Cloud Computing: How to Successfully Contract for Cloud Services

Cloud Contracts

Would you sign a contract that guarantees you carry all the risk?

“You promise to compensate us for any additional costs we incur because of any delay or failure by you to perform your obligations or responsibilities under this Service Contract.”  

“…we will have no liability to you for unauthorised access or use, corruption, deletion or loss of any of your content or applications.”

The cloud offers untold benefits, but it’s essential you procure your cloud services in the right way.

To Successfully Contract for Cloud Services – Download the Free White Paper that Covers:

  • Ensuring you select a provider that helps you cut costs and achieve your business outcomes.
  • Make sure the cloud services you select are fully fit for purpose.
  • Validating that your contract terms encapsulate a win win for both you and your cloud provider.
  • Pitfalls you must look out for in cloud providers’ standard contract terms.
  • How the procurement process you undertake has a significant effect on your ability to realise benefits from the cloud.
  • How you can ensure that you are not assuming all the contractual, commercial and technical risk of using cloud services.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR, ALLAN WATTON

Chief Executive of Best Practice Group.

Allan has worked on 500+ strategic partnerships that have required re-alignment and re-shaping. Of these, many have been ‘problematic’ IT projects. With so much at stake, and with so much potential for things to go wrong, It’s unsurprising that many IT projects run into trouble as they change hands internally.

Allan’s worked in the Strategic Service Commissioning, Business Process Outsourcing and Technology fields for nearly 30 years. He is regarded as one of the UK’s foremost authorities on strategic service provider relationships and developing practical contract structures for complex projects and programmes that involve multi-vendor, multi-source relationships.

He has recently advised on a public sector £5.4bn strategic service commissioning arrangement covering over 200 business process services that delivered £15m direct cash savings in its first 12 weeks, and a Section 75 agreement for a £3.5bn local authority/NHS Trust adult social care integration shared service that is anticipated to save £20m per annum.

An experienced service owner and practitioner who has also read contract law, Allan’s experience in understanding how client side delivery behaviours in complex vendor relationships undermine vendor contractual responsibilities, makes him a recognised specialist in advising on the implied (undocumented) contractual obligations of expert vendors.

Chief Executive and Co-Founder, Allan