Comments on: Why Most Cloud Contracts Shouldn’t Be Negotiable

By: Amazon: Death by Cloud for Traditional Software: Cloud «

Amazon: Death by Cloud for Traditional Software: Cloud « — Tue, 21 Sep 2010 15:42:38 +0000

[...] the public cloud and, in fact, Eli Lilly is an example of a company that has pulled back from AWS due to liability concerns. Clearly, it’s going to take time to get enterprises comfortable running their businesses on [...]

By: Will Amazon Become The King of Web Hosting Too?

Will Amazon Become The King of Web Hosting Too? — Fri, 06 Aug 2010 10:31:55 +0000

[...] on the planet. Even older startups use their infrastructure. And despite all the false rumors, pharmaceutical giant Eli Lilly is a customer. Ironically, the company which put the Cloud in computing has found a fast growth opportunity in a [...]

By: Coté's People Over Process » Links for July 28th through August 2nd

Coté's People Over Process » Links for July 28th through August 2nd — Mon, 02 Aug 2010 22:42:06 +0000

[...] Why Most Cloud Contracts Shouldn’t Be Negotiable"If self-service cloud providers, such as AWS, really want enterprise customers, they must consider how far they’re willing to bend to earn that business. In some cases, negotiation might be an option. Enterprises, in turn, need to figure out what they actually want from the cloud, because with most cloud providers, they can’t have their cake and eat it too. There are plenty of cloud options offering negotiable contracts, meaningful SLAs and even dedicated resources, but they don’t accept American Express." [...]

By: Neill Turner

Neill Turner — Mon, 02 Aug 2010 09:21:22 +0000

Insurance companies will need to come in and offer policies for this (at extra cost to companies). Amazon might even develop some relationships with insurance companies. Cloud Computing is just a further case of the commodity consumer tech and we will see the all the similar services of consumer Tech: extended warranty cover etc etc.

By: Derrick Harris

Derrick Harris — Sun, 01 Aug 2010 21:34:58 +0000

I’ll leave the definitive language to others. ;-) There was a news story that was later retracted, which is as accurate as anyone without inside knowledge can be. For all we know, the negotiations actually took place, even if there are questions around the outcome.

By: Derrick Harris

Derrick Harris — Sun, 01 Aug 2010 21:17:17 +0000

Until it’s updated on the site, here’s the correct link: http://pro.gigaom.com/2010/08/upset-about-your-cloud-contract-tough-luck.

Thanks for catching that.

By: Geoff Arnold

Geoff Arnold — Sun, 01 Aug 2010 20:52:52 +0000

Jo Maitland’s original “walked away” piece is still up at:

http://searchcloudcomputing.techtarget.com/news/article/0,289142,sid201_gci1517499,00.html

Her weak attempt to defend it can be found at:

http://itknowledgeexchange.techtarget.com/cloud-computing/2010/07/30/eli-lilly-amazon-web-services-story-still-stands/

complete with comments.

By: Om Malik

Om Malik — Sun, 01 Aug 2010 20:06:53 +0000

Speckz

The article was retracted by the publication and hence you see a 404 error message.

By: Alan Wilensky

Alan Wilensky — Sun, 01 Aug 2010 18:35:40 +0000

So this is just coming to light. I worked as an advisor to a professional lines insurer that will be underwriting cloud infrastructure. From my serieis on the uninsurability of same:

“In other words, since AWS and other cloud providers usually credit services interruptions with usage credits, the best you are going to get, if anything from an insurer, is a payment of some token multiple for what you would have paid for services from the provider – NOT costs incurred for the loss of business continuity. If any commercial line carrier knows of any such services that I have missed, please leave a comment.”

See the series http://bizcast.typepad.com/clients/2009/03/underwriting-business-continuity-in-the-cloud.html

The underwriting of cloud hosted services will have to go through the same travails as the managed services went through- it tool years for the insurers to get a handle on machines that you could identify. Let’s see how fast they can come up with products where the processes and the instances can’t be identified.

By: Geoff Arnold

Geoff Arnold — Sun, 01 Aug 2010 18:35:03 +0000

Perhaps in your first sentence you should replace “news” with “wild and unsubstantiated report”. And “retracted” doesn’t apply: the rumor was squashed, but the blogger involved still hasn’t apologized for the misrepresentation….