Brussels, 26/06/2014 (Agence Europe) - On 26 June, the European Commission presented guidelines on Cloud Computing, aiming to help professional users to save money by making the most of the services. Cloud computing allows individuals, businesses and the public sector to use these remote data centres for the storage and processing of their data, and to make savings of between 10 and 20% on average.
The guidelines were drawn up by a group of stakeholders from the cloud IT sector (the Cloud Select Industry Group) in the framework of the Commission's cloud strategy, to increase confidence in the services. These are the first stage towards the standardisation of the terminology and metrics of service level agreements (SLAs), which are the part of the service contract that defines the technical and legal aspects of the service offered. The guidelines will help users of the cloud to ensure that essential elements are included in plain language in the contracts they make with cloud IT service providers. The European Commission will now test these guidelines with users, particularly SMEs. They will also be examined by the expert group on cloud contracts, which the Commission set in place in October 2013. (IL)