting for our customers.

Amazon Web Services (AWS)
AWS provides a highly reliable, scalable, low-cost infrastructure platform in the cloud, including Tensoft customers. AWS has data center locations in the U.S., Europe, Singapore, and Japan. For more information on the privacy practices of AWS, please visit the AWS Privacy Terms web page: https://aws.amazon.com/privacy.

SaaSPlaza
SaasPlaza is a cloud provider of Microsoft Azure and Dynamics Services. SaaSPlaza manages enterprise grade cloud infrastructure for business-critical applications in the Microsoft Cloud for their partners and their customers, including for Tensoft’s Microsoft Dynamics GP customers. For more information on the privacy practices of SaasPlaza, please visit the SaasPlaza Privacy Terms web page: https://www.saasplaza.com/policies.

Managed Services

Tensoft uses a third-party service to manage Tensoft’s hosting environment at AWS.

Connectria

Connectria provides cloud computing, managed hosting and custom hosting solutions, including complex multi-vendor solutions. Connectria support a broad range of technologies, managed services and security. For more information on the privacy practices of Connectria, please visit the Connectria Privacy Terms web page: https://www.connectria.com/legal/privacy_policy.php .


Analytics

Tensoft uses the following third-party Service Providers to monitor and analyze the traffic on our website(s)

Google Analytics
Google Analytics is a web analytics service offered by Google that tracks and reports website traffic. Google uses the data collected to track and monitor the use of our Service. This data is shared with other Google services. Google may use the collected data to contextualize and personalize the ads of its own advertising network.

You can opt-out of having made your activity on the Service available to Google Analytics by installing the Google Analytics opt-out browser add-on. The add-on prevents the Google Analytics JavaScript (ga.js, analytics.js, and dc.js) from sharing information with Google Analytics about visits activity.

For more information on the privacy practices of Google, please visit the Google Privacy Terms web page: http://www.google.com/intl/en/policies/privacy/

Behavioral Remarketing

Tensoft uses remarketing services to advertise on third party websites to you after you visited our website. Tensoft and our third-party vendors use cookies to inform, optimize and serve ads based on your past visits to our Service.

Google AdWords
Google AdWords remarketing service is provided by Google Inc.
You can opt-out of Google Analytics for Display Advertising and customize the Google Display Network ads by visiting the Google Ads Settings page: http://www.google.com/settings/ads

Google also recommends installing the Google Analytics Opt-out Browser Add-on – https://tools.google.com/dlpage/gaoptout – for your web browser. Google Analytics Opt-out Browser Add-on provides visitors with the ability to prevent their data from being collected and used by Google Analytics.

For more information on the privacy practices of Google, please visit the Google Privacy Terms web page: http://www.google.com/intl/en/policies/privacy/

Payments

Tensoft may provide some paid products and/or services within the Service or on the website that require prepayment, such as online training or user conferences. In that case, Tensoft use third-party services for payment processing (e.g. payment processors).

Tensoft will not store or collect your payment card details. That information is provided directly to our third-party payment processors whose use of your personal information is governed by their Privacy Policy. These payment processors adhere to the standards set by PCI-DSS as managed by the PCI Security Standards Council, which is a joint effort of brands like Visa, Mastercard, American Express and Discover. PCI-DSS requirements help ensure the secure handling of payment information.

The payment processors Tensoft works with are:

PayPal
Their Privacy Policy can be viewed at https://www.paypal.com/webapps/mpp/ua/privacy-full.

Links To Other Sites

Our Service may contain links to other sites that are not operated by us. If you click on a third party link, you will be directed to that third party’s site. Tensoft strongly advise you to review the Privacy Policy of every site you visit.

Tensoft has no control over and assume no responsibility for the content, privacy policies or practices of any third party sites or services.

Children’s Privacy

Tensoft does not knowingly collect personally identifiable information from anyone under the age of 18. If you are a parent or guardian and you are aware that your Children has provided us with Personal Data, please contact us. If Tensoft becomes aware that we have collected Personal Data from children without verification of parental consent, Tensoft will immediately take steps to remove that information from our servers.

Changes To This Privacy Policy

Tensoft may update our Privacy Policy from time to time. Tensoft will notify you of any changes by posting the new Privacy Policy on this page.

Tensoft will let you know via email and/or a prominent notice on our Service, prior to the change becoming effective and update the “effective date” at the top of this Privacy Policy.

You are advised to review this Privacy Policy periodically for any changes. Changes to this Privacy Policy are effective when they are posted on this page.

Contact Us

If you have any questions about this Privacy Policy, please contact us:
• By email: privacy@tensoft.com

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How to Choose the Right Cloud Platform Provider

March 28, 2019 by Caprice Murray

Caprice MurrayHere at Tensoft, we strive for customer service excellence, be it providing solutions that add value to our customers, or by providing great customer support. This also includes providing customers with a secure, effortless cloud environment that they can trust.

“Tensoft’s cloud platform is an important part of our total solution delivery for our customers,” Tensoft CEO Bob Scarborough says. “We need to have our vision managed effectively and efficiently and delivered in a way that fully supports our service level and our required compliance. Connectria is a highly valued and highly skilled partner that has the tools, the people, and the know-how to make our vision a reality. We value both their input and their execution of our vision.”

Recently, the team at Connectria interviewed Tensoft CTO William White to learn more about Tensoft’s experience with hosting providers in general and with Connectria. Below is the published blog post that is now available on Connectria’s website.

“Independent software vendors (ISVs) that offer SaaS solutions need to provide their customers with a stable, secure, and responsive cloud environment. To speed time to market and focus on their solutions, it makes sense for these organizations to work with a third-party hosting provider. But choosing the right provider can have a significant impact on the ISV’s reputation in the market.

In this interview, we talk with William White, CTO and co-founder of Tensoft, about his experience with multiple hosting providers and how to make sure you choose one that has the capabilities you need.

Connectria: Thanks for taking the time to talk with us today. Let’s start at the beginning if that’s OK with you. When did you first launch your applications as a SaaS solution, and were you working with a hosting provider back then?

White: Bob Scarborough and I originally co-founded the business back in 1996. To understand our journey, you have to know a little bit about our business model.

We offer ERP and supply chain solutions for high-tech manufacturers and distributors. For example, one of our target markets is the fabless semiconductor industry. That probably sounds pretty niche to the majority of your audience, but these organizations have some very unique needs that our applications can handle, so it’s a good market for us. Also, instead of competing with other more well-established ERP solutions in the market, we integrate with them, so our customers don’t necessarily need to swap out what they already have.

That’s just one of the markets we serve. With IoT taking off, we also work with a wide variety of device and advanced electronics manufacturers. We even work with other SaaS solution providers like ourselves with our revenue recognition and contract management applications.

So, the point of all this is that we have a very diverse customer base. Many of these organizations are led by highly technical individuals who aren’t just going to take our word for it when we tell them their workloads will reside in a stable, secure environment. We really have to offer proof during our sales process.

We offered our first SaaS solution in 2006 and hosted it in our own data center where we purchased all the servers, all the networking equipment, security solutions, backup equipment…everything. We used tape for backups back then, which sounds crazy when you think about what’s available now. But managing a data center just wasn’t our core strength, and we knew it was only going to get more challenging as we grew.

Connectria: At that time, you decided to look for someone who could do the hosting for you, right? How did that go?

White: Right. There is a lot of expertise that goes into high-tech products like semiconductors, and the companies we work with contract with numerous suppliers and vendors to bring their products to market. We started thinking that approach might work for us too. Why not subcontract with someone whose business it was to manage cloud environments?

But to answer your question, it didn’t go so well. We learned pretty quickly that the provider we chose had oversold their capabilities. When we asked them if they had any experience with this technology or that technology, they assured us they did. In the end, it turned out to be one guy somewhere on the East Coast who supported everything. With so many technologies, his knowledge level wasn’t deep, and with so many customers, response time to our questions wasn’t great either.

Connectria: So, you switched providers?

White: We did. At the time, the majority of our customers were Microsoft Dynamics users, and this time we found a managed service provider that actually focused on that niche. In addition to providing a managed cloud environment, their team complemented our knowledge really well, and we’re still using them for many of our Dynamics GP customers today.

But as we grew, we started integrating to more ERP solutions and running across new technologies that our core provider had no experience with. As much as we liked working with them, we knew that partnership couldn’t address all of our needs, like the ability to be more ERP-agnostic.

In addition, we were already doing some work with AWS at the time, so it made sense to make that one of our primary cloud environments. We wanted someone who could manage that as well as a private hosted environment, so we could focus on developing great applications and being the subject matter experts in our space because that’s where we add the most value to our customers.

Connectria: Now you’re searching for your third managed service provider. Did you go about it differently this time?

White: Our first provider was a real learning experience. We learned what it takes to build out an infrastructure that can handle the kind of capacity and breadth of technology we needed and the kind of problems that crop up when you’re trying to work with a provider who overpromises and underdelivers. I went into our new selection process thinking, “I know exactly what questions I’m going to ask the next guy.”

At a high level, we wanted someone with genuine, broad technical experience who could also be very responsive. Of course, we also needed someone with deep hosting expertise, and we needed someone who understood multiple environments.

Connectria talked to us about their teams of people. They didn’t just have one support engineer who was an expert on twelve different things. We talked with engineers who very focused on their specialty, but they work closely with other experts in other areas to address any problems we have. It doesn’t matter what time of day or night it is, either. There’s always someone on the clock who can help us out.

So, their depth and breadth of knowledge was a good baseline, but one of the things that really stood out about Connectria was their ability to handle our customer’s security and compliance concerns. For us, that’s truly what differentiated Connectria from other hosting providers.

Our software doesn’t handle the Accounts Payable side of things, but the ERP solutions we integrate to do, so many of our customers need to be compliant with PCI. We don’t have customers with active HIPAA needs, but knowing that Connectria has that level of compliance service assures our customers that Connectria is highly capable in supporting our security and compliance requirements.

What’s most important to our customers more broadly is the SOC 2 Type 2 audit reports. Many of them are public companies, and before they sign on with us, they want to know that their data will be hosted in a controlled, secure infrastructure and that backups are being made and tested regularly. Connectria was able to show us the third-party audit reports for their data center environments.

This solved a huge headache for us. When our publicly held customers have their annual audits and the auditor requests the SOC 2 audit report, we can get the current one right from Connectria. It’s important to choose a provider who can provide an absolutely clean audit report because, if there are deficiencies that show up in that report, it creates a lot of nonbillable work for us and reduces overall customer satisfaction. We have to do things like coordinate meetings with people from the hosting provider and our customer’s IT staff and CFO. This usually requires several meetings, and it’s a lot of overhead for all parties.

We’ve had to do this several times with previous hosting providers because of simple things like a backup failure identified during the audit process. It gets even worse when that same provider has the same problem the next year. Not only is it even more lost time, but our reputation also starts to suffer.

With Connectria, annual audits have been so much easier. They have such solid practices and processes in place, and their third-party audit reports are so clean that we can give our customers the sense of confidence they’re looking for.

Connectria: With multiple clouds, are you using the TRiA Multi-Cloud Management Platform. And if so, can you tell us how it’s helped you?

White: We are using it, but we were just introduced to it back in the fall of 2018, so we haven’t been using it for all that long. The cost analysis is probably the detail that I look at most at this time. We use TRiA to review Security Compliance and AWS vulnerabilities details, which is information that other service providers could not provide direct access to. In the future, we’ll probably use more of the support ticketing features, and if I understand it correctly, there are some new capabilities being released in 2019, which we’re looking forward to using.

Connectria: To wrap up our discussion, what would you say are the main benefits you’ve seen from working with Connectria?

White: From a company standpoint, partnering with Connectria allows us to move faster and be more responsive to our customers, which increases our customer’s satisfaction. With our previous provider, if we wanted to add more capacity to our infrastructure, it might take a week to get a response from them and then another four weeks to get a new server in place.

Sometimes, we even got push back on why we needed to add capacity. They’d tell us we were on a defined infrastructure plan that only allocated so much memory per server. But with Connectria, we have a partner that immediately says, “Yes, we can do that. When do you want it by?” This gives us greater confidence in the commitments we make to our customers.

We also know that we have a partner with deep expertise in doing what they do best. They know all about VPNs, networking, security, databases hosting, Windows Server…everything we need. This lets us focus on what we do best.

To learn more about how partnering with Connectria can help you grow your business, reach out to us here. You can also visit our case studies for even more examples of ISVs and industry customers that have chosen to trust their cloud environments to Connectria”.

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