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Getting your cloud contracts in order

Posted by whirbot 565 days ago (http://feedproxy.google.com)

By David Snead

Generally what I hear from clients is that the cloud isn't that much different than their current offerings, so why should they revise their contracts? Markus Latzel of Palomino System, Christopher Garcia of Dell and I discussed this issue yesterday at HostingCon While the cloud, from a legal perspective, is an evolution, rather than a revolution, there are some significant issues that you should think about.

Christopher started out with a deep discussion about how pre-planning your contract drafting and/or negotiation is critical in ensuring that your contracts in this evolving technology adequately protect you. In particular, hosts should spend some time discussing the delivery model with their customers. Important areas that should be covered include: SLA's, whether an audit should be conducted, Security, and whether there is a special data requirement, like regulation. There was significant discussion about how companies can comply with regulations like HIPAA / HITECH and Sarbanes Oxley, even if they don't have expertise in these areas. Creating contracts that effectively segregate responsibility for these, goes a long way to dealing with risk in a cloud contract. Because of the nature of the cloud, complying with these regulations will be more difficult, and risky for hosts.