Privacy & Information Security Law Blog

In April 2011, a technical malfunction suffered by the Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud resulted in a multi-day outage affecting hundreds of businesses.  The incident offered high-profile evidence of both the widespread popularity of cloud computing and the potential consequences of storing company data in the cloud.  It also drew attention to cloud service contracts, raising questions about performance levels and backups in the event of a service disruption.  With more and more businesses seeking to take advantage of the efficiency and cost savings offered by cloud computing, the lessons of the Amazon outage underscore the complexities involved in negotiating cloud computing agreements.  In an article published in Bloomberg Law Reports, Technology Law, Andrew Geyer and Melinda McLellan discuss some of the key commercial issues and privacy and data security concerns to consider when evaluating a cloud services contract.