Cloud Exit Standard on Cloud Exit

C1 · No exit toll

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Caution

Draft criterion, version 0.1. No provider result is implied by this page.

Definition

A service passes C1 when a customer can move customer-owned data to another operator without charges that are disproportionate to ordinary delivery cost or that make exit economically impractical. The assessed path must be available at useful bulk-transfer scale, not only as a token free allowance.

How to verify

Define the full export volume, request count, retrieval class, region, and deadline.
Price every required read, retrieval, API request, transfer, appliance, and support item.
Compare exit cost with normal monthly service cost and with an independently procurable transfer path.
Record waivers, eligibility limits, notice periods, and whether the customer must negotiate.

Worked example

For data volume $D$ , retrieval price $R$ , request cost $Q$ , and transfer price $E$ :

C2 · Whole-data export

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Caution

Draft criterion, version 0.1. No provider result is implied by this page.

Definition

A service passes C2 when the customer can export all customer-owned data plus the metadata required to use it elsewhere, in documented formats and within a bounded duration. A dashboard download of only the current visible state is not a whole-data export when history, schema, permissions, versions, or logs are required to reconstruct the service.

C3 · Standard interfaces

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Caution

Draft criterion, version 0.1. No provider result is implied by this page.

Definition

A service passes C3 when the core operations needed to continue the workload are exposed through documented interfaces that independent implementations can reasonably reproduce. “Standard” means open enough to implement and test, not merely widely used under one vendor’s control.

How to verify

List every operation on the critical path, map it to a published specification, exercise the same workload against an independent implementation or adapter, and record incompatible semantics, undocumented extensions, and control-plane dependencies.

C4 · No commitment lock

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Caution

Draft criterion, version 0.1. No provider result is implied by this page.

Definition

A service passes C4 when commercial commitments do not turn an otherwise portable workload into an economically stranded one. Commitments are not a failure by themselves; the test measures term, unused balance, scope, transferability, cancellation, and the penalty created by leaving early.

How to verify

Record contract duration, committed spend, eligible products, utilization assumption, prepayment, refund and transfer rules, renewal behavior, and the unused obligation at each plausible exit date. Compare the committed effective price with both on-demand cost and the cost of leaving.

C5 · Accountable downtime

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Caution

Draft criterion, version 0.1. No provider result is implied by this page.

Definition

A service passes C5 when material downtime leaves an auditable record: timely status, bounded impact, a substantive explanation, corrective action, and the contractual remedy promised to affected customers. Perfect uptime is not the test; accountable failure is.

How to verify

Compare the status timeline, customer-observed impact, incident report, contractual SLA, claim process, compensation, and evidence of corrective work. Record what is public, what is available only to affected customers, and what remains unknown.