Industry picks over Doyenz's UK cloud disaster

Andy Burton, chairman of trade body the Cloud Industry Forum, said if commercial pressures are to blame, the firm should still have given customers more time to move their data.

"I'm not sure why they've given customers such a short time window...announcing you're stopping support in a week and giving people less than a month to get their data back...at a commercial level is pretty poor practice," he said.

He said the case highlights the need for end users to have an exit strategy in place should their cloud provider go out of business, for example.

At a commercial level, this is pretty poor practice.

"Typically, most end users aren't negotiating things in their agreement, along the lines of [working out], at the point of termination, [how much time] they will have to formally move their data," said Burton.

"That should be a contracted position, and never something that's left to chance."

IT Pro understands Doyenz is offering UK customers the chance to move their data to its US datacentres, but Ian Moyse, sales director at cloud-based CRM provider Workbooks.com, said this may not be a suitable solution for all.

"UK businesses have responsibility under the Data Protection Act to...not transfer data to any other country without adequate protection in situ," he explained.

"The Safe Harbour [agreement] has been used by US vendors as an answer to this, but many are now calling [the validity of] that into question.

"Maybe the buy British' stance will get another airing in the cloud world," he concluded.

Meanwhile, earlier today, rival online backup provider Databarracks announced that it will be offering Doyenz customers the opportunity to move their data to its datacentre for free until September.