When it comes to cloud computing services, all consumers and businesses should expect to have some basic rights to protect their interests, or so says Gartner.

With that in mind, Gartner has created its Global IT Council for Cloud Services, a body put together to facilitate successful business relationships between cloud service providers and consumers. The Council comprises mostly CIOs of large companies that consume cloud services and Gartner analysts. The group has defined a set of key rights to govern cloud computing and help providers and consumers be successful.

"If cloud services are commoditized, providers should offer stronger customer guarantees," Daryl Plummer, managing vice president and Gartner fellow, said in a statement. "However, service providers either do not offer protections or vary greatly in the protections they do offer. We believe that the Global IT Council for Cloud Services can facilitate improvements in industry practices that will benefit not only IT customers and clients, but also developers, vendors and other stakeholders."

Plummer added: "These seven rights and responsibilities will benefit both service providers and service consumers. Respecting these rights will require effort and expense from providers, but securing the rights will encourage enterprises to put more of their business into the cloud. However, the seven rights will not become a reality unless enterprises insist on them when they negotiate with service providers. We urge all enterprises to do what they can to establish these rights and responsibilities as the standard for cloud computing."

Here we take a look at the six rights and one responsibility of cloud computing as set forth by Gartner and the Global IT Council for Cloud Services.