Because nothing is certain 
1/21/2010 – UPDATE to the story below: Microsoft removed the NDA language from the Azure cloud services website – see my most recent blog for details!
Over the course of business today I was stunned to come across this:
Digging into Microsoft Azure cloud storage services, I went looking for the SLA. Microsoft posts the SLA as a publicly available Word doc for download, but posts the following on the download page:
“The Service Level Agreements (“SLAs”) posted on this site are the confidential information of Microsoft. You may view the SLAs if you have purchased or are considering the purchase of Online Services from Microsoft. You agree not to disclose the SLAs to any other third party or to make use of the information for purposes not related to the your (SIC) purchase or prospective purchase of Online Services from Microsoft. By downloading or viewing this document, you agree to these terms.”
I am always considering buying online storage services, so of course I downloaded the agreement and read it. But I can’t talk about what it said. In this era of social media and transparency, I am (almost) speechless that Microsoft would put this confidentiality language around its services.
Service providers are asking us to trust them with our data and consume storage as a service; how can vendors go about hiding details behind service levels? If the electric company started out by saying “I’ll tell you what type of service you’ll get from us, as long as you don’t tell anyone else” we’d probably still be using candles… it just makes me wonder what they are trying to hide!
The cloud storage SLA agreement (and associated confidentiality language) can be found at: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?displaylang=en&FamilyID=d32702dd-a85c-464d-b54d-422a23939871
Is this even enforceable? Does it mean we can’t discuss the information I found publicly available on the web? Am I the only one that thinks this is whacked?
Microsoft, are you listening?
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Excellent spot, Terri – absolutely ridiculous. I hope someone at Microsoft gets real and fixes this.
Thanks Ewan – I wish it were just a Microsoft issue, but it is broader. AWS won’t provide detail on its infrastructure and hows it is built for availability other than “trust us.” That may work down the road, but how many people will trust corporate data to someone that won’t disclose details on how its protected? IT guys are control freaks for good reason – the business depends on data being there!!! For cloud storage to take off there needs to be transparency.
Microsoft are certainly not unique in this inability to openly discuss SLAs and compliance when it comes to public cloud infrastructure (or even virtual/private clouds hosted externally). The failure they were by proxy associated with last year, the Danger/T-Mobile/Sidekick debacle, should make them abundantly aware of the need for open and transparent discussions to garner trust. They seem instead to be operating like so many other public cloud vendors of working on the basis that they can engender trust by slapping a “Cloud” logo somewhere on their kit.
I was relieved recently to see someone who works in public clouds, Stephen Foskett, call for some level of standards, auditing and compliance for Cloud providers. The first step towards this would certainly be public and open discussion of SLAs. (Stephen’s article was at: http://developer.nirvanix.com/blogs/strategies/archive/2009/10/22/everyone-should-be-skeptical-about-cloud-service-providers.aspx )
[...] at IT Depends, I found Terri McClure’s views on Microsoft’s requirements for accessing their Azure SLAs to be the same as mine – staggeringly stupid. (According to Microsoft Fanboy site The Register, [...]
[...] it to take the NDA language off of the Azure cloud storage service SLA website. Two days after I blogged, the topic was picked up by The Register (here) and blogged about here by Roger Jennings at Oakleaf [...]
[...] it to take the NDA language off of the Azure cloud storage service SLA website. Two days after I blogged, the topic was picked up by The Register (here) and blogged about here by Roger Jennings at Oakleaf [...]