IT leaders call on cloud vendors to rethink terms and conditions

IT Leaders Forum speakers also warn would-be cloud users to prepare an exit strategy

"Vendors are creating barriers for IT departments entering the cloud in the form of a complex licensing environment and lock-in strategies," said Richard George, Enterprise Channel Director at Intel, who was speaking at Computing's IT Leaders Forum yesterday.

"It seems that vendors are trying to operate a strategy of lock-in and many companies are unclear as to how you would switch cloud provider. There needs to be some work done to develop contracts with suitable exit strategies," he added.

And this was a view that was shared by other speakers at the conference.

Alistair Maughan, partner for law firm Morrison & Foerster, also advises CIOs to take an exit strategy into consideration when migrating to the cloud.

"When negotiating with a service provider, CIOs must make sure they have a practically tested exit plan," he said.

"Companies must either have in-house exit routes or be able to easily switch to another cloud provider [if the cloud service fails]."

Issues around vendor licensing agreements were also cited by other speakers as a barrier to cloud migration.

"The challenge to vendors surrounding licensing strategy is that you see IT departments demanding, for example, a two week service for a limited amount of money," said a member of the forum audience.

"This puts service providers under an incredible amount of pressure."

Lloyd's of London CIO Peter Hambling argued that in order for companies to obtain the licensing they want, a game has to be played with cloud providers.

"IT departments need to play vendors off against each other to get the deal they want," said Hambling.

"You need to say 'this is how we want to do business, if you can't help us we will go elsewhere'," he added.

Mike Sackman, director of IT for food outlet operator Mitchells & Butlers, argued that vendor and clients need to work together: "Vendors do realise they need to strike more innovative commercial deals to drive things forward, but IT departments putting up a brick wall is not the answer, simply saying licensing is a problem will be a blocker to migration."