Clarity of Cloud Services are often complex. Legally, they can be explosive to a company if agreements and business practice drift apart. Which aspects need attention? Previously, we discussed about Service Level Agreement and Cloud Computing Services, Cloud Computing and Legal Issues – all of these are basically hampers the clarity of Cloud Services. More to add, if you read the article – How to Calculate the Cost of Cloud Platform, you will understand the complicated pricing part as well.
How cloud contracts can be designed so that no discrepancies occur later ? These matters need to be discussed and clarified, in essence, the part Clarity of Cloud Services is an integral part of the service from a neutral point.
Clarity of Cloud Services : The most important questions
Services can be customized and technically integrated into the company’s system. Who will bear the costs of any technical issues? Are individualized services in the contract described in detail? Is must have software and hardware by the user is governed by contract ? How the interfaces and transfer of the services are set exactly ? How the security of corporate data is ensured by contract ?
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Clarity of Cloud Services : Bigger Concerns Now
To effectively protect against data loss, the cloud user should specify in the contract, how and at what intervals the data providers themselves take a full backup and whether or when the backups are deleted. Online backup is usually used in the cloud, but it must be ensured that the continuous availability of the service is available.
If the same company uses multiple clouds, then a “multi-cloud” solution is often offered, for example, the repeated storage of the data in different clouds. The alternative cloud-like services should be provided by different providers and made available, and in case of failure of a cloud, it must be possible to immediately resort to an alternative service.
Control and monitoring of Clouds can be about end-to-end monitoring and cloud service management implementation. Particularly for the sensitive data, companies should also secure themselves (“hybrid approach”) – and regularly. Thus, the data access is maintained even when there is interruption of Internet connection. Furthermore, the company is making services from independent suppliers. Nevertheless, data may be lost. Therefore, the contract has a scope for data recovery included. It regulates how to proceed with data loss.
Should the duration of the maximum system failure and the period of occurrence of damage to the recording of the backups in a running is determined ? In addition, the company must consider whether and to what extent it can accept the data loss. For this purpose, the period between backups is determined. The volume of data and transactions between backups represent the maximum amount of data loss Finally, the cost of data recovery must be a liability for the vendor for the damage caused indirectly by loss of data – it is often in agreement indirectly added as Force majeure.