Check contract risks, cloud sourcing managers advised

IT procurement or sourcing managers have been advised to check a number of contractual terms before signing on to the cloud.

According to Gartner, there are some risks present in the computing model that are often unclear or overlooked.

Alexa Bona, research vice-president at Gartner, explained: "Cloud solutions often appear to have lower initial and switching costs than traditional solutions, but include hidden costs and risks, and require unique terms for contract protection, compared to traditional arrangements."

In order to negotiate these risks, it is important that procurement officers look at nine key aspects of cloud contracts in particular.

These include uptime guarantees and business continuity and disaster recovery. While uptime is crucial for business productivity, analysts from Gartner found that there are numerous contracts with no uptime or performance-service-level guarantees.

Meanwhile, problems within disaster recovery clauses could mean that the business is still responsible for backing up its own data, despite the fact that it has been outsourced.