Recent years have seen massive growth in cloud-based solutions and software-as-a-service (SaaS). Business increasingly use cloud services and SaaS solutions within their own back office operations and many offer these types of services to their own customers.

The convenience and cost model benefits of cloud and SaaS solutions often speak for themselves. But the legal issues arising from them can be complex and can cause serious headaches for businesses on both sides, whether they use cloud or SaaS solutions provided by someone else or they offer them to their own customers. Not surprisingly, these types of services are often mission-critical to businesses, particularly where they replace traditional server-client software installations.

If your business uses cloud or SaaS solutions provided by someone else, there are a whole host of issues to consider, from availability of service and service level agreements to data protection law considerations, data loss, back-up, disaster recovery, business continuity, and exit arrangements. Having the right agreements in place with your providers is essential to protect your operations.

It is just as important to deal with these issues if your business offers cloud or SaaS solutions to your own customers, as you will want to control your potential liability if things go wrong. Again, having the right agreement or terms and conditions in place with your customers is critical – arguably even more so if your customers are consumers rather than businesses.

Whatever side of the cloud you are on, taking advice early on is a good idea. At Star Legal, we have the expertise to help you ensure that you get off to the right start. As well as advising you, we can prepare or review the agreements or terms relating to the cloud or SaaS solutions that you are buying or selling, and negotiate them on your behalf with the other party or their advisers.

Given our experience and expertise  across a range of different sectors,  you will be in safe hands – contact us today to find out more.