The rights defined by Gartner are:
- The right to retain ownership, use and control one's own data
- The right to service level agreements that address liabilities, remediation and business outcomes
- The right to notification and choice about changes that affect the service consumers' business processes
- The right to understand the technical limitations or requirements of the service up front
- The right to understand the legal requirements of jurisdictions in which the provider operates
- The right to know what security processes the provider follows
- The responsibility to understand and adhere to software licence requirements
As part of the definition process, the research firm has established the Global IT Council for Cloud Services to support successful business relationships between cloud service providers and consumers.
The council – which consists of CIOs of large enterprises that consume cloud services and Gartner analysts – has made identifying key rights of service consumers and how they might be upheld, a key priority.
"If cloud services are commoditised, providers should offer stronger customer guarantees", said Daryl C. Plummer, managing vice president and Gartner fellow.
"However, service providers either do not offer protections or vary greatly in the protections they do offer. We believe that the Global IT Council for Cloud Services can facilitate improvements in industry practices that will benefit not only IT customers and clients, but also developers, vendors and other stakeholders", he added.
According to Plummer, the seven rights and responsibilities will benefit both service providers and service consumers.
"Respecting these rights will require effort and expense from providers, but securing the rights will encourage enterprises to put more of their business into the cloud", he said.
"However, the seven rights will not become a reality unless enterprises insist on them when they negotiate with service providers. We urge all enterprises to do what they can to establish these rights and responsibilities as the standard for cloud computing", he added.