[communities] GGF Proposal Submission

[mark.henley at twobirds.com]

proposers_name: Mark Henley 
 
affiliation: Senior Associate, Bird & Bird 

email: mark.henley at twobirds.com 

proposed_title: Contracting for Grids 

session_type: Workshop 

proposed_duration: 60 mins 

target_audience: Managers and users 

num_attendees: Not known 

abstract: This workshop will explore the unique problems that contracts managers and lawyers face when drafting contracts for grid solutions.  It will look at licensing, data security, requirements and solutions documents, service levels and other legal/commercial areas where the grid demands creative and innovative thinking and will consider how these issues might be solved. 

synopsis: IT lawyers and contract managers must recognise that grid solutions raise unique problems for the drafting of commercial contracts.  For example, portable code and on-demand scaling create difficulties for traditional licensing models.  Processing across different administrative domains creates issues with traditional service level definitions.

The workshop would seek to raise awareness of these problems and start a debate on how they might be resolved within the context of a commercial contract.

The goal in the longer term would be to establish a community where grid providers, customers, and specialist lawyers could work towards establishing a common legal framework that suits all parties and can be easily adapted for different varieties of grid solution.  This should lower the barriers to grid providers and customers entering into balanced and workable commercial deals. 

tech_requirements: None 

prereq_participants: Commercial background and/or contracts experience 

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