Commitment
What happens to your data when you leave
Every data management system ties you in. The question at purchase is whether the tie comes from the use you get or from the difficulty of getting out again. This page is written for the engineering lead who has to justify a tool decision and knows the decision will hold for years. It states what you take with you when you switch, in what form, what you can put in the contract, and where the exit stops.
Bargaining position
A customer who cannot leave does not negotiate
A vendor whose customers cannot leave holds the better hand at every renewal. That is arithmetic rather than malice. A vendor who keeps ten years of engineering data in a form only its own software reads can price against your cost of switching. The larger the vendor and the smaller your share of its revenue, the less your annoyance costs it.
That route is closed to us. At our size every renewal counts, and a customer who feels walled in says so in an industry where the engineering leads know each other. So the exit is on this page and in the contract, instead of in a reassurance over the phone.
Export
Everything, at any time, without asking us
Every one of your data sets can be pulled in full to your own side: the files and the entries attached to them, with their history. It runs through the automation interface, so there is no ticket with us and no release by us, during the contract and after it.
The files run in parallel and straight out of Azure Blob storage. The throughput is built for data sets in the terabyte range, and the bottleneck is your own line rather than our service. The export is included in the price. What it costs you is transfer time and the space the data lands on.
Form
Data that reads without us
The structure Ref keeps your data in follows the way engineering data is organised anyway: files in directories, with plainly named entries on them and plainly named connections between them. Nothing in it has to be decoded first. Open the export and you recognise your models, parameter sets, requirements and results.
The storage itself is Azure standard: the files in Azure Blob storage, the entries in a SQL database. For exchange we support the formats the industry has settled on, ReqIF for requirements and textual SysML v2 for structure. A successor system that knows its trade can take this data over.
Continuity
The case where we fail
The question belongs in every purchase from a company our size, and it is a fair one. Three things are available to you against it by contract.
Escrow of code and data.
Source code and a continuously updated data copy sit with an escrow agent and pass to you on defined events, insolvency included. Part of the contract on request.
Your own copy, as often as you like.
A current export on your own storage turns the insolvency question into a question of operations. No contract clause is needed for it; your automation can do it today.
Operation under your own Azure tenant.
The standard is our tenant in the EU region you name, because that keeps operations in our own hands. Your own tenant is available on request and is scoped and priced as a project. In that case subscription, storage and database belong to you, and you reach both with Microsoft's standard tools without us.
Grunetal GmbH is a German company based in Haßmersheim, commercial register HRB 729261 Mannheim. Hosting is on Microsoft Azure in the EU region you name.
Scope
What the exit includes
The export hands you your data. It does not hand you a running replacement platform. Permissions, views and what Ref does with the data stay with Ref. Whoever switches sets up the new system and runs the migration, or pays for it. We see that through at a day rate.
The security controls are in place and documented. Which ones they are is listed on what Ref covers.
What this page states is contract text and properties of the system. You can test both before you buy.
Related pages
If you want to see the exit before the entry, put it in the pilot contract. The pilot on your own data costs no money. Tell us about your project.