Cloud Exit Standard
The Cloud Exit Standard asks one narrow question: does this service preserve the customer’s practical ability to leave? It does not rank product quality, feature depth, market share, or whether buying the service was a good decision.
Five criteria
| ID | Test | Question |
|---|---|---|
| C1 | No exit toll | Does leaving trigger punitive transfer or extraction charges? |
| C2 | Whole-data export | Can the complete usable dataset be exported in bounded time? |
| C3 | Standard interfaces | Can core operations be reproduced through public, implementable interfaces? |
| C4 | No commitment lock | Do commercial commitments preserve a practical path out? |
| C5 | Accountable downtime | Are incidents, remedies, and responsibility auditable? |
Every criterion uses the same page contract: definition → verification → worked example → boundaries and objections. A result is scoped to a product, region, plan, and review date; it is never a timeless verdict on a company.
What this standard is not
- It is not a demand that every workload leave every cloud.
- It is not a security certification, availability benchmark, or purchasing recommendation.
- It is not a moral ranking of providers.
- It does not infer a result from a logo, company size, or deployment model.
The method defines evidence, review, expiry, and appeal. The registry remains empty until an entry clears that process.
Test whether leaving triggers charges that are disproportionate to delivery cost or ordinary use.
Test whether all customer-owned data and required metadata can be exported in usable form and bounded time.
Test whether core data-plane operations can be reproduced through public, implementable interfaces.
Test whether discounts, credits, and term contracts preserve a practical economic path out.
Test whether incidents, impact, remediation, and contractual accountability remain auditable.
Scope, evidence hierarchy, scoring states, review cadence, expiry, correction, and appeal for the Cloud Exit Standard.
Evidence-backed Cloud Exit Standard results, scoped by product, region, plan, and review date.
Publication and usage rules for a future Cloud Exit capability badge.
What behavior the Cloud Exit Standard tests, and what it deliberately leaves outside the line of fire.