Welcome to the new world of risk: Microsoft cuts off services to energy company without notice

When Indian energy giant Nayara Energy sued Microsoft on Monday for cutting off all paid-for services with no notice, it highlighted a relatively new risk for CIOs to worry about. 

This goes beyond a vendor not delivering what it was supposed to, or outages that halt services. It raises the ugly scenario of a major partner deliberately cutting off services to an enterprise for any of a wide range of reasons. 

In this instance, the cutoff was sought by the European Union (EU), in an attempt to pressure Russia to back off its assaults on Ukraine. But what if the requester was a government that just didn’t like what an enterprise said or did? What if the vendor itself was upset with the customer?