Gartner identifies cloud contract issues

Thursday, March 10, 2011

While demand for cloud computing solutions has forced the market to mature rapidly, there are still service level agreement issues that must be addressed before the technology can reach its potential.

According to Gartner, maturity of cloud services is not the same for all markets. This can become a risky issue when it comes to data handling and compliance. To address this, Gartner recommends CIOs carefully assess their SLAs to ensure they meet legal and regulatory standards, and compliance issues are not present.

Additionally, Gartner asserts that contracts are often "opaque and easily changed." Before signing a contract, cloud service buyers need to understand the structure of their agreements, and ensure terms cannot be altered for at least the first year of service.

"It's essential that organizations planning to contract for cloud services do a deep risk analysis on the impact and probability of their risks, and they should also plan mitigation for the most critical issues," said Gartner research vice president Alexa Bona.

As spending on the cloud increases, contract issues will need to be resolved sooner rather than later. According to a recent CA Technologies report, 60 percent of enterprise IT departments expect to increase cloud spending in 2011.