Cloud Offerings Advisory Tool

What the tool offers

Cloud Offerings Advisory Tool (COAT) is a cloud brokerage tool that matches user’s non-functional and data protection requirements such as transparency, legal terms, court of choice, privacy and security, etc. with the contract terms in cloud providers’ service offerings. The tool has a list of attributes (the particulari-ties of a certain cloud provider) that can be used in this matching based on the analysis of standardized cloud contracts, service level agreements (SLAs), the EU Data Protection Directive (DPD), and the new EU Data Protection Regulation (GPDR). For cloud customers, it eases the comparison of alternative cloud offerings, makes the contract terms transparent for them, and it offers guidance in the meaning and im-portance of each attribute and contract term. For cloud service providers, the tool can increase their market exposure and offer them the chance to highlight a unique criteria in their offer.

The tool innovation

Some of the aforementioned non-functional requirements are in the contracts but they are not clearly categorized and used in offers-requirements matching. COAT uniquely focuses on achieving compliance by doing the matching based on well investigated data protection requirements while presenting the user with a familiar store-like interface to reduce complexity. One of the unique features of the tool is the guidance and information on the requirements that encourages understandability and enhances transparency.

Raising impact

So far most cloud brokerage tools in the market do not make the matching based on data protection requirements. With the new EU GDPR, users need to be more informed on their data protection practices especially the selection of a compliant service provider. As such, COAT will present a unique market value.