Cloud Computing: A Guide to Evaluate and Negotiate Cloud Service Agreements in the Light of the Actual European Legal Framework

Cloud computing technology fulfills the need of on-demand, scalable, and interoperable outsourced services: nevertheless, in the actual, fragmented European legal framework, it poses many issues from a legal point of view. The article provides an overview of such issues, and of the most relevant documents that have been published in Europe during 2012 in order to correctly manage the use of cloud computing services from a legal point of view, with a special focus on the European Cloud Strategy and on Article 29 Working Party Opinion 5/2012 on Cloud Computing.This last document, in fact, provides cloud clients with a useful checklist which contains all the elements that should be present in an agreement between a cloud service provider and a cloud client. Finally, the article’s last paragraph is dedicated to the processing of sensitive data in the cloud.