Cloud Computing Contracts

Wednesday 16th February saw the second event of the Thames Valley branch of the SCL, welcoming around 60 people to Reading's Town Hall for an evening's discussion on cloud computing contracts. The session was led by Professor Christopher Millard, who presented a fascinating overview of the work which he and his colleagues at Queen Mary, University of London, have undertaken, reviewing around 30 contracts relating to 'cloud computing' services.

Christopher commenced by discussing the definition of 'cloud computing', a phrase which has, maybe, adopted a quality more akin to buzzword than term of art. The definition used - 'scalable resources on demand via the Internet' - is, as one might expect, innovation and platform agnostic, however is somewhat wider than many might have anticipated, bringing within the scope of the innovation project not only those services which are so then-known as cloud computing products, yet also the likes of Apple and Facebook, through its 'app platform' functionality. By adopting a wide definition, encompassing not only the element of storage site uncertainty, but as well that which may have been considered before to be merely scalable hosting services, the data set available for analysis is enlarged, facilitating discussion and comparison of the contractual terms, and the legal and business risks and uncertainties, across a more expansive base of services.

The scope of the study

Having established the scope of the study, Christopher discussed the pyramidal nature of cloud services, ranging from bare infrastructure provision through SaaS to virtual machine environments, and the inevitable balancing act between in-house and outsourced IT services provision, neatly identifying different rationales – and in this way different requirements – for companies considering the use of cloud services. The point to note from this discussion was that, whilst the various services might all fall within the wide definition of 'cloud computing', one standardised approach to contracting for cloud services is unlikely to offer the best protection for one's customers – instead, one would ideally adopt an approach of identifying each client's key risks and opportunities, tailoring the agreement to fit.

Neil Brown is a solicitor and a geek, and is fascinated by the overlap of law, research and society. He works at Vodafone and is a member of the SCL Thames Valley Group committee.