In 2011, I co-wrote the Cloud Industry Forum’s third white paper “Contracting Cloud Services – A guide to Best Practice”. The first part researches cloud adoption and understanding of cloud contracts.  The research showed a patchy understanding of cloud service contracts. The second part offers some general opinion on good practice with guidance to clarify and shape cloud service provider contracts to educate and inform all parties in the supply chain from service provider to channel partner to end user. The aim is to identify the common areas of ambiguity and to offer opinion on how best to approach each issue. There is no one-size fits all approach that can be taken unilaterally and service, geography and scope will all play a part on the shape of any final agreement. However, the advice is offered to shed light on the issues that often cause the most concern for end users with a view to qualifying the underlying concerns and offering a practical approach to resolution of the following areas:

1. Choice of law

2. Data control

3. Service availability & resilience

4. Liabilities & indemnities

5. Termination by Cloud Service Provider

6. Deletion of data

7. Service transfer

Go visit the Cloud Industry Forum website to download the paper.