Compute Terms aria-hidden="true"bservatory

The published contract terms of cloud infrastructure and AI model providers, archived twice daily and laid out side by side. Every value links to the source document.

ai-generated summaries · documented methodology · not legal advice

Microsoft Azure

Published terms, citations, and change history.

← Back to matrix

Documents archived

Extracted terms

General contract terms

Capacity & reservation terms ✓ Quote verified against source

Reserved capacity offered (Capacity Blocks, On Demand Capacity Reservations); enterprise commitment terms negotiated, not published

“Capacity Block means a reservation of compute capacity for a specified duration”
Microsoft Azure Consumption Commitment (MACC): negotiated, not published (program page). Microsoft's own docs describe the MACC as a contractual spend commitment associated with a negotiated agreement; the commitment terms themselves are not published.
Source: SLA for Microsoft Online Services (consolidated; incl. Azure compute/GPU) · fetched 2026-07-15

Data use & AI training ✓ Quote verified against source

Never trains on customer data by default; only per documented instructions

“will not use Customer Data to train any generative AI foundation model”
Source: Microsoft Product Terms for Online Services · fetched 2026-08-01

Suspension rights ✓ Quote verified against source

Suspension for AUP breach or material breach; reasonable notice unless immediate needed

“violations of the Acceptable Use Policy in this section may result in suspension”
Source: Microsoft Product Terms for Online Services · fetched 2026-08-01

Termination ✓ Quote verified against source

Either party may terminate for convenience on 60 days notice; 90-day data extraction on disabled account

“Either party may terminate this Agreement without cause on 60 days' notice”
Source: Microsoft Customer Agreement (published) · fetched 2026-07-14

Unilateral modification ✓ Quote verified against source

Microsoft may update terms; at least 60 days' notice for General Terms changes; SLA 90 days for adverse changes

“notified at least 60 days before changes take effect to these General Terms”
Source: Microsoft Customer Agreement (published) · fetched 2026-07-14

Governing law & disputes ✓ Quote verified against source

Governing law Washington State; venue varies (King County or Ireland); no arbitration clause stated for enterprise

“governed by and construed in accordance with the laws of the State of Washington”
Source: Microsoft Customer Agreement (published) · fetched 2026-07-14

Liability caps & carveouts ✓ Quote verified against source

Cap = 12 months' subscription fees; consequential damages waived; carveouts for confidentiality, IP, defense obligations

“total amount of subscription fees Customer paid to use the Product during the 12…”
Source: Microsoft Customer Agreement (published) · fetched 2026-07-14

Output IP indemnification ✓ Quote verified against source

Yes via Customer Copyright Commitment for Covered Products; conditions require safety systems on

“Microsoft's obligation to defend Customer against third-party intellectual property claims”
Source: Microsoft Product Terms for Online Services · fetched 2026-08-01

Model deprecation & version pinning No provision found

Reviewed SLA for Microsoft Online Services (consolidated; incl. Azure compute/GPU) and 6 other governing documents: no provision addresses this term.

Benchmarking & eval restrictions ✓ Quote verified against source

Consent/conditions required; competitors must waive restrictions and provide replication info

“provide: (a) all information necessary to replicate such Benchmark”
Source: Microsoft Product Terms for Online Services · fetched 2026-08-01

No-compete-training clauses ✓ Quote verified against source

Restricted: may not generate output as synthetic training data for substantially similar AI

“creating synthetic training data to develop or train AI models”
Source: Microsoft Product Terms for Online Services · fetched 2026-08-01

Capacity delivery remedies ✓ Quote verified against source

Capacity Blocks: service credits for failure to provision reserved capacity; credits sole remedy

“failures to Provision or make available the reserved capacity within a Capacity Block”
Source: SLA for Microsoft Online Services (consolidated; incl. Azure compute/GPU) · fetched 2026-07-15

Hardware substitution rights No provision found

Reviewed SLA for Microsoft Online Services (consolidated; incl. Azure compute/GPU) and 6 other governing documents: no provision addresses this term.

Assignment & financing clauses ✓ Quote verified against source

Assignment to Affiliate allowed with notice; payment rights assignable without notice; no lender step-in stated

“Either party may assign this Agreement to an Affiliate”
Source: Microsoft Customer Agreement (published) · fetched 2026-07-14

Service level (SLA) terms

Availability definition Quote not verified against source

Per-service; Virtual Machines instance/AZ-level connectivity-based; e.g. 99.99% multi-AZ, 99.9% single-instance Premium SSD

“Downtime is the total accumulated minutes that are part of Maximum Available Minutes that…”
Source: SLA for Microsoft Online Services (consolidated; incl. Azure compute/GPU) · fetched 2026-07-15

Credit regime ✓ Quote verified against source

Tiered e.g. VM <99.9%=10%, <99%=25%, <95%=100%; credits sole and exclusive remedy

“Service Credits are your sole and exclusive remedy for any performance or availability issues”
Source: SLA for Microsoft Online Services (consolidated; incl. Azure compute/GPU) · fetched 2026-07-15

Claim mechanics ✓ Quote verified against source

Must file claim; Azure within 60 days of Incident; supply detailed description, time, resources, errors

“For a claim related to Microsoft Azure, we must receive the claim within 60…”
Source: SLA for Microsoft Online Services (consolidated; incl. Azure compute/GPU) · fetched 2026-07-15

SLA exclusions ✓ Quote verified against source

Force majeure, customer fault, preview/beta, single-datacenter non-geo-resilient, throttling, external network

“Due to factors outside our reasonable control (for example, natural disaster”
Source: SLA for Microsoft Online Services (consolidated; incl. Azure compute/GPU) · fetched 2026-07-15

Data protection & privacy

International data transfer mechanism ✓ Quote verified against source

Standard Contractual Clauses; EU-US/UK/Swiss Data Privacy Frameworks; adequacy decisions

“standard contractual clauses approved by the European Commission”
Source: Microsoft Privacy Statement · fetched 2026-07-31

Data residency commitments ✓ Quote verified against source

Reserves global processing; may store/process in US and other jurisdictions

“stored and processed in your region, in the United States, and in any other…”
Source: Microsoft Privacy Statement · fetched 2026-07-31

Sub-processor transparency ✓ Quote verified against source

Subprocessor list published; names of new subprocessors published at least six months in advance

“names of any new subprocessors for its online services at least six months in…”
Source: Microsoft Online Services Subprocessor List · fetched 2026-07-18

Government access commitments ✓ Quote verified against source

No back doors; imposes special requirements for government requests; transparency report published

“no direct or unfettered government access to your data”
Source: Microsoft Online Services Subprocessor List · fetched 2026-07-18

Retention & human review of content ✓ Quote verified against source

Automated classifiers run to detect AUP/Code of Conduct violations; personnel access granted only when necessary

“run automated classifiers and other automated evaluation systems to detect violations”
Source: Microsoft Product Terms for Online Services · fetched 2026-08-01

Accountability & transparency

Prohibited high-risk uses ✓ Quote verified against source

AUP prohibits illegal use, harming minors; high-risk use disclaimed but not specific FR/policing list

“Intending to harm or exploit minors in any way”
Source: Microsoft Acceptable Use Policy (Online Services) · fetched 2026-07-14

Appeal & redress mechanisms No provision found

Reviewed SLA for Microsoft Online Services (consolidated; incl. Azure compute/GPU) and 6 other governing documents: no provision addresses this term.

EU AI Act role allocation No provision found

Reviewed SLA for Microsoft Online Services (consolidated; incl. Azure compute/GPU) and 6 other governing documents: no provision addresses this term.

Change history

Microsoft Azure: Microsoft Product Terms for Online Services ai_terms 2026-08-01

The clause broadened its scope from applying specifically to Azure OpenAI in Microsoft Foundry Models to applying to any covered service, and updated the reference for required mitigation documentation from the prior Azure OpenAI customer-copyright-commitment URL to a new Customer Copyright Commitment Required Mitigations page.

Output IP indemnificationModel documentation commitments

AI-generated description; verify against the source before relying on it.

sourceCompare full documents side by side
Preview of changes
For Azure OpenAI in Microsoft Foundry Models and any other For any or other safety systems, Customer also must have implemented all mitigations required by the Azure OpenAI documentation (published at https://learn.microsoft.com/legal/cognitive-services/openai/customer-copyright-commitment or other safety systems, Customer also must have implemented all mitigations required by Customer Copyright Commitment Required Mitigations (published at https://aka.ms/aoai-ccc

View prior version · View current version

Extracted 2026-08-12 03:37 UTC with claude-opus-4-8.