ANALYSIS: After a Cloud Outage, Contracts (and Facts) Matter

Mobile platforms, streaming services, and theme parks are among the many businesses that could seek contractual remedies because of Tuesday’s Amazon Web Services outage. But would they prevail? As with most cloud outages, that depends on the underlying facts pertinent to the provider’s terms.

In the default service level agreement (SLA) governing some of the affected services, Amazon guarantees minimum uptimes. In line with industry standards, the sole remedy for downtime is a service credit which, depending on amounts paid, could be significant. The table below depicts available credits and other relevant terms from the Amazon Compute SLA ...