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?
Read more of Terri’s blog entries at IT Depends.
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