by Lydia Leong | March 8, 2011 | Comments Off
There are plenty of cloud (or cloud-ish) companies that will sell you services on a credit card and a click-through agreement. But even when you can buy that way, it is unlikely to be maximally to your advantage to do so, if you have any volume to speak of. And if you do decide to [...]
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Category: Industry Tags: Cloud, contracts, Gartner, research
by Lydia Leong | August 24, 2010 | 8 Comments
I saw an interesting article about cloud provider liability limits, including some quotes from my esteemed colleague Drue Reeves (via Gartner’s acquisition of Burton). A quote in an article about Eli Lilly and Amazon also caught my eye: Tanya Forsheit, founding partner at the Information Law Group, “advised companies to walk away from the business [...]
by Lydia Leong | June 26, 2009 | 3 Comments
In many enterprises, IT folks decide what they want to buy and who they want to buy it from, but Procurement negotiates the contract, manages the relationship, and has significant influence on renewals. Right now, especially, purchasing folks have a lot of influence, because they’re often now the ones who go out and shop for [...]
by Lydia Leong | June 2, 2009 | 1 Comment
Everyone has vendor horror stories. No matter how good a vendor normally is, there will be times that they screw up. Some customers will exacerbate a vendor’s tendency to screw up — for instance, they may be someone the vendor really shouldn’t have tried to serve in the first place (heavy customization, i.e., many one-offs [...]
by Lydia Leong | May 7, 2009 | Comments Off
I’m seeing an increasing number of IT buyers try to negotiate “out clauses” in their contracts — clauses that let them arbitrarily terminate their services, or which allow them to do so based on certain economy-related business conditions. People are doing this because they’re afraid of the future. If, for instance, they launch a service [...]
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by Lydia Leong | December 30, 2008 | 1 Comment
I’m on vacation, and I’ve been playing World of Goo (possibly the single-best construction puzzle game since 1991′s Lemmings by Psygnosis). I was reading the company’s blog (2D Boy), when I came across an entry about BlueHost’s no-notice termination of 2D Boy’s hosting. And that got me thinking about “unlimited” hosting plans, throttling, limits, and [...]
Category: Infrastructure Tags: Cloud, contracts, customers, hosting
by Lydia Leong | December 9, 2008 | Comments Off
If a customer really wants to leave, you are probably best off letting them leave. Certainly, if they’ve reached the end of their contract, and you are actively engaged in dialogue with one another, you should note little things like, “Your contract auto-renews”. What not to do: Not tell the customer about the auto-renewal, then [...]
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