Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
technology providers and their customers should use their contractual freedom to
set their own contractual 'laws' as much as possible. This advice applies also to
the existing reality, characterised by many laws that are not able to encompass all
business scenarios, and ultimately the reader should not rely too much on the law.
It would go beyond the scope of this chapter to assess whether the legal system is
complete or not. Personally, we believe that the system is incomplete and open, and
the parties may fill its gaps according to their needs. The abovementioned lacuna
contained in the Regulation 44/2001 could easily be filled with a contractual clause
stating which court will be competent. A few minutes' discussions during the nego-
tiation phase can prevent much longer arguments and uncertainties later - and espe-
cially if they result in litigation.
Therefore, whenever it is possible, Grid/Cloud providers and their customers
should engage in negotiations aimed to produce a contract which is as complete as
possible. They have to think about all major aspects of their future relationship and
see how this can be made easy to manage. This means avoiding gaps and doubts in
every possible case. If the law that ultimately governs and gives effects to the agree-
ment is incomplete, the contract should strive to be complete and fair, in the sense
that liabilities and risks should be balanced between the parties and not completely
one-sided.
Nevertheless, potential customers planning to enter into the market of Grid/
Cloud-based services should be aware of the fact that SLAs and other contracts
imposed by big international technology providers are not fair, at least not according
to the common sense of justice and fair play. Buying Grid or Cloud capacity from
one of the big players may be cheaper and efficient - but it is not without risks.
The customer is required to trust the supplier, but his contractual protection is very
limited and it often consists of little more than service credits. We do not want to say
that the services these companies provide are not good or that they are likely not to
respect what they promise in the SLA. We just want to highlight that possibilities of
failures always exist and that the price of such failures will be (more or less entirely)
paid by the customer.
Negotiations carried out between more equal parties who can tailor SLAs (or
other contracts) to their requirements should balance the risks of failure equally
and make Grid and Cloud computing more attractive for the customers and, at the
same time, should urge providers to invest in technology in order to be able to
supply excellent services and respect all security standards and requirements. The
success of Grid (and in general of technologies based on dispersed resources, like
Cloud computing) also depends on the contractual practices that the actors in the
market create and impose. Fair agreements will undoubtedly render Grid and Cloud
computing very interesting for both providers and customers.