Cloud Platforms

If you are looking to develop or provide software via a cloud platform you will need to ensure that your software is provided in accordance with the platform provider’s requirements whilst still adequately describing your services and giving your business the protection it needs.

Increasingly cloud platforms allow software service providers to offer more cost-effective, scaleable and versatile solutions without the need for large amounts of capital expenditure. However, deploying software services and solutions via a cloud platform presents its own challenges, such as:

• the need to comply (and for your customers to comply) with the terms of the cloud platform provider;
• who will be responsible if there is a problem arising from the cloud platform?
• added complexities in relation to data processing and compliance with GDPR.

We can help you to deal with these issues to ensure that you can minimise your risk-exposure and get the most from the cloud platform you are using.

Our ethos is to provide our clients with an alternative to the major regional and national firms by offering high quality legal advice from highly experienced, specialist solicitors, but on a much more cost-effective basis.

We work closely with our clients to ensure that we meet their expectations both in terms of their objectives for a particular piece of work and in relation to costs. We are easy to deal with, clear in our advice and understand that a common sense approach is often required. As standard practice, we give our clients an estimate of the costs involved in undertaking any piece of work at the outset. We can then provide costs updates on a regular basis. In addition, where appropriate, we are happy to discuss other pricing models (for example, fixed fees and retainer arrangements) if that is helpful to you.

Our experience includes advising on solutions provided via:

• Amazon Web Services
• Amazon Elastic
• Google Cloud Platform
• Salesforce

Recent examples of our work in this area include:

• licensing of database ETL tools provided via AWS (for use with Amazon Redshift) and Google Cloud Platform (for use with BigQuery), with additional “bring your own licence” terms;
• software development and licensing of a B2B solution via the Salesforce Platform;
• licensing of an Amazon Elastic-based solution in relation to provision of quotations for the insurance industry;
• provision of professional and business services software as a service (including cashiering and payroll services) relying on Google Cloud Platform to host the software and data.

Our specialist IT Solicitors have a wealth of experience in advising businesses on providing software through cloud platforms and we are able to assist with the drafting and negotiation of the relevant documentation that you will require.

Our team of Commercial Solicitors are ranked Top Tier - Tier 1 by the independent Legal 500 directory.  In addition, Partners in our team are recommended by the Legal 500. Therefore, you can be reassured that you will deal with some of the best Commercial Solicitors in the country.