More and more, organisations are moving legacy applications to the Cloud – or deploying new applications – in accordance with their “Cloud-first” philosophies. The breadth of Cloud use cases range from small infrastructure (IaaS) or platform (PaaS) “sandbox”/pilot projects to enterprise-wide SaaS projects that encompass the full breadth of back-office, customer-facing and mobile applications that are the backbone of the organisation’s digitalisation strategy – and, more likely than not, critical to the organisation’s well-being. As we move from simple, one-off project use cases to business critical enterprise-wide solutions, the associated complexity, costs and risk tend to scale accordingly.
On large Cloud-based enterprise software projects in particular, complexities may arise when a systems integrator or implementation partner are selected to implement the end solution. This is where the overlaps and potential conflicts between the Cloud Service Provider (CSP) and Systems Integrator/Implementer (SI) agreements and obligations need to be carefully assessed.
The mind map below shows some key considerations for Cloud contracts. These – and other – topics will need to be carefully considered when engaging with Cloud Service Providers on large enterprise Cloud projects.
