Legal aspects of procuring cloud

ICT2015 this year was the perfect location for PICSE to meet opinion leaders from EU funding agencies, industry and research sector to discuss the main challenges and best practices related to cloud procurement.

PICSE Wizard (http://wiz.picse.eu): Cloud service procurement made easy!
Are you a Procurement official, IT manager or procurement initiator? Then, complete the PICSE wizard easy-to-use services to help you make informed decisions about how to procure cloud services. The PICSE Wizard is a web-based application that public research organisations can use to obtain guidelines on the most suitable model for procuring cloud services, to make a self-assessment and evaluate their procurement procedures. Each checklist comes with a set of recommendations & tips.

Digital transformation is absolutely crucial to any organisation whether public or private. It is at the very core of the digital single market to ensure Europe reaps the socio-economic benefits of new technologies. Cloud computing has the potential to reduce IT expenditure and boost organisational agility while at the same time improving the scope for delivering flexible high-quality new services.
This document describes the experience of ten public sector organisations across Europe who have either carried out a process to procure cloud services, or are considering doing so. The experiences vary in terms of success and offer insights into how the procurement of cloud services is impacting on their current processes. Read more...

Interesting article by James Mitchell, CEO at Strategic Blue, financial cloud broker & PICSE Task Force member. The article focuses on how cloud computing is affecting the IT sales channel, and how the way that a cloud service provider structures its distribution and reseller contracts profoundly affects the behaviour of the channel...with knock-on effects on whether the cloud buyer is better off going direct, or continuing to work with the IT resellers who make a business out of understanding the IT needs of their customers.

The acquisition of IT services is key to any public or private organisation and the advent of cloud computing requires innovation in the procurement of cloud services. Although cloud computing has become increasingly popular, it appears that potential customers, in the public sector in general and in the research community in particular, are facing barriers that inhibit the wider adoption of cloud services. This report presents a list of barriers to cloud services procurement identified through literature, in-depth interviews of IT managers surveyed over a period of 3 months, and input provided by the PICSE Task Force members as well as intergovernmental research organisations such as CERN and EMBL. The survey demonstrated that barriers to cloud service procurement mainly relate to the adoption of new technology (i.e. cloud computing) and the procurement process itself...

The Cloud Standards Customer Council has just released the guide " The Practical Guide to Cloud Service Agreements". It provides a practical reference to help enterprise information technology (IT) and business decision makers analyze cloud service agreements (CSAs) from different cloud service providers. The paper informs decision makers of what to expect and what criteria to use as they evaluate CSAs from such potential suppliers.

The present comparative law Study, encompassing the European Member States (excluding Croatia) and the U.S., has been conducted by the international law firm DLA Piper UK LLP. The Study has been coordinated by a multinational Core Team, with representatives from countries pertaining to the various legal traditions across Europe. The input for each of the countries under investigation was provided by a dedicated team of specialized IT contracting lawyers from local DLA Piper law firms or preferred partner firms.