Given that the majority of Saugatuck clients today utilize multiple (usually dozens or more) Cloud-based IT and business services, how many have dusted off the SLAs related to those? What we’re finding out from our ongoing SaaS and Cloud IT research programs is that most have not given enough time and thought to viewing and understanding their Cloud IT SLAs. And too many, it seems, have not even negotiated the terms of those SLAs with their providers. That’s bad business for enterprise user/buyer and provider both.

This week, we’re reviewing and updating our original guidance regarding SaaS/Cloud SLA provisions and negotiation, and we strongly recommend that our client do the same. We’ve updated our core Strategic Perspective on the subject, which is being published this week for clients of our CRS subscription service. Here are the five points that every IT and business executive needs to understand and negotiate when it comes to any Cloud service level agreement:

What is Happening?  Saugatuck’s ongoing research with IT and business leaders regarding their business, Cloud, social and other IT-related plans and actions reveals that, while core business priorities remain very similar from the smallest firms to the largest mega-enterprises, significant differences exist based in part on the relative size of firms. These differences shape what, why, how and when firms acquire and use IT of all types and forms, whether suite-based, Cloud-based, traditional, or hybridized.

Our latest global survey research provides us with very useful data regarding how firms of varying size differ in their business goals. The key differences are illustrated in Figure 1, and analyzed in detail in research published this week for Saugatuck CRS clients (1057MKT, Varying Value Needs: SaaS and Business Priorities from SMBs to Mega-Enterprises in 2012, published 25April2012).

What is Happening?  Last week, Saugatuck attended the Wells Fargo Tech Summit in San Francisco, moderating a panel and meeting with a number of industry leaders. This was the second year that we participated in the conference – which we greatly value as another important window into the dynamics shaping the market for business computing products and services – in this case a Wall Street perspective.

Day 1 of the event was filled with an all-star cast of industry leaders. I especially valued John Chambers (CEO, Cisco) opening keynote, as well as the Consumerization of IT panel, Jason Maynard’s (Wells Fargo’s lead software analyst) fireside chat with Safra Catz (CFO, Oracle) – as well as the panel that I moderated on the Future of IT (with senior executives from Snaplogic, ServiceMesh, Deloitte and Nodeable). One of the highlights of the morning session was a short presentation by Biri Singh (Head of Cloud Services, HP), where he outlined at a high level HPs new holistic Cloud strategy that was subsequently announced this past Tuesday (see Saugatuck’s initial take in our Lens 360 blog post HP Cloud Update: Solid Strategy and a Top-down Mandate, 09Apr2012).

An emerging and disruptive master architecture – combining Cloud, Mobile, Social and Data Analytics plus Integration to on-premises Data Assets – is now forming to enable the Boundary-free Enterprise™ that Saugatuck foresaw in 2008. The Boundary-free Enterprise will not be constrained by organizational boundaries and firewalls, but can enable a new model of work and facilitate new business relationships that are not bound by time or place. Nevertheless, there are new risks and challenges that must be managed for its rewards to be fully realized.

Table 1 - Convergence in the Cloud: 21st Century Organizations, Boundary Free and Global

What is Happening?  Earlier this quarter, Saugatuck began publishing the results of a deep-dive interview program conducted with large-enterprise CIOs and CTOs, with a focus on gathering first-person insights into the impact that Cloud is having on IT strategy and planning. Last week, Saugatuck traveled to Europe and was able to extend this research through a series of one-on-one meetings and briefings with large-enterprise IT leaders, as well as keynoting the well-attended annual EuroCloud France conference in Paris.

This Research Alert provides some top-line insights as previously published in two premium research pieces, as well as extend the analysis with new input from this European trip. Overall, our research clearly demonstrates an accelerating pace and scope of Cloud adoption – with Cloud now fully accepted and fundamental in the plans of most of the senior IT leaders we have spoken to (globally).

Saugatuck Technology recently reached out to a dozen large-enterprise CIOs and CTOs (all from companies with greater than $1 Billion in annualized revenue), seeking their input and insight concerning the impact that the Cloud is having on their company’s evolving enterprise IT strategies and plans.

In a previous Lens 360 blog post (CIO Insight: Importance of Cloud in IT Strategies/Plans Growing – Part I), we highlighted some of the key findings from Part I of this research, highlighting how most CIOs and CTOs have moved well beyond the learning phase in regard to the Cloud, and instead are fully embracing it in their IT strategy and planning.

What is Happening? This week Informatica, The Data Integration Company, held an invitation-only, two-day conference for a select group of industry analysts at a hotel near the company’s Redwood City, California headquarters. While Saugatuck’s head of research, Bruce Guptill attended the full program of conference events, I conducted an interview with two senior executives at the information management company on the subject of data quality, data governance and the Cloud.

Full Disclosure: More than twenty five years ago, I managed data administration at John Hancock and later at Fidelity Investments, founded the Boston chapter of the Data Administration Management Association (DAMA) and was deeply involved in the issues of data quality and data governance in a number of vendor user conferences, including IBM GUIDE.

Saugatuck Technology recently reached out to a dozen large-enterprise CIOs and CTOs (all from companies with greater than $1 Billion in annualized revenue), seeking their input and insight concerning the impact that the Cloud is having on their company’s evolving enterprise IT strategies and plans.

In a Strategic Perspective published last Friday, we focused on the first three of six questions asked in the interviews – including the importance of Cloud in IT planning/strategy, what are their key 2012 Cloud priorities, and what have been the key drivers.