Cloud services customers should be afforded basic rights to protect their interests, Gartner has said.

The leading technology organisation’s Global IT Council for Cloud Services has listed six rights and one responsibility of service consumers in order to help IT outsourcing providers and their clients establish fruitful business relationships.

Top of the list is the right to retain ownership and use of data, while consumers should also have the possibility of service-level agreements that address liabilities, remediation and business outcomes.

Further rights include being notified about service changes that will affect business processes and being made aware of the technical requirements or limitations of the service on offer.

In addition, providers should explain the legal framework surrounding the provision of cloud services, while clients should be entitled to know what security processes the provider follows.

The one responsibility is to understand and adhere to software license requirements.

Recent research by IT specialist Brocade showed that European firms are increasingly trusting of the cloud computing IT infrastructure model.