The SLALOM initiative, which is partially funded by the European Commission through the H2020 programme and was set up in 2015 to help drive the uptake of cloud services with model service level agreement (SLA) legal clauses and technical specifications, has published the final version of its legal and open model terms for cloud SLAs and other contracts.

The model terms are designed to make it easier for small and medium-sized enterprises to enter the cloud services market. It is also hoped that use of the model terms will lead to greater consistency between the contracts offered by the range of providers, making it easier for purchasers of cloud services to draw comparisons between different cloud services. The Cloud Industry Forum reports that its research has shown that cloud providers themselves do not always use contracts that are well suited to the services they are offering, resulting in increased drafting costs.

The model terms consist of an SLA with attachments covering issues such as data protection and acceptable use of the cloud service.

Source: SLALOM final version legal and model open terms for cloud SLA and contracts, 28 June 2016.