The ChannelWeb post "Know Your (Cloud) Rights: Gartner Inks Cloud Computing Bill of Rights" explains the details of the bill of rights recently devised by the Gartner Global IT Council for Cloud Services. The document was developed to define the key rights governing cloud computing and thereby to facilitate the business relationship between providers and their customers.

"If cloud services are commoditized, providers should offer stronger customer guarantees," said Daryl Plummer, managing vice president and Gartner fellow, in remarks prefatory to the bill, which encourages customers to familiarize themselves with the seven rights set forth and to insist on their observance in the course of negotiations with providers.

Data Ownership, Use and Control

This is the first of the rights identified by the council and the most important. The document declares that users of cloud computing services must retain ownership of their data and that providers can and must specify the uses it proposes to make of customer data. In the event of a sale of a cloud computing provider, the document contends that details of the original contract and service level agreement (SLA) need to make clear exactly how a customer's data is to be treated in the event of termination of service.

SLAs and the Issues of Liability, Remediation and Business Outcomes

It is imperative that SLAs specify exactly what customers can expect in terms of recovery times in the event of service interruptions and slowdowns, the document continues. It should be clear what the forms of remediation are to be and what the procedures are that will be followed in the course of restoring service.

Notification of Changes

Whenever there are changes to the terms of service, providers have a duty to inform customers sufficiently in advance so that allowances can be made within respective enterprises to account for such modifications.

Understanding the Cloud's Limitations

The document is explicit on this point: "Service consumers and providers must do a better job of keeping each other informed about their technical limitations, particularly for complex, long-term projects or complex architectures and systems."

Where's the Data; What Are the Laws

Providers have the absolute duty to inform customers of the laws within every jurisdiction through which their data may pass in order that clients will have foreknowledge of the restrictions on content and usage that may apply, the document insists.

Terms of Security

Providers must also inform customers about the security processes in effect within the cloud, again so that security protocols within the enterprise do not subvert protocols at higher levels. Providers must also give customers a clear picture of their business continuity plans, the document asserts.

Respect the Requirements of Software Licenses

According to the Gartner Council's bill of rights, there is a mutual responsibility involving both cloud computing providers and their customers in the matter of respecting the requirements of software licensing. On this point, too, the document is explicit: "On the one hand, providers must be held harmless, if the service consumer puts the software it licenses from a third party in the cloud yet violates the licensing agreement. On the other hand, the provider should not agree to an audit directly by the vendor, if the consumer owns the software license."

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