Are cloud contracts driving away business?

Cloud computing providers are increasingly falling for bad habits – they are offering customers “standard form” contracts whereby they set the provider lays out the terms, very much like insurance companies do with their policies.

These contracts are somewhat problematic, as they levy all responsibility and liability onto the client making use of the cloud service. Whilst many small businesses may accept these contracts due to not having sufficient legal resources, large businesses have means and are extremely unlikely to take up a one-sided contract.

This contractual quandary could well hinder the process of cloud adoption, unless the providers address the matter, and soon. Large businesses have already taken the lead in rejecting cloud providers with such contracts.

Many of the standard form contracts are extremely basic and presented very much like software contracts whereby you must simply accept the terms in order to proceed, or else don’t accept – “take …