Can SaaS/Cloud Vendors Be Trusted?

From a cloud architect's perspective:

One of the inherent tenets of "Cloud" or "XaaS" is that the client is focused on the "What" (e.g. the service...twitter, BPOS, Facebook, Azure, EC2, etc.), rather than the "How" (the constructs of actually delivering those services). Which is the way it should be, IMHO.

Most consumers don't walk into McDonalds and ask them what temperature their griddles operate, they just expect a fresh & juicy Big Mac to come out on a clean tray. There's a certain amount of caveat emptor that users/businesses/enterprises should approach "clouds" with, ensuring that they've got a fair amount of insulation, in the form of SLA penalties if the Big Mac comes up cold and wilted. If that burger comes to the counter in a sad state, as some vendors recently have, the manager should be notified, the customer should either get a refund (if they're paying for that burger) or walk across the street to Burger King.

A bill of rights may be helpful, however there's still servers, network gear, storage, code, content and most importantly humans behind the curtains of the cloud. Caveat Emptor...Buyer beware, and ensure you've got your SLAs in writing and that you've got a great system/dashboard for service level reporting.

Well if the SaaS vendor can not be trusted, they will not be in business too long, so in a sense the SaaS vendor can or should be trusted as much as any vendor and be held to the highest standards of quality.

When considering SaaS or any cloud solution there are always risks. Outages, raised rates, ect.. like Simon said are something you should be weary of but you are also dependent on someone else being responsible for your data. It does help if you ensure the provider does meet certain compliance standards (lessens the risk of your data being compromised) but does not prevent it. Yea ok if there is an outage or your data gets compromised you might get some type of refund but that still does not omit the fact that your data is now leaked and you have to take responsibility for that. So what I am trying to say is there is always risks with these type of solutions but most importantly you should be aware of the data you’re putting up there along with what risks are associated if that data were to be leaked or not available to your end user.

We at www.edocr.com takes trust very seriously. Yes, we have been prone to outages, both as a result of our inadequacies as well as of our suppliers. We have a programme of continuously improving our service, and operate http://status.edocr.com to inform of known problems, whilst http://support.edocr.com provide a way for our growing customers to inform us of our own short fallings.

What you need to recognise is that without SaaS model, applications like edocr.com would not be possible at all. Cloud has given you more choice, its up to you to evaluate risks associated with using particular products.