Negotiating Cloud Contracts

The cloud computing market is evolving rapidly. New as a service (aaS) platforms are appearing and the dichotomy between public and private cloud domains has been fractured into many different shades of hybrid cloud alternatives. And while many of the key issues – privacy risk, data location, service commitment – remain the same, service providers' commercial offerings are becoming more flexible.

Over the past 18 months, we have even started to see changes in the "take it or leave it" approach to cloud contracts. Negotiations of cloud contracts have started to occur. But at this stage in cloud computing's evolution, even more so than for traditional ICT contracting, the key is to know what can be negotiated and how much.