Back in 2012, the European Commission ('Commission')
adopted the Cloud Computing Strategy to promote the
adoption of cloud computing and ultimately boost productivity. In
June 2014, the Cloud Select Industry Group – Subgroup on
Service Legal Agreements published Standardisation Guidelines for
Cloud Service Level Agreements ('Guidelines') as part of
this strategy.
To achieve standardisation of Service Level Agreements
('SLAs'), the Guidelines call for action "at an
international level, rather than at national or regional
level", and cite three main concerns. Firstly, SLAs are
usually applied over multiple jurisdictions, and this can result in
the application of differing legal requirements. Secondly, the
variety of cloud services and potential deployment models
necessitate different approaches to SLAs. Finally, the terminology
used is highly variable between different service providers,
presenting a difficulty for cloud customers when trying to compare
products.
