8 sure-fire ways to screw up a cloud contract

Grazed from InfoWorld. Author: Robert L. Mitchell.

Something happened on the way to the cloud: Too many business customers got burned by bad contracts. It’s not that cloud services can’t deliver value. But in the rush to the cloud, enterprises often end up stuck with contracts that don’t fully meet the business’s needs, lack accountability and cost considerably more than anticipated.

There are several reasons for that, say people who make their living studying licensing issues and advising businesses on contract negotiations. Among other things, seasoned veterans of on-premises software licensing may mistakenly assume that cloud services contracts are just another variation on the same theme…

But as enterprise software vendors move to the cloud, software licensing has become so complex — Microsoft’s licensing strategy alone has ballooned from fewer than 50 options to more than 170 — that even consultants and resellers are struggling to fully understand it. And even when expertise is available in house, businesses aren’t always aware, or don’t take advantage of it for political or other reasons…

Read more from the source @ http://www.infoworld.com/d/cloud-computing/8-sure-fire-ways-screw-cloud-contract-231147