Todd McClelland was quoted in an InformationWeek article discussing software-as-a-service (a form of cloud computing), and outage issues related to SaaS. McClelland spoke specifically about how some SaaS vendors are unwilling to provide significant service-level commitments. "If you're not paying a lot, then the vendor is not going to take a whole lot of responsibility," he said. "We're only seeing discussions of SLAs in very large deals."
As interest in SaaS and other forms of cloud computing increases, more attention will be spent solidifying performance and security expectations. According to McClelland, companies need to "consider whether vendors should be holding and hosting certain types of customer data. The Amazons and IBMs of the world will implement security measures that are greater than customers would have on their own systems."
He continued: "But even though large vendors' systems are more protected, there [are] more people who will want to hack into those systems because there's so much more data."