On 22nd November 2010, the CIF launched a Code of Practice ("Code") in the hope of improving standards in the industry and promoting confidence in cloud services.
a key benefit of any certification is to help customers to make more informed buying decisions. From our perspective as a cloud service provider, we're not convinced that the self-certification offered by the CIF would do this for our prospective customers. Even if we were certified, our potential customers – who are usually medium to large organisations that are considering placing a substantial proportion of their IT infrastructure in the cloud – would want to conduct proper due diligence on us and our services. This means that the utility of the self-certification to us would be limited to its potential use as a marketing tool.
Michel Robert, Managing Director at Claranet UK Source: CIF Code of Practice: Seeking transparency in the cloud