Tech & Sourcing @ Morgan Lewis

The European Securities and Markets Authority (ESMA) published its draft guidelines on outsourcing to cloud service providers on June 3. Steven Maijoor, the chair of ESMA, indicated that the purpose of the guidelines is to “help firms understand and mitigate the risks that they are exposed to when outsourcing to cloud service providers.”

Although many companies are already revisiting contractual provisions relating to nonperformance, like force majeure clauses, as the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic continues to wreak havoc on public health and the economy.

In a prior series of posts, we discussed issues relating to intellectual property indemnification, including some exceptions, remedies, and allocation of liability. Given that these provisions often involve taxing negotiations and that many technologies have become intertwined, below we explore some nuanced—and frequently sticky—issues regarding third-party products and how they can be resolved.

In the wake of the reinvigorated call for equality and greater diversity and inclusion, many companies—largely through their procurement organizations—are taking the opportunity to revisit their diversity supplier programs, including assessing impact and reevaluating best practices for pursuing supplier diversity and tracking the impact of these programs.

In an ideal outsourcing relationship, technology transformation through innovation, continuous improvement, and future project work is never really “over.”